Who we are

In 2019, the Washington Traffic Safety Commission awarded the Office of Financial Management with a grant to manage the Washington State Traffic Records Integration Program (TRIP); this public health and safety effort is supported by funding from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s continuing efforts to combine public health and traffic safety data resources.

The purpose of the TRIP is to develop and maintain a data repository for public health and safety research to further the goals of the Vision Zero 2030 to achieve zero fatalities or serious injuries on our highways. This data repository will also enhance capacity to assess crash risk factors and the human, administrative, and financial toll from crashes on Washington roadways. By integrating different data sources, issues with data collection or other systemic issues surrounding individual datasets might be overcome. This holistic approach will support a more comprehensive crash-outcome dataset to support public health and safety research.

With this effort, the TRIP will create an avenue of information for the public and policymakers to address long standing issues as well as new risks for drivers in Washington. The linkage of this data will give Washington the means to support public health traffic information to save lives. Additionally, research efforts with the TRIP data will help inform policy on efficient ways to reduce and eliminate fatalities and serious injuries from traffic collisions; this data repository aims to also provide comprehensive and longitudinal data to evaluate the effectiveness of efforts and programs, best practices, and evidence-based strategies designed to reaching the Vision Zero 2030.

TRIP has successfully been able to link Department of Transportation, Administrative Office of the Courts, Washington State Patrol, and Department of Licensing data. TRIP is currently working on integrating Department of Health data as well. The TRIP is currently leveraging of the aforementioned state data to look in depth at how vehicle crashes impact the public health and public safety of Washington state residents. Through this linkage, TRIP can incorporate data for each stage of a crash, and the events occurring thereafter – to the roadway, to the crash, to police interaction, to court interaction.

What we do

The purpose of the TRIP repository warehouse is to enable researchers at TRIP and elsewhere to conduct valuable research that informs policy- and decision-making both at the state level. People throughout the state, including state policymakers, state and academic researchers, benefit from the data available upon request at TRIP.

TRIP maintains a strict privacy program and has developed data governance and data security processes to ensure driver privacy, appropriate use of the data, and security of the data. TRIP engages in several activities, including but not limited to: