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:

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
Fargo, ND United States 58108
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