One of the basic tools for understanding what happened during a crash is the road user movement or crash type (originally referred to as the RUM code when introduced in Victoria in 1968). ARRB Technical Manual ATM 29 (Andreassen, 1991 and Andreassen, 1992) established the model guidelines for describing the procedures for deriving accident codes from a crash sketch and narrative contained in a police crash report. During the coding of information from the crash report form, each crash is given a Definition for Coding Accidents (DCA) code indicating the movements the involved road users were making when the crash occurred based on the established codes used by a particular road jurisdiction.
Queensland Police Services (QPS) (and hence the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR)) adopt such a protocol for assigning crash codes to reportable crashes that occur in Queensland. Through DCA code, a practitioner can quickly identify any crash pattern at a particular location, which may suggest a common contributing factor and lead to an appropriate countermeasure.
Since the introduction of (DCA) back in the early 90’s, there has been changes to descriptions of the road space, the addition of lanes for different road users, and the introduction of other modes of transport. In early 2020, TMR identified that 45% of crashes involving bicycles entering a roadway might have been coded in a way that did not clearly indicate crash nature. Therefore, a review of all DCA codes was undertaken resulting the development of a new Descriptions for Road User Movements (DRUM) coding protocol to replace the DCA protocol in Queensland. The new DRUM protocol has been documented in the Technical Note 206: Guide to Coding Crashes.
This presentation will provide practitioners with an understanding of the transition from DCA to DRUM codes, the associated changes to the reporting of crash data, and how to apply DCA / DRUM codes when using crash data.
