Kentucky State Police Win National Award for Motor Vehicle Data Project

October 5, 2004

Making traffic data easier to access and helping law enforcement agencies plan their traffic safety efforts were two of the main reasons the Kentucky State Police (KSP) was recently recognized with a national award. The Association of Transportation Safety Information Professionals (ATSIP), a professional society of the National Safety Council's Highway Traffic Safety Division, handed out the award at their annual awards program that recognizes exemplary state and federal projects designed to improve the timeliness, accuracy and accessibility of traffic safety data.

Operated by the KSP's Criminal Identification and Records Branch, KYOPS (Kentucky Open Portal Solution) is a program that permits the electronic collection of motor vehicle collision, citation and crime data from throughout the state. This data is stored in a repository known as CRASH (Collision Reporting and Analysis for Safer Highways). The information can then be easily accessed by law enforcement agencies throughout the state for use in planning traffic safety efforts.

"KYOPS provides a bundle of tools that permits us to quickly capture, process, store and distribute data and documents related to numerous law enforcement and justice activities," explains Sgt. John Carrico, KSP Criminal Identification and Records Branch, Traffic Division. "Its flexibility and simplicity has allowed KSP to create, manage and maintain this useful data at a lower cost, in a shorter timeframe and with a greater success rate than previously experienced."

According to Carrico, a major benefit of KYOPS is its ability to identify problem areas in a timely manner. With local agencies able to submit collision data electronically instead of by paper reports, problem areas can be identified more quickly with a corresponding positive impact on public safety.

The KYOPS program was recognized for producing results in three areas:

• A decrease in the total number of injury collisions;
• An increase in the number of KYOPS users; and
• An increase in the number of KYOPS Web applications users.

After implementing KYOPS, the number of injury collisions decreased by more than five percent in 2003 as compared to 2002 (32,780 in 2003 vs. 34,510 in 2002). In January 2003, 79 agencies in the state were using KYOPS, equaling 19.6 percent of the reports. By December 2003, 151 agencies were utilizing the system, representing 47,610 electronic reports or 31.6 percent of the total reports. In January 2003, less than 15 agencies were making use of the data-mining tool on the KYOPS Web site. By December 2003, more than 120 agencies were using the service.

According to Carrico, "KYOPS has proven itself to be a robust, flexible and extendable tool that has delivered an outstanding return on investment in both dollars and services to KSP and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We know of no other state that can produce accurate statewide data as quickly as Kentucky," Carrico said. "The key to decreasing collision injuries to the general public is to quickly identify and resolve safety issues. KYOPS has proven it can do this job."

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