Department for Transport revamps police road traffic accident reporting system

The Department for Transport (DfT) has revamped the cloud-based system used by police forces across England and Wales to report road traffic accidents by enhancing its mobile capabilities.

The government department has worked with Civica Digital to make it easier for police officers to log details of roadside incidents and share the data accrued with other stakeholders, including Highways England and local authorities, using mobile devices.

The Collision Reporting and Sharing System (Crash) is already being used by 20 police forces across England and Wales, and is reported to have generated annualised savings of £7.5m for its users.

The system was introduced in January 2018 as a means of providing police officers with a means of recording details of road traffic accidents as they happen, in real-time, and the data generated is hosted in the Microsoft Azure public cloud.

Steve Thorn, executive director of Civica Digital, said: “Crash allows police forces to go fully digital for road traffic collision management: a key step forward in intelligence-based policing, enabling agencies to talk to one another and collaborate to tackle road issues and improve road safety.”

According to DfT and Civica Digital, the reworked mobile application will speed up the time it takes police to make roadside reports, and allow them to do so with a higher degree of accuracy, with the help of Ordnance Survey mapping data.

It is hoped this will provide police forces and local authorities with a clearer idea of where collisions most frequently take place and why, and allow corrective and preventative action to be taken.

Jesse Norman, the government minister for road safety, said the system is helping police forces cut down on the amount of paperwork they do, while also making their reporting procedures far more efficient.

“This technology ensures police officers can record accurate information about crashes – ensuring they spend less time on paperwork and more time preventing crime. This data will also help local authorities identify issues and act more quickly to improve road safety.”

Thorn added: “With improved efficiency and end-to-end transformation, we’re confident that a digitally transformed and mobile Crash will lead to more efficient use of finite resources and far better decision making about the road network in the future.”