Police test road crash GPS scheme

Police are testing the use of handheld PCs with GPS data to speed up their investigations of road accidents.

The Highways Agency is working with police forces in Surrey and Warwickshire as part of a three month trial, which began last week. Via handheld PCs, police will get access to Ordnance Survey data to pinpoint accident location along with any other information that they need.

Road accidents can take as long as six hours to investigate, during which whole roads or motorway lanes and sections may be closed, and the trial is aimed at speeding up the time it takes for police to make a site survey and get traffic moving again.

Ginny Clarke, the Highways Agency's chief highways engineer, said in a statement: "We hope that by using innovative new technology we will able to cut the time the police spend on vital investigations, get traffic moving again more quickly, and reduce congestion for England's motorways and major roads."

Lane closures after accidents are blamed for a quarter of all congestion as police take time to survey the area, followed by the Highways Agency moving in to make any repairs.

Last week the Highways Agency also announced the opening of a £160m National Traffic Control Centre to provide more effective real-time updates on the state of the UK motorway network by drawing on data from 3,750 road sensors and 700 CCTV cameras.