OK After Roads
How OK After counts accidents
Every number on OK After Roads comes from a public source, read by our own collector. This page says which sources, what a count means, what we never show, and how fresh each page is.
Sources
Where the numbers come from
Florida Highway Patrol dispatch
Read once a minute from Florida Highway Patrol's public live traffic report.
It covers the accidents FHP works: interstates, toll roads and state highways. It does not cover accidents on city streets handled by local police or the county sheriff.
An entry usually appears on our pages within a minute or two of FHP posting it.
Tampa Police traffic calls
Read once an hour from the city's public list. It covers traffic calls Tampa Police handled in Tampa.
Tampa Police traffic calls are added a few hours after each call, once the call has cleared, so they are never live.
Orlando Police active calls
Read once a minute from the city's public list. It covers calls Orlando Police are working in Orlando.
A call appears while it is active and clears when it leaves the list.
Winter Haven Police records
Winter Haven Police Department calls for service, obtained by public records request. They cover city streets in Winter Haven.
They are added once a month, so a road read from these records shows a month, never minutes.
The state's crash report is a separate document that we never collect. How to request a crash report from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Counts
What a count means
An incident is one entry we observed in a dispatch feed or a police record.
An accident is an incident the source itself records as an accident, by its own incident type. Road hazards, debris and other calls are incidents, but not accidents, and the Roads pages count accidents only.
Counts are what we observed, not every accident that happened. A source covers only the roads its agency works, and anything during a gap in our collecting is missed. When our collector was not running for part of a month, that month's report says for what share of the hours.
Privacy
What we never show
- Anything about the people involved: no names, no vehicles, nothing from a report.
- Exact addresses. A location is rounded to the block, or given as a cross street or mile marker.
- Links to a records portal or to anyone's report.
Freshness
How fresh each page is
"Updated 4 minutes ago" counts from the data's own time: the newest moment an accident on that road, or in that county, was first seen or cleared. It does not count from our last check, which happens every minute whether or not anything changed.
An open page keeps counting in your browser and refreshes itself about once a minute while you are reading it.
Corrections
Something looks wrong?
Write to brandon@okafter.com with the page's address. We read every message and correct what is wrong.