Interesting - it isn't just "the net" that had to be in place for this to happen. Digital cameras have to be almost ubiquitious - which they are. Now, add to this a basic GPS with timestamped route recording (most of them...) and leave the time/date stamp feature on your camera. When you get back, download the route, correlate against the time stamps from the pictures, and you get time (accurate to seconds) and place (often to 10 metres) automatically. (Some digital cameras can be connected to the GPS to record the time/position info in the metadata for the picture.)

My HP camera lets me add 45 seconds of audio just after the picture is taken - ideal for note-taking.

NOW add the reporting capabilities of the net, and the entire population of the area is, on the whole, better equipped to locate, tag, and report accident-related information than a full survey team of ten years ago - mainly because there are so gosh darn many of them.