Tribal Crash Reporting in ND: Practices, Perceptions, and Systematic Implementation

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of American Indian unintentional injury for ages 1 to 44 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] 2016). A national study of fatal crashes in 1975 and 2002 showed a disheartening trend as fatal crashes per year on Indian reservations increased 52.5% in the comparison while nationally fatal crashes declined 2.2% nationally (Poindexter 2004). The Indian Nations Highway Safety Plan (HSP) goal ‘is to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes on Indian Country highways’ using evidence-based programs and projects. A fundamental aspect of addressing public safety priorities with evidence-based interventions is high-quality data. Unfortunately, the Indian Nation lacks a comprehensive and reliable crash reporting systems (U.S. Department of Interior 2015; Iragavarapu et al. 2015; Noyce et al. 2014). Tribes are sovereign nations so they have a formal relationship with the federal government and not the state. Therefore, they do not participate in state crash reporting systems that form the foundation for analysis related to resource and policy decisions, as required for jurisdictions such as towns and counties. Crash data submissions by tribes is often limited to fatal events. For example, it was determined that nonfatal crashes were underreported by 64% in a representative sample of tribes in South Dakota (Quick and Bailey 2007) and in Montana only fatal events were reported (Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 2013). Limitations certainly exist with the underreported events but the fatalities do provide some insight for emphasis in tribal traffic safety.

• Record URL:
  https://www.mountain-plains.org/research/details.php?id=415
• 

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $142390
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT13-G-UTC38

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  University Transportation Centers Program
  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Mountain-Plains Consortium

  North Dakota State University
  P.O. Box 6050, Department 2880
  Fargo, ND  United States  58108-6050
• Project Managers:

  Kline, Robin

• Performing Organizations:

  Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute

  North Dakota State University
  Fargo, ND  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Vachal, Kimberly

• Start Date: 20161201
• Expected Completion Date: 20190930
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program
• Source Data: MPC-518

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash data; Crash injuries; Crash reports; Fatalities; Indian reservations; Injury severity; Traffic safety
• Geographic Terms: North Dakota
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01618744
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Mountain-Plains Consortium
• Contract Numbers: DTRT13-G-UTC38
• Files: UTC, RiP
• Created Date: Dec 8 2016 12:21PM