PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

The time-consuming, labor-intensive process of generating, editing and interpreting police accident reports stood as an obstacle to the timely analysis, dissemination and utilization of accident statistics throughout the State of Iowa. The life cycle of a single accident report could extend for as long as 18 months from the time when the crash occurred to the time when information about that crash became available for review. As a result, local engineers could not obtain current data to identify high accident locations, and safety program coordinators could not determine if new safety problem areas were emerging. Furthermore, valuable police resources were being expended on essentially clerical functions rather than on traffic and criminal patrols. Since there was no mechanism in the process for feedback to the originating officer, problems in the quality or timeliness of the reports were not being addressed. Faced with shrinking budgets and increasing work loads, the Iowa State Department of Transportation recognized that a new approach had to be developed.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The goal of this project was to develop an automated process for collecting, validating and transferring crash data in order to reduce the length of the crash report life cycle and to improve the overall quality of the information collected. Specific objectives for the project were to:

• Reduce the crash data collection life cycle from 12-18 months to as little as one day
• Provide a readily accessible local database to expedite problem identification and correction
• Eliminate redundant data entry through automation at the point of collection in the field
• Eliminate redundant officer clerical functions and increase officer availability for enforcement duties.

Mobile Accident Reporting System (cont'd)

STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES

The Iowa Department of Transportation issued a contract to design a new automated system, called the Mobile Accident Reporting System, or MARS. MARS, which is designed to run on a laptop computer in the field, allows the investigating officer to enter all required crash information directly into a database. The system utilizes stylus or keyboard data entry and provides numerous pick-lists, crash scene templates and default options to streamline the data entry procedure. Once the data is entered, it is automatically validated on-line, thereby providing immediate feedback to the officer on any fields that were missing, incomplete, or improperly filled in. At the end of the shift, the investigating officer can transfer the information collected to a desktop computer, where it can be reviewed and approved on-line and transferred electronically to the state computer. There it is assigned a number and merged with existing data.

RESULTS

Forty-two police agencies, representing the largest jurisdictions in the state, are currently using MARS, and the plan is to expand the program gradually to all 500 law enforcement agencies in Iowa. While formal evaluation data have not been collected, several observations have been made about the success of the program. The on-line validation capability has virtually eliminated the problem of missing data on accident reports. In addition, local jurisdictions now have access to their own crash data as soon as it is collected, rather than a year after the fact. Several standard queries have been developed to assist these jurisdictions in performing their own data analyses. Finally, the labor cost associated with state data clerks entering data from paper forms has been replaced with the approximate $1.41 in telephone charges to transfer the crash reports electronically.

Based on the success of the MARS program, Iowa is developing several other complementary systems, such as the Mobile Operating While Intoxicated (MOWI) system, and the Electronic Citation Component (ECCO), which will eventually work with MARS as part of the Officer Information Manager.