Kaitlyn Jankowski, “WisDOT DT4000 Crash Report Narrative Survey”
Mentors: Xiao Qin and Md Abu Sayed, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Crash report data, specifically the narrative, is used by many transportation professionals during roadway and intersection review making the quality of the data within the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s (WisDOT) DT4000 Crash Report of high importance. This study consisted of a survey distributed to the DT4000 crash report data users and collectors. Two separate surveys were created to be answered by the data user and data collector with 13 and 9 questions respectively. Using the survey’s results, recommendations were made to WisDOT with the feedback collected from the survey. Of the data users, all indicated that they use the narrative to look for detailed information and the rate that they find the information they needed on a scale of 1-5 was an average of 3.38. When asked about the challenges of reviewing the crash narrative, the lack of details and specifications (14) and conflict with other information (12) were the largest problems. Recommendations to be made on the collected data include adding a GPS location field for the coordinates of the crash and adding fields within the narrative to guide the collector to record all important information. With these additions, the overall consistency of the crash report narrative details are expected to improve.