Between January 1, 2007 and January 1, 2010, the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) recorded 2,106 non-fatal collisions between vehicles and pedestrians, in which 2,183 pedestrians were injured. It’s easy to find this information, but before this past Tuesday, when Connecticut and University of Connecticut’s Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center released the Connecticut Crash Data Repository and the CTCRASH online query tool, it would have been much more difficult.

As the User Guide makes clear, the purpose of the “repository and query toolset was to provide members of the traffic-safety community with timely, accurate, complete and uniform crash data.” This new electronic system makes Connecticut the second state in the region (after New Jersey) to centralize crash data in an easy-to-use database, and it’s vastly better than what it replaces.  In reference to the system that existed before Tuesday, The Hartford Courant reports,

The current system for crash reporting requires the state Department of Transportation to manually enter all traffic reports – about 5,000 a month, all filed on paper. That creates a significant backlog, and the current database has only been updated through December 2011.

These new resources don’t just offer more timely information on crashes; they also centralize crash data. Prior to these resources, information about crashes were stored in different places throughout the state. According to the Guide,

Connecticut has two disparate crash repositories: one at the Department of Public Safety (DPS); and one at the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT). In addition to two large scaled repositories, there are numerous small scale repositories retained at local police departments throughout the state.” Moreover, “these crash data repositories are not easily linked to roadway information, traffic volumes or land use data.”

The CTCRASH query tool is similar to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) Encyclopedia, which TSTC and many other advocates use for information about fatal crashes in each state.

Connecticut’s online tool provides several ways to query crash data, including:

• Time period (for example, crashes between July 2010 and September 2010)
• Crash severity (fatal, non-fatal, property damage)
• Location (county or town)
• Road (or portion of road)
• Contributing factors, and
• Information about a person involved in the crash

The tool generates results in spreadsheet form as well as summaries (for each table, Crash, Traffic Unit and Person) of the information. Data from DPS is not currently available but is forthcoming; the mapping tool is still under development.

For those looking for summaries of crash stats, but not to design actual queries, the Crash Summary Tool provides easy-to-grasp tables. Access to CTCRASH is registration-based, but registration is free and easy.

By increasing data accessibility to a wide range of users — from employees of State agencies to local livable streets advocates — these new tools will hopefully help to make Connecticut’s streets safer.