East Sussex Constabulary road traffic accident report booklet Form 85 c1960
Name/Title
East Sussex Constabulary road traffic accident reporting booklet Form 85 c1960
Entry/Object ID
911
Description
Beige card covered pro forma booklet consisting of 40 pages, 100mm x 165mm, marked on front "East Sussex Police Accident Book" and "Form 85"
Use
For an officer to record details of a road traffic accident or "RTA"
Context
By the 1960s with increasing numbers of motor vehicles on the roads and increasing numbers of traffic accidents, police forces were using pro forma booklets such as this to record such incidents. This booklet produced by East Sussex Police, was designed to be carried in a tunic pocket and was for recording either road traffic accidents where there was an injury or those where certain offences had occurred or where a police vehicle was involved. It probably dates from the 1960s.
Similar booklets were later used in Sussex Constabulary and Sussex Police, but over time they became more complicated as result of the need for greater statistical recording. In more recent times they have been superseded by digital forms completed on mobile data terminals and computers. In the 1990s the term "accident" was discontinued and replaced with "collision" to described such incidents, the rationale being that collisions involving motor vehicles were not accidental and that they were caused by error. So what had previously been called a "road traffic accident" was now called a "road traffic collision" or "RTC".
