Preliminary Investigation of Circumstances Contributing to Fatal Crashes Involving Law Enforcement Officers

Abstract

Over the past several decades, the number of fatal crashes in the United States has steadily declined. This decline is the result, at least in part, of the combined efforts of the three E's: engineering, education, and enforcement. Although these overall trends have shown promising results, there remain specific groups with alarming fatal crash rates. One of these groups, in particular, is law enforcement officers. Because police officers are a unique group with very particular job requirements, these crashes must be evaluated separately from crashes involving the general population. This study investigated 3 years of police-related fatal crash data to determine what contributing circumstances needed to be further investigated to reduce the trend in crashes. Data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System were used to develop a logistic regression model to determine the statistically significant factors in 220 fatal crashes involving law enforcement officers from 2010 through 2012. It was found that a crash was less likely to be fatal if the officer was wearing a seat belt and if there was more than one occupant in the vehicle at the time of the crash. Conversely, the law enforcement officer was more likely to be the fatality when the crash was speed-related.

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