WATERLOO REGION - Waterloo Regional Police officers spend a lot of time on the road and a cruiser crashes about every 10 days on our busiest local roads, on average.

Most police collisions are minor and no one is hurt. But traffic records for regional roads show an average of nine people injured per year in collisions involving police.

Police drivers account for half the injured. Other injured are presumably civilians, although traffic records don't state this.

Officers make driving mistakes in one-third of police crashes. The most common police driving mistakes are losing control and following too closely.

"Frankly in a perfect world, we'd prefer to have zero collisions," Insp. Doug Sheppard said. "But it's a fact of life that things happen.

"We have over 100 cruisers and those are on the road every day of the week, seven days, 24/7. Frankly, it's a very low frequency of accidents."

Sheppard is the commander who oversees the training branch for regional police. This includes driver training. "We do look extremely closely at every police vehicle collision that takes place," he said.

An officer who commits a driving mistake may get more training. The force has one officer dedicated to driver training and can also call on a second training officer.

The Record examined local police crashes after Guelph Police Const. Jennifer Kovach was killed in March when she lost control of her cruiser and crashed into a Guelph Transit bus. She was not wearing a seatbelt. An investigation made public Wednesday blamed speed and ice. No one else was injured.

Her death is the worst outcome for an event that's not uncommon, but could also be called rare given how far and how often officers drive. In 2011, Waterloo Regional Police drove five million kilometres and crashed 28 times on regional roads.

To assess police collisions, The Record analyzed 246 crashes involving cruisers on regional roads (our major commuter routes) between 2005 and 2011. Records show an average of 35 police collisions per year.

The data excludes collisions on quieter city roads or highways, is silent on traffic charges, and doesn't indicate if police activated a siren.

In total, 64 people were injured over seven years, including 32 police drivers. Nobody was killed and only two injuries were deemed major, both times police drivers.

Over seven years, cruisers collided 177 times with passenger vehicles and crashed 45 times on their own with no other vehicle recorded. Police collided three times with motorcycles, four times with tractor-trailers, three times with cyclists and once with a pedestrian. Four times, a police cruiser collided with another police cruiser.

When a police cruiser collided with a Grand River Transit bus in 2009, the outcome was much better than in Guelph. No one was hurt when the bus made an improper left turn and hit a cruiser stopped in an intersection in Waterloo.

More dramatically in 2006, a cruiser responding to a bank robbery collided with a transport truck in Kitchener after an officer, racing to the scene, failed to yield the right of way. The officer suffered a minor injury and the cruiser was destroyed.

The worst police collisions recorded on regional roads:

•An officer suffered major injuries in 2007 in Kitchener after failing to yield the right of way to another driver who was impaired. The other driver was not injured.

•An inattentive officer skidded into a parked car and rolled a cruiser in Kitchener in 2008. The police driver suffered major injuries.

Roads were dry in 60 per cent of collisions involving police. In about one-third of collisions road conditions were wet or icy.

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Recruits at the Ontario Police College are taught the driving skills they need to chase and catch suspects, Sheppard explains. This includes the judgment to call off chases. Officers employed by Waterloo Regional Police must refresh these driving skills from time to time in recertification. However there's no requirement to recertify general driving skills unrelated to chases.

"We do our best training. And we prepare our officers to respond to the worst situations," Sheppard said. "Our expectation is that with all of that, when they're in the circumstances that they're in, even though their adrenalin is pumping furiously and they're in a heightened anxiety situation, that they will use their best judgment."

Why do police crash?

On regional roads between 2005 and 2011 there were 246 collisions involving police cruisers. In 88 of these collisions, police made driving mistakes. Their top six mistakes:

•Losing control (18 collisions)

•Following too closely (18 collisions)

•Failing to yield the right of way (12 collisions)

•Improper turn (11 collisions)

•Disobeying a traffic control (10 collisions)

•Speeding too fast for conditions (Seven collisions)

Source: Region of Waterloo traffic database

