New Arizona Crash Report Form(01-2704 R06/2010)
Issue
The State of Arizona has created a new form for reporting crashes. This article describes changes that have occurred that will affect your crash data in Intersection Magic.
Explanation
A new form is being used to document vehicle collisions. This form is similar, but in some critical ways different from the previous form. Some fields have been dropped from the new form and some fields have been added. Unfortunately the values in some of the fields have changed. So a table that used to look like this:
1. Blue
2. Green
3. Red
4. Silver
may now look like this:
1. Blue
2. Yellow
3. Green
4. Gold
5. Red
6. Silver
(this example is contrived, we don’t use vehicle color in our system)
This means that when a yellow car is involved in a crash, the officer will now code it as a “2”. That “2” will be written to one of the files that Intersection Magic imports. Intersection Magic will see that “2” and interpret it as a green car.
The changes are substantial and will affect any application that uses data from these forms. As a result, you should not import this new data into your existing database Intersection Magic database. It will result in incorrect data in the program. This will affect the display of collision diagrams, as these diagrams rely on the data provided.
Solution
The most important information you will need in order to handle this situation is know how your data provider is dealing with this change. Your data may be provided by ADOT, your police department, or you may be entering data directly into IMW Edit.
Your data provider will probably do one of three things (in order of our opinion of preferred strategies):
- Convert old data to the new values: In this case, all the old values have be re-mapped to match the new values by your data provider. In the previous example the data provider would convert “2” values to “3”, “3” values to “5”, and “4” values to “6” from the old crash report. This requires a new IMW configuration to import the data into Intersection Magic. Once installed, this would provide IMW users with a new desktop icon to use with the new data. ADOT has indicated that it will be providing data converted to the new values. Clients using data from ADOT should check with ADOT for details on the data. This also means that if you have made changes to your own data, These changes will not be shown in the new database. Clients should also be aware that ADOT data does not support corridor diagrams in Intersection Magic. Click here for details.
- Create and maintain a separate database: In this case, the old format is archived and a new database is created to hold the new format of data. In this case, a new configuration for IMW is needed. Once installed IMW users will have two icons on their desktop. One will access data from the old format, and the other icon will only access new data. Users will not be able to access old and new data in a single screen.
- Convert all new data to the old values: In this case, the data provider is choosing to ignore the changes. In the example the data provider would convert all “3” values from the new form to the old form value of “2”, and new colors like Gold would be ignored. The advantage is that there will be no changes needed on your part. Intersection Magic will continue running without change. However, this strategy will eventually come back to haunt you each time changes are made. You may not be able to relate your data to statewide stats. You will essentially be using a discontinued format.
Please, contact us once you’ve identified how your data provider is handling this change. If you are using IMW Edit, you have the same three choices as above. However, we will only support option #1 or #2 and we will assist you in the conversion process.
Converting old IMW Data:
Please, contact Pd’ Programming if you data provider has chosen option 2 and you would like to convert you legacy data to the new format.