Mission: The mission of FARS is to make vehicle crash information accessible and useful so that traffic safety can be improved
In order to improve traffic safety, the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) created the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) in 1975. This data system was conceived, designed, and developed by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) to assist the traffic safety community in identifying traffic safety problems and evaluating both motor vehicle safety standards and highway safe
ty initiatives. FARS is one of the 2 major sources of data used at the NCSA.
Fatality information derived from FARS includes motor vehicle traffic crashes that result in the death of an occupant of a vehicle or a nonmotorist within 30 days of the crash. The final FARS file is normally completed around Memorial Day, at which time the final quality control procedures are implemented. When these procedures are completed, NCSA can begin to create our fact sheets and release the new data. When new year data are available, it will be announced on this page. FARS contains data on all fatal traffic crashes within the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The data system was conceived, designed, and developed by the NCSA to assist the traffic safety community in identifying traffic safety
problems, developing and implementing vehicle and driver countermeasures, and evaluating motor vehicle safety standards and highway safety initiatives.
NCSA responds to over 3,000 requests for information and sends out more than 50 computer tapes of FARS data each year. FARS data are used extensively within NHTSA, and requests are received from sources such as state and local governments, research organizations, private citizens, the auto and insurance industries, Congress, and the media.
FARS data can be used to answer many questions on the safety of vehicles, drivers, traffic situations, and roadways. FARS data can also be accessed at the state level by the FARS analyst to respond to state safety issues. To protect individual privacy, no personal information, such as names, addresses, or specific crash locations, is coded. Data are available for every year since FARS was established in 1975. Users can obtain FARS data in several ways:
NHTSA has a contract with an agency in each state to provide information on fatal crashes. FARS analysts are state employees who extract the information and put it in a standard format. Each FARS analyst attends a formal training program, and also receives on-the-job training.
Data on fatal motor vehicle traffic crashes are gathered from the state's own source documents, and are coded on standard FARS forms. The analysts obtain the documents needed to complete the FARS forms, which generally include some or all of the following:
To be included in FARS, a crash must involve a motor vehicle travelling on a traffic way customarily open to the public, and result in the death of a person (either an occupant of a vehicle or a non-motorist) within 30 days of the crash. The FARS file contains descriptions of each fatal crash reported. Each case has more than 100 coded data elements that characterize the crash, the vehicles, and the people involved. The specific data elements may be modified slightly at times, in response to users' needs and highway safety emphasis areas. All data elements are reported on four forms:
In addition, there are FARS Alcohol files which contain driver and nonoccupant BAC (blood alchohol content) estimates, as well as overall crash alcohol estimates, which are used to supplement the data files when no alcohol information would otherwise be available.
Information on these files are available in two reports, A Method for Estimating Posterior BAC Distributions for Persons Involved in Fatal Traffic Accidents (DOT HS 807 094) and A Guide to Using the Fatal Accident Reporting System BAC Distribution Files (DOT HS 807 095) available from NTIS.
Quality Control is a vital system feature. One important part of the quality control program is a series of consistency checks, which ensure that no inconsistent data are entered. For example, if an analyst codes 11:00 am as the time of the crash and "dusk" as the light condition, these codes would be rejected as inconsistent. Other checks are for timeliness, completeness, and accuracy. Statistical control charts are also employed to monitor the coding of key data elements.