By Police1 Staff
CHICAGO — State records show data on traffic accidents in the Chicago area is often flawed or incomplete, which hinders decisions on how to spend money for safety-related fixes within the metropolis, a city-led study concluded.
More than 70 percent of Chicago Police Department crash reports were missing important data, and details such as street names or proximity to intersections frequently misreported, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation, which conducted the research at the city’s request in 2008.
Other inaccuracies include “deaths underreported by as much as 179 percent” and a volume of angle crashes associated with running red lights inflated by one third, which the study attributed to faulty city data being taken at face value.
“The Illinois Department of Transportation validates each of the reports with software and manually to ensure that the coded data on the report corresponds with the narrative provided by the law enforcement reporting agency,” the research report said. “The Chicago Police Department, however, enters the crash data exactly as it appears in the hard copy of the crash report.”
According to the Chicago Tribune:
“In 2006, for example, they said the city counted 63 traffic deaths in Chicago while a state database they considered far more accurate put the number at 176 deaths. That same year, records show, the city reported 1,594 victims of serious injuries in crashes in Chicago; the state pegged it at 3,337.
“At the same time, city numbers for some key crash categories were far higher than the state’s. The city count in 2006 for crashes involving pedestrians was 4,945, compared with 3,909 totaled by the state. For angle crashes, the city total in 2006 was 24,576, the state 16,392.”
City officials say better training for law enforcement and clerical workers who analyze data — and an upgraded accident form — should help correct the problems. A spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation said he has seen improvements since implementing the changes.
“Without accurate data on the seriousness of the injury and relation of the crash to the intersection, the crash rate calculations and prioritization will be erroneous, and could result in the misdirection of funds,” read the city’s grant application.