Traffic Records

A new Traffic Records Assessment was conducted for the State of Arkansas March 6 – 11, 2011 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s assessment team. The findings and recommendations of this team, together with input from the TRCC, are the basis for Arkansas’ 2011-2015 Traffic Records Strategic Plan submitted to NHTSA June 15, 2011. In conjunction with the strategic plan, the goals of the Traffic Records Program are to reduce the backlog of crash report data to be entered into the Traffic Analysis Reporting System (TARS) and improve the accuracy of data. The backlog was reduced from 7.8 months in November 2009 to 4.5 months in November 2010.

The Program will continue efforts to reduce the backlog and improve the accuracy of data. This will be accomplished through two projects: one to continue the paperless system by using a computer image of the crash report for review and data entry; and another project will continue capturing a portion of the data that is uploaded by the troopers and other law enforcement officers through the TraCS system.

An additional project will incorporate the E-Crash system from the University of Alabama which will be used to transition from TraCS. The transition from the TraCS system will further streamline the entry of crashes by ASP and local law enforcement agencies. E-Crash will also be used to enter data from paper reports. This will increase the amount of data captured and create uniform data to be merged into the database further decreasing the backlog of reports. It is anticipated that E-Crash will be ready to be pilot tested in 2013.

The Arkansas State Police (ASP) logged 64,261 crash reports in 2009, of which 62,808 were entered into the TARS database. The total logged by the ASP for 2010 was 63,162. Reports entered into TARS do not include duplicate, private property or parking lot crashes.

The goal of the projects funded in the Traffic Records Program is to reduce the backlog of crash reports to be manually entered into the TARS from a 4.5 month backlog as recorded in November 2010 to a 2 month backlog by November 2012