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The impact of a crash prevention program in a large law enforcement agency
Author(s) -
Tiesman Hope M.,
Gwilliam Melody,
Rojek Jeff,
Hendricks Scott,
Montgomery Brian,
Alpert Geoff
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
american journal of industrial medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.7
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1097-0274
pISSN - 0271-3586
DOI - 10.1002/ajim.23032
Subject(s) - crash , medicine , law enforcement , injury prevention , occupational safety and health , poison control , enforcement , autoregressive integrated moving average , rollover (web design) , environmental health , law , time series , statistics , political science , mathematics , pathology , world wide web , computer science , programming language
Background Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) remain a leading cause of death for US law enforcement officers. One large agency implemented a crash prevention program with standard operating policy changes, increased training, and a marketing campaign. This was a scientific evaluation of that crash prevention program. Methods MVC and motor vehicle injury (MVI) data for law enforcement officers were compared using an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. Two law enforcement agencies who had not implemented a crash prevention program were controls. Results After program implementation, overall, MVC rates significantly decreased 14% from 2.2 MVCs per 100 000 miles driven to 1.9 ( P = .008). MVC rates did not decrease in the control agencies. Overall, MVI rates significantly decreased 31% from 3.4 per 100 officers to 2.1 ( P = .0002). MVC rates did not decrease in the control agencies. MVC rates for patrol officers significantly decreased 21% from 3.1 per 100 000 miles to 2.4. MVI rates for patrol officers significantly decreased 48% from 3.2 per 100 officers to 1.6 ( P < .0001). Conclusions Crash and injury rates can be reduced after implementation of a crash prevention program and the largest impacts were seen in patrol officers.