GA - Inaccurate crash reports could cost state funding

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Joey Ledford - Staff Thursday, March 29, 2001

Georgia could lose nearly $1 billion in federal transportation funds if the state fails to correct chronic problems in its highway crash reporting system.

Larry Dreihaup, division administrator for the Federal Highway Administration, which disperses federal highway dollars, confirmed Wednesday his agency might withhold all federal transportation funding if the state's highway crash reporting isn't upgraded to become more timely, accurate and complete.

Federal and state transportation officials use crash reports to determine where crashes occur and in many cases how money is spent to correct highway design flaws that may have caused them.

Dreihaup said the agency could decide to impose lesser sanctions, including withholding only federal highway safety funding, which totals $28.6 million in fiscal 2001.

"We're trying to resolve this without making it ugly," said Dreihaup. "We hope we can, but we are prepared to take some action if that's what's necessary."

He said he hasn't set a deadline, but added that he would not wait too much longer.

"We're not going to be satisfied waiting for three or four months," he said. "Let's put it this way: We need to get this data and get it moving right now."

State officials say they believe they can have the data collection problems resolved by summer.

In a March 21 letter to Gov. Roy Barnes, state Transportation Commissioner Tom Coleman described the impasse as "very serious."

"Please allow me to stress that this is not just funding for highway programs, but can affect the entire transportation program, including funds for transit, pedestrian facilities, bike trails and rail programs," Coleman wrote.

Joselyn Butler, Barnes' press secretary, said Wednesday that the problem "is being addressed" in the Department of Public Safety, which collects crash reports.

Public Safety Commissioner Bob Hightower said the root of the problem is a chronically high error rate by city and county police officers writing crash reports at accident scenes.

"I don't want to embarrass a lot of police agencies," said Hightower. "That's not my thing. I'm not going to do that."

But Maj. D.A. "Corky" Jewell, head of the communications division, said crash reports coming in on paper from more than 700 police agencies across Georgia have an error rate of between 35 percent and 65 percent. "Of those, 45 percent have inconsistencies that render that report statistically questionable," he said.

Errors run the gamut from failing to list the cause of the crash to conflicting information in the multi-page paper reports on how many people were killed or injured. "In some cases, pedestrians were listed as vehicles," said Jewell.

Further complicating the data gathering was Public Safety's change to a new computer system in 1998, the last year state officials produced what federal transportation officials consider accurate data. The new system has been plagued by problems, Coleman and federal officials said, though Public Safety officials contend it's now working well and could have all the data processed by summer.

http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/today/local_news_a32c2d1b63f311ff1011.html

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), March 29, 2001


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