PAR Eval OMB Supporting Statement_PartA

Inventory of State Police Accident Reports (PAR) and

Serious Injury Reporting

The Supporting Statement: Part A

This is a request for OMB clearance for a new information collection entitled “Inventory of State Police Accident Reports (PAR) and Serious Injury Reporting.”

1. Circumstances that make collection of information necessary:

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Safety’s mission is to exercise leadership throughout the highway community to make the Nation’s roadways safer by developing, evaluating, and deploying life-saving countermeasures; advancing the use of scientific methods and data-driven decisions, fostering a safety culture, and promoting an integrated, multidisciplinary 4 E’s (Engineering, Education, Enforcement, Education) approach to safety. The mission is carried out through the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), a data driven strategic approach to improving highway safety on all public roads that focuses on performance. The goal of the program is to achieve a significant reduction in traffic fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads, including non-State-owned public roads and roads on tribal lands.

In keeping with that mission, the United States Congress on June 29, 2012 passed the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), which was signed into law (P.L. 112-141) on July 6, 2012 by President Barrack Obama. MAP-21 is a milestone for the U.S. economy and the Nation’s surface transportation program as it transformed the policy and programmatic framework for investments to guide the system’s growth and development and created a streamlined performance-based surface transportation program. The Federal Highway Administration defines Transportation Performance Management as a strategic approach that uses system information to make investment and policy decisions to achieve national performance goals.

MAP-21 requires the Secretary of Transportation to establish performance measures for States to use to assess serious injuries and fatalities per vehicle mile traveled; and the number of serious injuries and fatalities, for the purposes of carrying out the HSIP under 23 U.S.C. 148. The HSIP is applicable to all public roads. USDOT therefore requires crash reporting by all law enforcement agencies.

In defining performance measures for serious injuries, FHWA seeks to define serious injuries in a manner that would provide for a uniform definition for national reporting in this performance area, as required by MAP-21. An established standard for defining serious injuries as a result of highway crashes has been developed in the 4^th edition of the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC). MMUCC represents a voluntary and collaborative effort to generate uniform crash data that are accurate, reliable and credible for data-driven highway safety decisions within a State, between States, and at the national level. The MMUCC defines a serious injuries resulting from traffic crashes as “Suspected Serious Injury (A)” whose attributes are:

Any injury, other than fatal, which results in one or more of the following: Severe laceration resulting in exposure of underlying tissues, muscle, organs, or resulting in significant loss of blood, broken or distorted extremity (arm or leg), crush injuries, suspected skull, chest, or abdominal injury other than bruises or minor lacerations, significant burns (second and third degree burns over 10 percent or more of the body), unconsciousness when taken from the crash scene, or paralysis.¹

As part of the effort to understand current reporting levels for serious injuries to support the MAP-21 performance measures, the FHWA seeks to determine what law enforcement agencies have adopted the MMUCC definition, attribute and coding convention. FHWA is aware that not all States have adopted the MMUCC definition, attribute and coding convention for serious injuries while other States have only partially adopted the definition. It is also known that some jurisdictions do not use the State Police Accident Report (PAR) form to report on crashes. It is not known if the reporting forms these jurisdictions use are MMUCC compliant.

The ultimate outcome for the project is to assess the extent to which Federal, State, tribal, county, and municipal law enforcement agencies are assessing and reporting highway crash injury levels by using the definition, attribute, and coding convention for suspected serious injuries based in the MMUCC guidelines and, if not, the definition and coding convention the jurisdictions are using.

2. How, by whom, and for what purpose is the information used:

The information will be collected by FHWA by conducting in person or telephone interviews with the State Traffic Records (TR) Coordinators for each State, the State crash database and/or form managers, or the best State resource person who can provide the necessary information about the PARs used in the State.

The information will be directly collected by FHWA’s contractor KLS Engineering and its subcontractor Traffic Safety Analysis Systems & Services, Inc.

The information will be used to assess the level of readiness and the technical assistance and training needs of Federal, tribal, State and local law enforcement agencies to comply with the proposed Federal regulation required under MAP-21 to report on serious injury crashes in support of the National Goal to “Reduce Fatalities and Serious Injuries on all public roads.”

The purpose of the information collection is to conduct an assessment of each Federal, tribal, State and non-State PAR to determine if the definition and coding convention used for reporting on serious injuries is or is not compliant with MMUCC, 4^th edition, and if not compliant, the definition and coding convention that is used. This collection supports DOT’s strategic goal for safety.

A3. Extent of automated information collection:

Automation will not be used to collect this information. Each State will be contacted individually, starting with the State TR coordinator and then, if necessary identifying the alternate person/s that can best provide the information desired. All contacts will be made by telephone or, where possible, in person.

4. Efforts to identify duplication:

The information collected through this survey will not duplicate any existing data. FHWA and its contractors currently possess a library of all State crash forms, coding manuals, data dictionaries, and last known Crash Manager. The initial interview will verify that the information in the library is current, correct and up to date. The interview will identify errors and collect current information. The main focus of the interview will be to verify the current library information is correct and identify agencies in the State that do not utilize the State crash form.

4. Efforts to minimize the burden on small businesses:

This information collection will only focus on Federal, State, tribal and local government agencies (Departments of Transportation, Traffic Records Coordinators, Departments of Motor Vehicles, etc.). Therefore, there is no burden on small businesses.

4. Impact of less frequent collection of information:

Information will only be collected once. Thus, there is no impact of collecting information less frequently.

4. Special circumstances:

There are no special circumstances related to this information collection.

4. Compliance with 5 CFR 1320.8:

The FHWA published a Federal Register Notice on November 12, 2014, which appeared on pages 67233 and 67234 of Volume 79, Number 218. No comments were received.

4. Payments or gifts to respondents:

There will be no payments or gifts to the respondents.

4. Assurance of confidentiality:

The information being collected is not inherently confidential. The survey will collect facts about how serious injuries resulting from roadway crashes are defined and reported within each State. No opinions, other subjective responses or personally identifiable information will be sought or required. The name, business title and address of the respondent will be collected.

4. Justification for collection of sensitive information:

The information to be collected will not be sensitive in nature.

4. Estimate of burden hours for information requested:

The total burden for this information collection is approximately 19 hours. Information will be collected from the staff member responsible for managing State and locally reported crash data and is limited to information focused specifically on serious injuries. No other parts of the PAR will be evaluated. The respondents will include each Federal State, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico tribal, and, as necessary, local level jurisdictions. Based on current knowledge of State traffic records coordinators, other persons responsible for crash data, and other persons at the local level for jurisdictions that do not utilize the State PAR an estimated 75 persons will be contacted. It is estimated that the interview will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. Assuming a mean hourly wage of $23.89², the total estimated cost for the burden hours of this information collection is $1,791.75.

4. Estimate of total annual costs to respondents:

There will be no costs to the respondents.

4. Estimate of cost to the Federal government:

The cost to the Federal government for this project is $60,396, of which this information collection represents approximately 12%. Therefore, the estimated cost to the Federal government for this information collection is approximately $7,500.

4. Explanation of program changes or adjustments:

This is a new information collection. Therefore, this is a program change.

4. Publication of results of data collection:

The raw data collected will not be published. A report for internal use, summarizing all findings from the information collection, will be used by FHWA for the purposes described in Question A2.

4. Approval for not displaying the expiration date of OMB approval:

Approval for not displaying the expiration date is not being requested.

4. Exceptions to certification statement:

No exceptions to the certification statement are being requested.

1 MMUCC Guideline: Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria, Fourth Edition (2012). http://mmucc.us/sites/default/files/MMUCC_4th_Ed.pdf

2 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_999200.htm#00-0000

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