Epidemiology of law enforcement vehicle collisions in the US and California

Concerns about the risk of traffic collision injury to both police officers and bystanders are increasing as the use of in-vehicle technologies becoming widespread among agencies. This study used national and California data to characterize traffic collisions in which a police vehicle was involved. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors used a California traffic collision database to retrospectively identify collisions that involved police vehicles for years 2007-2010. The authors summarized collision characteristics with descriptive methods and used log-binomial regression to estimate associations between personal and collision characteristics with officer culpability.

The authors identified 5,233 traffic collisions in California. In total, 10 percent of law enforcement vehicles were motorcycles. In all, 9 percent of cruisers struck a pedestrian or bicyclist, compared with only 2 percent of motorcycles. Compared with officers aged 50 or older, officers in younger age categories were progressively much more likely to have been culpable. Motorcycle officers were 33 percent less likely to be culpable for their collision involvements. Approximately 100 fatal collisions involving a law enforcement vehicle occur each year in the USA.

The findings from this study indicate that approximately 1,300 injury-producing traffic collisions occur each year in California that involve a law enforcement vehicle. The authors found that younger age, female sex, cruiser operation, traveling unbelted, and single-vehicle collision involvement were positively associated with officer culpability. Officer race and community population were not significantly associated with culpability. The occurrence of fatal collisions in the USA was stable over a 12-year period.