Transportation Expertise

Federal Crash Databases (FARS, NASS, LTCCS)

The federal government, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA), is currently involved with a number of major data collection efforts. Notable among these are the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS). FARS provides police-reported information augmented by data gathered from other sources for the critically important fatal crash situation. The NASS program, which has been active since 1979, involves the statistical sampling of traffic crashes, and documents a considerable amount of vehicle information. In the current implementation, the collection program has been modified to yield the General Estimates System (GES), which collects information to provide a national sample of important crash measures, and the Crashworthiness Data System (CDS), which samples vehicle damage data. Datasets for both programs (from their inception to the present) are available through UMTRI's Transportation Data Center.

Selected projects in this area:

Evaluation of Pedestrian Injury Patterns
Sponsor: AAMA
Investigator: Kathleen DeSantis Klinich
05/01/2003 - 03/01/2004

Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) Evaluation
Sponsor: DOT/Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
Investigator: Daniel Blower
09/30/2008 - 09/29/2011