| Q: What is your background in traffic
engineering? |
| A: I have a degree in civil engineering from San Jose State
University. I have worked for local government since 1973,
starting as an engineering trainee while attending college and as
a professional engineer since 1978. Presently, I am the traffic
engineer for a city in the southwest part of Washington State.
I am licensed as a professional civil engineer in the states of
California, Oregon and Washington. |
|
| Q: What is your background in computer
programming? |
| A: I have been programming PCs since 1983 and have written several
versions of the Crash Record System (CRS). Back in the DOS era I
had written several freeware utilities that were published in books.
One of the programs, CopyCon was reviewed and recommended in Dos
for Dummies. I presently write my programs using Visual Basic
and the Microsoft Access Database Engine. |
|
| Q: How can I get CRS for my state?
|
| A: Send me a copy of your state's collision report and the key
for all fields. A version of CRS can be created for your state.
The cost usually ranges between $3,000.00 to $5,000.00 depending
on how unique your state's data fields are compared to Washington
State's. There may be federal or state funds available to fund
the project and a statewide license fee can be established.
|
|
| Q: What are the critical tasks to
successfully using CRS? |
A: There several fields that is very important to successfully
analyzing crash records. The most import is the location of the
crash. A crash is located at an intersection or a distance from a
cross street. A crash IS NOT located with a reference to a house,
a fixed object or between two streets.
Several data fields that are very important are the direction
of travel and the vehicle action. If these fields are not coded
and entered correctly, the crash diagram will be incorrect and
trends cannot be assumed to be valid.
|
|
| Q: Why doesn't CRS have on-line help?
|
| A: The CRS manual is quite extensive. It is delivered in PDF
format. Great effort was made to create bookmarks to quickly
find the reference topic. I recommend loading the manual into
Acrobat Reader prior to running CRS. If a question on how the
program works arises, typically the answer can be found quickly
in the manual.
|
|
| Q: What features of CRS do most users
under utilize?
|
A: There are two features that come to mind. The first is the
power of filtering. Most filtering of data is done in conjunction
with the Browse/Edit menu option. The Browse/Edit feature allows
the data to be refined by re-filtering multiple times. The Advance
tab of the Filter form is for more complex filters and filters with
and OR clause. The appendix of the CRS manual lists all the
database fields and their valid values. The "Test" button allows
a filter to be tested to verify the filter criteria are valid.
The second feature is CRS's ability to access scanned images of a
portion of the report. Having the police's narrative at your
fingertips is very important when performing a detailed analysis.
The process takes time, but the rewards are great.
|
|
