Epidemiology of law enforcement vehicle collisions in the US and California

Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – 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. Findings – 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 olde...