Best Practices for Effective Completion of Crash Reports by Law Enforcement

Summary:

Crash reports are one of the primary data sources for conducting crash and roadway safety analyses. Crash reports are used for a wide variety of safety analyses, much of which relies on having the widest possible range of data, including fatal, injury, and property damage crashes. Due to recent changes, law enforcement is not required to document all crashes (Statute 169.09), but only when there is an injury. Because of this practice, there is a lot of missing data which is crucial when conducting safety analysis and in being proactive in the pursuit of designing a safer roadway network. Additionally, it is important that these crashes are documented accurately to ensure usefulness of crash data. There has already been some work done to facilitate this. Law enforcement uses GPS enabled interactive maps to identify collision locations in MnCRASH. The HumanFIRST Lab at UofMN is currently working to improve automated crash reporting software for officer use. While these developments improve crash reporting, there is still a need to educate officers in the use of this new technology. In addition, recent legislation will influence the collisions that are required to be reported by law enforcement. To address the above concerns, the project team will review and synthesize best practices for crash reporting, review new technologies that aid in crash reporting, and develop educational materials to support law enforcement’s crash reporting and data submittal.

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