As part of their investigations, Utah Highway Patrol troopers and other law enforcement officers may use drones as one of their tools to have measurable data to determine what exactly happened in an accident. They maintain it’s a cost-effective and safer way to resume the traffic flow.

“When we’re doing a scene, these drones are more accurate,” UHP trooper Devan Biggs said. “They’re able to communicate marks to the satellites to measure skid marks, for example, and we know it is within however many centimeters. That’s more accurate than me taking my yard stick or tape measure.”

The drones are not only more accurate, but they’re also more cost-effective to get traffic resumed sooner, said Douglas Spotted Eagle, director of client experiences with the Las Vegas-based The LiDAR Pros, a team that instructs trainers on drones and is part of the Sundance Media Group, a training and education organization for 30 years.

“It’s been determined that every time there’s a road closure in the heart of Las Vegas, it costs about $150,000 per minute per mile,” he said. “When there’s a crash on the freeway, people can’t get to work. People can’t make deliveries. Tours can’t make their destinations. A typical fatal crash in Salt Lake, can take three to four hours to investigate, sometimes more. Drones can save us hours with crash sites. Sometimes, it almost takes longer to change the drone battery than it does to set up the specific mission. I can fly it in five minutes from the time I get it out of the box to being able to help traffic get moving again.”

Drone use isn’t new to the world, but the technology is being used more commonly. They’re used for hospital deliveries; surveying; inspecting bridge, dam and cell towers; mapping; construction; aerial photography; preventing possible mudslides and more. Drone education is being taught in public schools and professionals have a FAA Part 107 pilot license.

“Utah is probably one of the top states in the country pushing drone programs,” Spotted Eagle said.

His colleague, Ben Goddard, agrees: “If you can imagine a way to use a drone, we can find a way to make it work. We’ve done about everything. Drones are a flexible and versatile tool in anybody’s tool bag.”

Recently, both drone pilots were part of a three-person team that was instructing Utah Department of Transportation trainers how to teach fellow troopers to operate drone programs during a five-day intensive course.

“It takes a lot of dedication to go through this course; there is both a practical and a written test that has to be passed to qualify and certify as a trainer,” Goddard said. “Everything we do is done under ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards. Everything is done safely, and if we see any anything that stands out to any of our instructor examiners, we will stop the operation, as will the instructors.”

As part of their evaluation, the instructors taught volunteers ranging from high school students to retirees.

“We train new trainers so the state agencies, such as UDOT and the Utah Highway Patrol, and some of the municipalities, can be self-sufficient, so that they don’t have to hire outside pilots to come in. We are teaching them how to run and develop their training programs for drones,” he said, adding the trainings are offered quarterly.

A Utah Highway Patrol trooper gives instructions to a volunteer student how to fly a drone as part of his flight industry training test. (Julie Slama/City Journals)

In addition to course work, the seven trainers used Autel EVO II drones, a foldable pocket drone, to teach the volunteer students. Only one of their students had any experience with drones, years ago.

That volunteer student was retiree John Leonard, who started the drone program with UDOT’s incident management team. Now, there are about 28 certified pilots within the team and 55 overall with UDOT.

That’s where Goddard, who has his professional pilot’s license, started teaching in 2000.

“We’ve been able to use drones so much more with the new age of them about 10 or 12 years ago,” he said. “Right now, there’s a great need for pilots, so we are seeing an uptick in number of training classes. That uptick comes with development of new roadways and the growth Utah is seeing. The more we see the growth in Utah, the more need there is for qualified pilots to be able to help assist and save taxpayers money by flying drones to collect data ahead of events or during events.”

Utah Highway Patrol trooper Steve Crowe was under review to become a certified trainer and was giving feedback to a volunteer student.

“You listen well, and you move the controls smoothly; it’s just a matter of repetition to remember what the sticks do,” he told her.

She had just flown the drone for the first time, from making sure the space outside of UDOT’s traffic operations center was clear to take off to maneuvering it forward, backward, side to side, higher and lower, and landing.

Crowe is part of the major crash investigation team. He will help oversee training for the other 40 drone operators within his department. There also are drones within the dive and SWAT teams.

“I got into the drones with crash investigation; it was something I’ve always been interested in,” he said. “I practice flying drones twice a month, just to keep up on things. I enjoy the teaching aspect of it. Teaching drones is a natural progression.”

Biggs also enjoys flying drones. As a pilot of five years, he appreciates the bigger picture it provides when they stitch together photos they have taken of a crash scene.

“I really like the end product, it helps to wrap your mind around the scene,” he said. “When we fly drones, we take pictures, and then a program interlays them all together into one big picture with a top-down view. It’s easier for me to process the scene and get the perspective from one big view than individual pictures.”

Biggs said the program can 3D print a crash scene to help troopers better illustrate a scene.

“It just gives us a lot more data and resources; it’s another process we can use to determine what happened,” he said.

Leonard said when drone are used, it’s on a defined mission.

“The operators plot their missions, and then the drone automatically flies it so that it gets the correct overlaps and everything. They will pull up the satellite and outline the area on the highway that the drone will fly,” he said.

Goddard, who estimated the drones being used cost $1,800 to $2,100, said the drone can connect with 10 to 30 satellites at a time, which helps increase its accuracy.

Leonard said accuracy is important with Utah traffic as there are more vehicles on fewer interstates than other states.

At the UDOT traffic operations center, law enforcement officers were being evaluated as trainers instructing volunteer students how to fly drones in preparation to teach other officers. (Julie Slama/City Journals)

“Literally taking an hour off of a crash investigation could be tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to the economy, or even millions if we’re doing a full freeway shutdown,” he said. “For example, if I-80 was closed in Parleys Canyon, trucks and the main traffic would be diverted either to Provo Canyon or to Ogden Canyon so you’re talking an hour out of direction for 50-60 miles. When that’s multiplied by tens of thousands of vehicles. It can be very substantive.”

Leonard said that was the mission behind starting the program, which several year ago, saw 18,000 reportable incidents that impacted traffic.

“The goal of the incident management team is to reduce the impacts of incidents that happen on Utah’s highways and by assisting and supplementing the investigating agency. With the foresight of the drone program, we realized we could expedite the clearance of the incident and restore traffic much earlier, which is a significant benefit to the traveling public and to Utah’s economy,” he said.

With colleague Boyd Frank, Leonard introduced the incident management team in Utah in 1994, laying the groundwork several years earlier. Originally funded with a Wasatch Front Regional Council grant under the Clean Air Act, it was a way to clear traffic effectively and reduce idling and emissions.

“We proved that reducing the duration of an incident improved air quality because there’s less idling, people can go through the incident area quicker and more efficiently. When IMT determined it was worthwhile to keep, it became funded through UDOT,” he said.

As a licensed professional traffic operations engineer, Leonard oversaw the incident management team twice before recently retiring. He was awarded the American Traffic Safety Services Association’s National Safety Award after helping write a section of the national manual on traffic control and management.

“Drones are one of the tools in the toolbox that the incident management team can use to reduce the duration of incidents that are happening,” Leonard said. “Because of that, it’s making Utah roads safer. By reducing the duration of the incident, there’s less exposure to the people responding to the crash or incidents, as well as the public that has to go through an incident zone — and hopefully, prevent a secondary crash, which oftentimes can be worse than the first crash.”