CHP y2k Information 

This letter was forwarded to Pd' Programming by one of our users.
We have included it here in the event that any of our users would
like the raw information sent by SWITRS.
Pd' Programming's comments appear at the bottom of the text.

October, 1997 INFORMATION TO ALL SWITRS TAPE AND DISKETTE USERS The SWITRS programmers are in the process of making SWITRS data ready for the Year 2000 Effective with the distribution of Third Quarter 1997 SWITRS data, all fields on the SWITRS record that contain year will be expanded to a four digit year. This will include all historical and future files. The distribution of Second quarter 1997 is the last distribution of tapes or diskettes with the two digit year. The fields affected are: Collision Segment: Processing date, byte 1, will appear as yyyymmdd Collision date, byte 11, will apear as yyyymmdd Party Segment: Vehicle model year, byte 28, will appear as yyyy These changes will increase the length of the collision segment by four digits and increase the party segment by two digits. We hope that this advance information will assist you in preparing for these changes. Any questions may be directed to California Highway Patrol, Support Services Section, Information Services Unit, P.O. Box 942898, Sacramento, CA 94298-0001, telephone (916) 375-2850

Pd' Programming has been informed that when they refer to "Third Quarter
1997 SWITRS data", this is the data that you will receive 2-3 months after the
third quarter is over. For most of you, this means January - February.
THIS DOES MEAN YOUR VERY NEXT SHIPMENT OF DATA FROM SWITRS

Note that when "Processing date, byte 1" is changed from yymmdd to yyyymmdd,
this offsets all the rest of the fields in the record. When "Collision date,
byte 11" is changed it affects all the data after the 11th byte. Finally, when
byte 28 of the Party segment is changed, it affects all data after that byte.
The changes are cumulative, so by the time they reach the third party field,
all of the fields will be at least 10 characters off.

The current sizes of the fields as reported with each data set are:

NAME	COUNT(varies)	LENGTH IN BYTES
COLLISION	1	162
PARTY	5	37
VICTIM	8	10

Pd' Programming therefore assumes that the new values will be:

NAME	COUNT(varies)	LENGTH IN BYTES
COLLISION	1	166
PARTY	5	39
VICTIM	8	10

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