JANUARY 2005 - Accident Reconstruction Newsletter

Electronic Accident Forms Boost Reporting Efficiency; Data Can Be Linked With Records Systems

By Bob Galvin
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If your police department is waiting for the day when crash reports can be completed electronically and shared among numerous parties, the wait is over. As law enforcement officers grow weary of filling out long and complicated paper crash reports, a growing number of them have discovered the ease and time savings offered by using electric versions of their crash reports. One of these officers, Lt. Steve Szabo, who manages Daytona Beach, Florida PD’s Telecommunications and Technology Section, recalls hearing about a software product that offered an electronic version of the Florida state crash reports. That product, it turns out, was the result of a unique collaborative effort. The CAD Zone, a provider of The Crash Zone crash scene drawing software, teamed up with AMGRAF, a Missouri-based forms software company, and its partner, Essociates Group, Inc. of Kansas. For years, AMGRAF and Essociates Group had been converting all kinds of paper forms to electronic versions. By joining forces, the three firms were able to create a powerful state crash report system called STARS. So far, they have created electronic forms for many states, including Florida, Arizona, Texas, Kansas, California, Oklahoma and Oregon.

Electronic Form Integrates Crash Diagrams

The collaboration among the three firms made sense. AMGRAF and Essociates Group are experts in form creation and editing systems. All of the STARS State Crash Reports are seamlessly integrated with The CAD Zone’s crash diagramming programs—The Crash Zone, for crash scene investigations, and Quick Scene, which is ideal for officers who need to create crash scene diagrams in less than 10 minutes. When a user creates and saves his diagram, a high-resolution image of the diagram is embedded into the report. The text portion of the complete report and the diagram are saved as a single file so they can be easily e-mailed or digitally submitted. Diagrams created with The CAD Zone’s Crash Zone program can also be embedded into the electronic reports. The Crash Zone is a more powerful diagramming program that is ideally suited for crash reconstructionists.

From the start, the whole idea of an electronic crash report form intrigued Lt. Szabo, who, as part of his research, wanted to see just how the crash report form was filled in. One of the aspects he liked was that the electronic version looked identical to paper forms that officers had been using for years. “It (the electronic form) has pull-down menus with a lot of the common information,” the lieutenant recalls. “And we could actually have some more drop-down menus built in specific to our agency.” A time-saving aspect of using the integrated Quick Scene diagramming program is the ability to create and reuse templates of intersections, Lt. Szabo notes.

A completed electronic crash report showing the embedded diagram.

Records Management Tie-in is Goal

The ultimate goal with implementing an electronic crash report form for law enforcement agencies is the ability to transfer the form’s data into a records management system (RMS). Daytona Beach PD’s Lt. Szabo plans to have the electronic report form installed on his department’s desktop computers and on individual laptops used by officers in the field. As part of this effort, he looks forward to seeing his officer’s complete electronic crash report forms on their laptops, then transferring them to the police department’s RMS. For Lt. Szabo, this capability is the real pay dirt for the electronic form because it means officers can then upload data from each completed crash report form into the database. The database then can be accessed by any officer, plus the state highway patrol or Department of Transportation can use the data to report statistics on auto crashes.

The drive to convert paper crash report forms to a paperless version, says Ray Killam of Essociates, stems from the fact that until now it has taken too long for data from crashes to be fed into a central database and for the reports to become available to those who needed them, such as lawyers and insurance companies. In many cases, the paper reports were not available for several months following crashes. Another reason is that the paper forms showed a high rate of errors, misspelled words, illegibility, and boxes that were incorrectly filled in. “The error rates were unacceptably high,” recalls Killam. Now, however, as more police agencies are automating their crash reports, accuracy and legibility have improved dramatically. The electronic form is easier to complete and more accurate, he adds.

Another aspect of the electronic crash report form that proves appealing is that it has built-in editing functions. For example, instead of typing in information, an officer may select his choice for a response to a particular box from a drop-down menu. Or, if he cannot complete his form in one sitting, the officer can save his work, then return later, re-open the form on his computer, and complete it then.

Reusable Intersection Templates Popular

The ability to create and reuse templates of intersections is another big draw with electronic crash reports that have integrated diagramming, according to Senior Officer John Spala, of the Temple Terrace Police Dept. in Florida. “We have several intersections mapped to scale, which we did about three years ago for traffic fatality investigations,” Officer Spala explains. “Now, we can just pull these up (in The Crash Zone or Quick Scene) and place them in the diagram for a preliminary investigation. What we’ve noticed is, if we get a crash at one of those intersections, we pull up the template, drop the cars in, and the diagram’s done,” Officer Spala adds. “It’s cut in half the time it takes to complete the report,” he continues. “And the reports are a lot neater.”

Some Agencies Create Own Form

Some police departments have chosen to create their own electronic crash report form. A case in point is the Aurora, Colorado Police Department. The department will soon be able to complete all of its crash reports electronically. Presently, patrol cars have mobile data computers that are connected to the police information records system via wireless modem. Nearly any report could be transmitted to the records system except crash reports. So, the department created a copy of the Colorado state crash report form as a Word document template. “The drawback with the Word template,” explains Traffic Officer Brad Stelter, “is that I can send it as an e-mail attachment, but there is no storage for it in the police information management system.” As a result, the data from crash report forms has to be entered into the police information management system by hand. Eventually, the Aurora P.D. hopes to have a more integrated system that allows the data to be exported from the crash reports to a database that can then be imported into the police department’s records management system.

The Florida Traffic Accident Report, showing a menu of the various forms and supplements available to create a complete report.

Conversion Possible for All Forms

Invariably, crash reports for nearly every state will differ in some way. Nevertheless, an electronic version of that form must resemble precisely the original paper version that was being used. Otherwise, the form will not be accepted by a state’s Department of Transportation or whichever agency within the state processes crash report forms. In addition, most states have several different forms for different situations—the number of vehicles involved, whether a fatality resulted, whether a commercial vehicle was involved, among other instances. The CAD Zone electronic crash report for your state includes an easy-to-use menu so you can quickly choose which of these forms you need. Also, when an electronic form is completed, all of the report’s pages are stored in one convenient Acrobat PDF file. This enables the electronic form’s users to view and print reports without needing to have the complete CAD Zone Crash Reports system or any other special viewing software.

Converting to an electronic crash report system has tremendous benefits which cannot be ignored: higher accuracy, legibility, transferability to a records management system, integration of crash scene diagrams, and tremendous time savings for law enforcement professionals. By adopting an electronic crash report, your agency will be more efficient with processing and saving filed crash reports, plus more people who need to view these reports will now have access to them. It’s worth considering.

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• Pedestrian Safety 2003
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• Electronic Accident Forms Boost Reporting Efficiency; Data Can Be Linked With Records Systems
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