FDOT Safety Office: Crash Data Management
Crash Data Management
Florida Traffic Safety Portal Crash Data Management:
 Crash Data Sources
 Crash Data Flow:
o Florida Traffic Crash Report (reporting officer)
o Preliminary Processing (reporting agency)
o Secondary Processing/Validation/Custodian (DHSMV)
o Transfer of Long Form Data (SSO)
 FDOT SSO Crash Location Processing:
o Upload and Conversion
o Location Processing and QA/QC
 Location Processing on the SHS
 Location Processing for Local Roads
 FDOT SSO Reports and Analyses
o The Crash Analysis Reporting (CAR) System
o Crash Location Shapefiles
Crash Data Sources
By law, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) is the
official custodian of the crash reports and is responsible for statewide crash data collection
and dissemination of the official statistics. Crash reports that reveal personal information of
parties involved in the crash are confidential and exempt from the provisions of §119.07(1),
F.S. and s. 24(a), Article 1 of the Constitution for a period of 60 days after the date the
report is filed. (§316.066 (2)(a), F.S.).
The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) State Safety Office (SSO) receives the
Long Form crash data from the DHSMV and loads them into the Crash Analysis Reporting
(CAR) database. As of January, 2014, approximately 65% of all documented crashes were
submitted to DHSMV using the long form. The SSO uses the CAR system to process the
crashes and to support safety analyses for Florida’s public roads.
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FDOT Safety Office: Crash Data Management
Crash Data Flow
Florida Traffic Crash Report (reporting officer)
Crash incidents are documented by law enforcement agencies using the Florida Traffic Crash Report
(FTCR) long form, the FTCR short form, or on a driver-exchange form depending upon the
location and severity of the crash. The material difference between the long and short
forms is that the long form requires both a narrative and a diagram and short form does not
require either. For additional requirements, please refer to the excerpt below from Section
316.066, F.S.:
316.066 Written reports of crashes.—
(1)(a) A Florida Traffic Crash Report, Long Form must be completed and
submitted to the department within 10 days after an investigation is
completed by the law enforcement officer who in the regular course of duty
investigates a motor vehicle crash that:
1. Resulted in death of, personal injury to, or any indication of
complaints of pain or discomfort by any of the parties or passengers
involved in the crash;
2. Involved a violation of s. 316.061(1) or s. 316.193;
3. Rendered a vehicle inoperable to a degree that required a wrecker
to remove it from the scene of the crash; or
4. Involved a commercial motor vehicle.
(b) The Florida Traffic Crash Report, Long Form must include:
1. The date, time, and location of the crash.
2. A description of the vehicles involved.
3. The names and addresses of the parties involved, including all
drivers and passengers, and the identification of the vehicle in
which each was a driver or a passenger.
4. The names and addresses of witnesses.
5. The name, badge number, and law enforcement agency of the
officer investigating the crash.
6. The names of the insurance companies for the respective parties
involved in the crash.
(c) In any crash for which a Florida Traffic Crash Report, Long Form is not
required by this section and which occurs on the public roadways of this
state, the law enforcement officer shall complete a short-form crash report
or provide a driver exchange-of-information form, to be completed by all
drivers and passengers involved in the crash, which requires the
identification of each vehicle that the drivers and passengers were in. The
short-form report must include:
1. The date, time, and location of the crash.
2. A description of the vehicles involved.
3. The names and addresses of the parties involved, including all
drivers and passengers, and the identification of the vehicle in
which each was a driver or a passenger.
4. The names and addresses of witnesses.
5. The name, badge number, and law enforcement agency of the
officer investigating the crash.
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FDOT Safety Office: Crash Data Management
6. The names of the insurance companies for the respective parties
involved in the crash.
Preliminary Processing (reporting agency)
The long and short form crash reports from law enforcement officers are submitted to
supervisors who review and approve the reports for submittal. Upon approval by a
supervisor, electronic crash reports are transmitted to the DHSMV through electronic
submittal using Extensible Markup Language (XML) via File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
Crash reports submitted on paper forms are mailed to the DHSMV to be scanned and
converted into Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) and then forwarded to a third party
contractor who performs the necessary data entry.
Secondary Processing/Validation/Custodian (DHSMV)
Once the electronic files have been created, the records are checked by automated routines
that look for data errors and discrepancies. All of the records that pass the automated
check are uploaded into the DHSMV database within 24 hours of submittal. Electronic
records that fail the validation checks are returned to the submitting agency for correction
and resubmission.
For paper crash reports, the data entry contractor converts the records into electronic
format (comma-separated values (CSV)) and transfers them to the DHSMV daily via FTP.
Paper crash reports that fail the quality checks are identified and returned to the submitting
agency with notes identifying the issues. The responsible agencies must then correct and
resubmit the reports.
Transfer of Long Form Data (SSO)
Every weekday, the DHSMV generates a file of that day’s or weekend’s new long form
reported crashes and any updates to existing crashes that have been received, both from
direct electronic submittal from the reporting agencies and the data entry contractor. The
crash data file is in CSV format. The DHSMV combines the CSV file with the corresponding
crash image files then encrypts the combined file and posts it for the SSO to download. The
SSO transfers and unpacks the file and stores the record data in CAR, a DB2 database, and
the corresponding TIFF images in an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS).
Updated records match to and overwrite the original database records; additionally, key
report fields are flagged for duplicates and resolved through DHSMV’s reciprocal process.
Finally, the incoming TIFF files for updated records are added to the EDMS database with a
version number.
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FDOT Safety Office: Crash Data Management
FDOT SSO Crash Location Processing
Upload and Conversion
After the crash data is downloaded from DHSMV, the CAR System's automated process
checks and formats them for upload into the CAR database. The records are split into
groupings to match the CAR database structure and certain fields are calculated and
flagged. DOT is working through a challenge created when the FTCR forms were modified in
2011. DHSMV instituted this change to align Florida crash data collection protocols closer
with the Federal Model Uniform Crash Codes (MUCC). At the current time, the CAR
database has not been updated to store all of the new fields on the updated form.
However, the incoming 2011 crash data are converted as accurately as possible to match
the previous FTCR data elements and code values uploaded into the CAR database.
Location Processing and QA/QC
Using DHSMV crash data and crash report images in combination with other FDOT data, the
SSO Crash Records and Research Section processes crash records to determine an exact
location for each crash. Once the crashes have location coordinates, the SSO systems use
them to perform various analyses. Location processing is conducted separately for the
State Highway System (SHS) and for Local Roads.
Location Processing on the SHS
Crashes are first screened by an automated location process within the CAR System.
Unambiguous locations on the SHS are captured and spot-checked for quality and accuracy.
Records successfully located on the SHS by the automated process, based on a recent
sample, make up just over 13 percent of the total crashes received (ranging from 8 percent
to 18 percent on any given day). Also captured are records that can be unambiguously
confirmed not on the SHS. These records fall into two categories: (1) crashes that are on
private property or in parking lots and are not on the public roads system, and (2) crashes
for which the automated process can determine that the referenced location is not on the
SHS. The former (1) make up approximately 11 percent of the crashes received (also
ranging from 8 to 18 percent) and the latter (2), make up approximately 14 percent (ranging
from 12 to 16 percent).
The remaining records (about 62 percent of the records received) are crashes for which the
system cannot automatically determine a location or crashes that involved a fatality. The
indeterminate locations and the fatal crashes are reviewed and finalized by personnel in the
Crash Records and Research section using the CAR System. Processed SHS locations are
reviewed for quality and final approval for inclusion in the reporting and analysis dataset.
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FDOT Safety Office: Crash Data Management
Location Processing for Local Roads
Records for crashes that the SSO staff have determined are not on the SHS are passed to a
second system for location processing using customized Geographic Information Systems
(GIS) applications.
Crash locations that are on Florida public roads but are not on the SHS are imported by the
SSO’s Crash Locator System (CLS). In the CLS the records are updated with corrected street
names, given latitude and longitude coordinates and linked to a specific roadway segment
in the map dataset used to determine the location. The CLS crash locations are verified and
quality checked by SSO staff and after initial location.
FDOT SSO Reports and Analyses
The Crash Analysis Reporting (CAR) System
The SSO, through the CAR System, has a powerful and flexible reporting tool that can
provide crash and crash analysis data in a variety of formats. The CAR System can provide
specific crash data for any location on the SHS and can filter the crashes returned by most
of the data elements that are collected on the FTCR Long Form. Standard output formats
are live (on-screen), formatted reports in PDF and data files in CSV format. The formatted
reports are available as a crash listing with limited attribute data, a section or location crash
rate analysis with summary tables for a standard set of data elements and as a customized
tabulation on elements selected by the user. The CSV files are available in six versions,
which vary based on the attributes included in the extract, or as an extract of all attributes
in the database.
The CAR System runs annual analyses for crashes on the SHS and the results are available
for crash rates and high-crash locations, as well as for areas where certain crash types have
a higher than average concentration (night-time crashes, wet weather crashes, et al.).
Annual analyses are also generated for the non-SHS public roads using the Crash Locator
Analysis Reports (CLAR) System. Results are published on the SSO’s Florida Traffic Safety
Portal: http://webapp02.dot.state.fl.us/TrafficSafetyWebPortalFDOT/.
Crash Location Shapefiles
Because the location coordinates for the crashes that are not on the SHS are not stored in
the CAR System, the CAR System has only a limited capability for reporting on crashes that
are not on the SHS. The CLS stores the geographic coordinates for the crashes that are on
non-SHS public roads, but there is no generl reporting function in the CLS. At the close of
each calendar year (and sometimes in intermediate intervals) the location coordinates in
the CLS are captured and the SSO generates and publishes crash location shapefiles that
allow users to access crashes by location in a GIS format.
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