In India, 150,000 people die every year due to road crashes. Over the past few years, the deaths per 100,000 population have stabilized. However, road traffic injuries is in the top 10 cause of overall death and the top 5 cause among children (5-14 years) in India. In absence of local evidence on how road infrastructure impacts safety, the low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) replicate the safety treatments used by the high-income countries (HICs). However, due to substantial differences in the traffic environments, some of these interventions may not be effective in LMICs.

To prevent road deaths, there is a need to develop evidence-based strategies. Details of road crashes are an integral part of conducting such research. This project has been funded by National Institute of Health (NIH), USA. The project has been led by Dr. Kavi Bhalla at the University of Chicago and Prof. Geetam Tiwari at Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre (TRIP-C), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

After reviewing the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) reporting formats, we have prepared a manual using the most relevant variables from the existing police report (FIR) format. The manual discusses in detail about coding the data into the crash database system. The main components of the manual are the introduction to the different sections of the police report, familiarization with the different data entry forms (crash, vehicle, and person), extracting vehicle details from the VAHAN website using registration number, and geo-location of the crash using the crash description in the police report.

The crash-related data is available from the First Information Reports (FIRs) or police reports in both online and offline modes. Statewise police reports are available through the common "Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS)" portals. In the present work, we have used the CCTNS portal for accessing and downloading the online police reports.

Thereafter, a crash database management system was developed using MS Access. The database includes three entry forms: crash, vehicle and person. The crash form includes crash-level attributes (FIR number, crash description, details of crash time and location, distance and direction from the police station, number of fatalities and non-fatalities, etc.). The vehicle form includes all the attributes of the vehicle involved in the crash (vehicle type, impacting vehicle/ object, vehicle registration number, etc.). Finally, the person form includes attributes of all the person involved in the crash, irrespective of their injury outcome (person type, age, sex, occupant type, injury category, etc.). Using the crash database system, the user can extract the data from the police reports and use for further analysis and policy implementations.