Welcome to
The National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) is an office of the
National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA), an agency in the United States Department of
Transportation. NCSA is
responsible for providing a wide range of analytical and statistical support to
NHTSA and the highway
safety community at large, in the general areas of:
- Human, vehicle, environmental, and roadway characteristics, as they relate to
crash frequency and injuries.
- Identifying injury mechanisms and associated crash dynamics in motor vehicle
crashes.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of crashworthiness, crashavoidence, and traffic
safety efforts.
- Monitoring the magnitude of the traffic safety problem.
- Quantifying the benefits resulting from proposed agency rules.
To address the many analytic requirements, data are obtained from a variety of
sources. The major data sources are NCSA's
own Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the National Automotive Sampling
System (NASS).
FARS was established in 1975, and contains data on the
most severe of traffic crashes, those in which someone was killed.
FARS data are used to monitor trends in traffic safety and to evaluate motor
vehicle safety standards.
NCSA's other major data source is NASS, which is composed of two systems - the
Crashworthiness Data System (CDS) and the
General Estimates System (GES). Both systems are
based on cases selected from a sample of police accident reports. CDS
data focus on passenger vehicle crashes, and are used to investigate injury
mechanisms to identify potential improvements
in vehicle design. GES data focus on the bigger overall crash picture, and are
used for problem size assessments and tracking
trends.
In addition to data from FARS and NASS, NCSA uses data from other governmental
agencies, as well as crash files from a number of states, to support analytical
activities.
NCSA conducts onetime and ongoing analyses a wide range of safety issues.
Examples of recent analyses include:
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of automatic occupant protection systems.
- Monitoring and describing trends in female driver fatalities.
- Analysis of the crash experience of vehicles equipped with antilock brakes.
- Evaluation of primary enforcement and other provisions of safety belt use laws.
NCSA also regularly produces a variety of fact sheets and reports which provide
information on crashes at the national and
state levels. Most are produced annually, and include:
- Traffic Safety Facts: A Compilation of Motor Vehicle Crash Data from the FARS
and the GES
- Traffic Safety Fact Sheets
- NASS Crashworthiness Data System Report
- Alcohol Involvement in Fatal Crashes Annual Summary
- FARS monthly fatality estimates
Please send any comments to: ncsaweb@nhtsa.dot.gov
If you are requesting data or other information, your including a fax number, phone number, or postal address will enable us to respond more quickly and thoroughly to your request. You can also phone in information requests to our automated answering system at 1-800-934-8517, or (202) 366-4198 locally in the Washington, DC area.
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