Characteristics of Emerging Road and Trail Users and Their Safety

State Motor Vehicle Crash Data

State motor vehicle crash files are another potential source of information on the safety of emerging road and trail users. To determine whether States collect information on the various user groups identified, the researchers sent a brief e-mail survey (included in the appendix) to the crash form coordinator in each State. The names of the crash form coordinators and their e-mail addresses were obtained from NHTSA's Traffic Records System Inventory Web site (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/perform/trafrecords/crash/Pages/coordinators.htm). The site also provides telephone numbers and downloadable copies of State crash report forms.

Surveys were initially sent to the 40 States with available e-mail addresses. Of these 40, however, only 22 proved to be viable (i.e., deliverable) addresses, and only 15 responded. Researchers continued to follow up with nonrespondents, and also began trying to contact persons by telephone to obtain updated e-mail addresses. Eventually, researchers were able to identify e-mail addresses for all but a few States, and obtained completed surveys for 35.

The results are not especially encouraging. In response to the question about whether specific user groups could be identified on their computerized crash database, the number of "yes" responses (out of 35) is shown in table 3.

Table 3. User types that can be identified in State motor vehicle crash files.

Four States indicated that they could identify inline skaters (or rollerbladers), but in two of these States (Nevada and North Carolina), inline skaters were coded together with skateboards. Seven States indicated that they could identify motorized scooters; however, we believe that in most if not all of these cases, the motorized scooter that the respondent was referring to was the larger powered motorbike similar to a motorcycle, and not the small, motorized stand-on scooter that we had intended by our question. The exception may be Nevada, which indicated that it had begun collecting data on motorized scooters in November 2001. The only other special use groups identified by any of the States were bicycle trailers (two States), wheelchairs (two States), and racing wheelchairs (one State). In the case of wheelchairs, Oregon indicated that although they had been coded separately since 1998, they were not differentiated by type. This may also be the case in Nevada (i.e., Nevada may code racing wheelchairs along with regular wheelchairs). Thus, there appears to be few data available on emerging road and trail users from computerized State motor vehicle crash databases.

Anticipating this might be the case, we also asked the coordinators whether their State computerized the narrative descriptions of crashes, either full descriptions or key words, and if they did, whether this data could be electronically searched. Five States (Arkansas, Delaware (under development), North Carolina, Oregon, and Rhode Island) indicated that they did computerize some or all of their crash narratives, and three of these (North Carolina, Oregon, and Rhode Island) indicated that these data could be searched using key words to identify potentially relevant crash reports for the various identified user groups.

A final question asked respondents whether there had been any efforts in their State to use available crash data to study the safety of any of the identified emerging user groups (not including standard bicycles). Florida indicated that its department of transportation had studied inline skaters, and Vermont that pedestrians had been studied (although without reference to any of the identified user groups). In North Carolina, the crash data have been queried in response to requests from the public, but no formal studies have been carried out on any of the identified user groups. Several respondents indicated that these user groups were not felt to constitute a safety problem in their State.

As a side task, we searched the North Carolina crash data to identify all crashes in which "Person Type" was coded as "roller skater, roller blader, etc." Over a period of approximately 2.5 years (2000, 2001, and through about August 2002), only 17 such cases were coded.

However, it was clear that the coding was not entirely accurate, since when we examined the hard copies of the crash reports for these cases, 9 of the 17 did not appear to involve skaters. In addition, there were cases that we had identified from our narrative search (see following section) that should have been coded in this category but were not. This admittedly limited pilot effort suggests that routinely coded crash data may not be the most complete or reliable source of information on emerging road users.

Based on these results, it does not appear that State motor vehicle crash databases are especially useful sources of information on the safety of the emerging road and trail users that are the focus of the current study. Although this is primarily because only a few States are collecting data on only a few of the user categories, it is also because the data that are collected are limited almost entirely to crashes involving motor vehicles and occurring on public roadways. Recognizing these limitations, it may still be useful to pool available information from selected States to study the characteristics of, for example, crashes involving inline skaters or skateboard users. While sample sizes are likely to be too small for a statistical analysis of the data, the identified crash reports could be accessed and reviewed as a case series to identify potentially important characteristics, such as involved age groups and factors contributing to the crash.