Police Benefit From These Computer Crashes

Traffic accident investigators here are giving up their carpenters’ tools for high-tech gizmos an astronaut would love.

Through a $70,000 grant from the California Office of Driver Safety, the Police Department has acquired a compact laser range finder, a video camera, six laptop computers and an advanced Hewlett-Packard calculator that transfers data from the laser to the computers.

A police officer investigating an accident aims the laser at various points around the scene and precisely records distances. The information is then dumped into a laptop, which the officer can use to create his report and crash diagram. The computer can also crunch formulas to help determine how the accident happened and who caused it.

What used to take two officers an average of two hours--measuring everything at the crash scene with carpenters’ levels and tape, taking photographs, examining evidence--can be done in less than half the time, and more accurately by a single officer using the new equipment.

“It’s boom boom boom boom. All you have to do is set it up and aim it,” said Police Department spokesman Mike Kelly, who investigated crashes for six years. “We would be out there on the scene forever. It was very laborious.”

And frustrating. Sometimes oblivious motorists ran over the measuring tape, ruining the measurements or even breaking the tape, said Senior Traffic Officer Robert Barr, who has been investigating crashes for 12 years.

Reports and hand-drawn diagrams that once took days to complete can be finished in hours, Kelly said. Among other things, that can speed insurance payments to victims.

Kelly said the technology also will reduce overtime for officers, or free them to catch drunken drivers. In addition, the computerized statistics can help traffic engineers identify and fix dangerous intersections, reducing the city’s liability in lawsuits and preventing future crashes, he said.

Traffic Sgt. Bill Peterson applied for the grant in June, and the department bought the equipment in January. Peterson said it will be another six months before it’s fully integrated into the unit, but it has already been used at two fatal crash sites.