Driving Force, a year-long investigation into police vehicle crashes from the USA Today Network New-York and Syracuse University, found that officers rarely face substantial discipline for serious crashes, even when at fault, and civilians injured in those collisions fare poorly in court against powerful departments.

While citizens deal with years-long, permanent physical or mental anguish related to these crashes, the officers involved are often put right back on the road with little to no penalty or reprimand.

In the event a citizen is killed by a police vehicle, the incident is investigated by the New York Attorney General’s Office, but those investigations also rarely result in penalties for officers.

Driving Force is a police accountability project meant to expose and document the prevalence of police vehicle accidents in New York.

This joint investigation between USA TODAY Network-New York and Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. That project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University-Medill.

This reporting was completed in partnership with The Central Current, a Syracuse-based nonprofit newsroom.

Reporters, visual journalists, editors, designers and project partners include Maria Birnell, Evan Butow, Kayla Canne, Daniel DeLoach, Jamie Germano, Anna Ginelli, Jon Glass, Seth Harrison, Nausheen Husain, Hayden Kim, Chris Libonati, Finn Lincoln, Beryl Lipton, Tina MacIntyre-Yee, Laura Nichols, Peter Pietrangelo, William Ramsey, David Robinson, Kyle Slagle, Eden Stratton, Sarah Taddeo, Jodi Upton and Marili Vaca.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NY police crashes: What our investigation has uncovered so far