Crash data validation
Subtitle: an Iowa case study
By: by Reginald Souleyrette and Tom Stout
Contributors: Stout, Thomas Brooks; Iowa. Department of Transportation
Publisher: Cener for Transportation Research and Education, Iowa State University
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Ames, Iowa
Language: eng
Subjects: Databases; Traffic accidents; Data processing; Evaluation; Accident analysis; Accident records; Accident reports; Iowa. Office of Driver Services; Iowa; Iowa. Office of Traffic and Safety
Description: With the quickening pace of crash reporting, the statistical editing of data on a weekly basis, and the ability to provide working databases to users at CTRE/Iowa Traffic Safety Data Service, the University of Iowa, and the Iowa DOT, databases that would be considered incomplete by past standards of static data files are in "public use" even as the dynamic nature of the central DOT database allows changes to be made to both the aggregate of data and to the individual crashes already reported.  Moreover, the "definitive" analyses of serious crashes will, by their nature, lag seriously behind the preliminary data files.  Even after these analyses, the dynamic nature of the mainframe data file means that crash numbers can continue to change long after the incident  year.  The Iowa DOT, its Office of Driver Services (the "data owner"), and institutional data users/distributors must establish data use, distribution, and labeling protocols to deal with the new, dynamic nature of data.  In order to set these protocols, data must be collected concerning the magnitude of difference between database records and crash narratives and diagrams.  This study determines the difference between database records and crash narratives for the Iowa Department of Transportation's Office of Traffic and Safety crash database and the impacts of this difference.
Notes: "February 2007."

Final report.

Also available via the Internet.

Sponsored by the Iowa Dept. of Transportation CTRE project 06-256