When crashes happen in one of the county’s fastest growing communities, a drone is helping police get the information they need faster, and allowing them to reopen the road and get traffic moving in as little as half the time.
In March, the Bargersville Police Department bought new software to use with their drones to help them document a crash scene much quicker. The police chief thinks the department is one of the first in the state to use the program, but with the improvements they’ve seen, he expects others will want the technology, too.
The new software enables officers to use their drone to take hundreds of pictures of the crash scene, showing skid marks, debris and the location of vehicles, so they can determine how the accident happened.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
Typically, that work could take hours, with officers taking pictures and measuring the scene. But with the new software, those photos are taken in a fraction of the time, creating one single image of the scene that officers can use to do the measurements and other investigation needed after everything has been cleaned up. That means the road doesn’t need to stay closed because officers already have what they need to investigate.
“It nearly cuts the time in half,” said interim police chief Todd Bertram, who is a certified drone pilot.
In the last couple of years, police and fire departments across the county have bought drones that can be used for locating missing people, investigating crashes and documenting construction work.
Bargersville police currently have two drones that they use for investigating crashes, searching for missing people and assisting other town departments with mapping road and construction projects. Earlier this year, they heard about new software that would make it much easier to use drones to investigate crash scenes. They bought the program in March, and have already used it at about a dozen crash scenes, said Bertram, who is a certified drone pilot.
Here is a look at how the program works:
Once emergency workers have taken care of any victims and cleared them from the scene of a crash, an officer will use a digital tablet to mark an area around the crash scene for the drone to survey.
The drone will then fly an automated path overhead, crisscrossing the area while taking as many as 1,000 photos. Those photos will be combined into a single image of the crash scene, Bertram said.
Officers get a better view of the factors that led up to the crash. They can make measurements from the image that are accurate up to a centimeter, allowing them to analyze skid marks, debris and the locations of the vehicles to determine what took place, he said.
That image can be used by the department’s investigators and be shared with prosecutors and other police agencies as well, he said.
Already, they are noticing an improvement in how quickly they can document a crash scene.
A drone can often gather all of the photos in 10 to 15 minutes, meaning that a road no longer has to be closed for multiple hours, blocking traffic while officers are on the ground taking measurements. Speeding up the process of documenting a crash scene means that major thoroughfares, such as County Road 144, wouldn’t have to be closed to traffic for nearly as long, he said.
And officers can get back to their regular patrols much quicker, Bertram said.
But the new software has been useful for more than just mapping crash scenes.
Bertram has also worked with other town departments to aid them in everything from putting together maps of road sections they are preparing to work on to taking photos to document progress on construction projects.
The software the department purchased, Drone Deploy, wasn’t designed specifically for police use, but rather for aerial mapping for uses such as surveying or construction, Bertram said. He came across the software while doing research about drones and police departments in other areas who use similar software to map crashes.
The police department is planning to spend $1,600 to purchase two additional drones by the end of year, meaning that one officer on each shift will have a drone to use, Bertram said. Currently, if they don’t have an officer with drone experiencing working at the time of a crash, they would need to have someone come back on duty and work overtime, he said.
But drones don’t completely replace traditional police work, he said.
Their current drones aren’t able to fly in rain or heavy winds, meaning some crash investigations must be done solely on the ground, he said. The department is interested in getting a drone model that will function in inclement weather, but those models cost as much as $30,000, something the department can’t afford, Bertram said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”At a glance” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The Bargersville Police Department is using new software to enable them to better document crash scenes. Here’s how it works:
Mapping the area:
An officer uses a tablet to mark out an area around the crash site on GPS. The drone will fly an automated route over the entire scene.
Taking photos:
The drone can take up to 1,000 photos in 10 to 15 minutes, significantly faster than an officer on the ground.
One image:
The photos will be uploaded to a website and compiled into a single image of the crash site.
Investigation:
Police officers, investigators and the prosecutor’s office can then use that image to do measurements of the crash scene, looking at skid marks, the roadway and placement of vehicles, to determine what happened in the accident. That work does not have to be done by an officer on the ground, keeping the crash scene closed. That means roads can reopen significantly sooner after an accident.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
