Seven million dollars could buy an awful lot of new teachers for Chicago Public Schools. It could help pay for ambitious homeless programs, contribute to affordable housing efforts, or go toward hiring more police officers to patrol the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Instead, it’s how much money Chicago spent last year settling lawsuits for police car accidents.

According to records from the Department of Law, blockbuster settlements for two police pursuit accidents in 2001 and 2003 accounted for $6 million of that money.

The other million dollars worth of lawsuits are classified as being for “motor vehicle accidents” in general or for things such as hitting pedestrians or causing intersection accidents. Most of the accidents happened in 2005 and 2006.

 “Too many police departments are chalking up these police accidents as part of the job,” said Capt. Travis Yates, of  the Tulsa Police Department,  who is  a certified law-enforcement driving instructor and a leading advocate of national police pursuit policy reform. “We would never say that with a firearm accident.”

Police pursuits kill an average of one person a day in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  Approximately 1 in 3 pursuits leads to a collision, injuring thousands a year, the NHTSA statistics showed.

Police departments are not required to track or report their police pursuit statistics, but Yates has found that many police departments do.

“A department that’s not tracking pursuits is asking for trouble,” he said. “If we’re not tracking one of the most dangerous things we do, we’re just asking for lawyers to line up and come after us.”

Yates was not familiar with Chicago’s policy, but said: “They should have those numbers – Chicago is a professional department.”

But a Medill News Service request for police pursuit statistics yielded nothing from the police department.

“I don't know if we catalogue those, but it's not something we have readily available,” said News Affairs Officer John Henry.

Department of Law spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said she did not know if the city’s attorneys tracked police pursuit accidents, and she was not immediately able to find out.

Yates said that departments that evaluate their police pursuit records – looking at things such as average speeds, number of injuries and number of deaths – are often able to improve their records when they implement annual driver training courses for officers.

“We can’t blame the officers -- we’ve got to give them the proper training,” he said. “It’s safe to say that most departments in this country don’t provide driver training to their officers.”

Officers who receive initial training in pursuit driving at the police academy should still be required to take annual refresher courses, Yates said. “All the research tells us that the academy training is not going to help you six years later.”

A copy of the Chicago Police Department’s vehicle pursuit policy provided by the News Affairs office states that officers are required to pass an annual test showing they are familiar with the department’s procedures for motor vehicle pursuits. It does not mention a driver training program.

Henry from the department’s News and Affairs division said he did not have information regarding police driver training hours available.