How FARS counts a fatal crash

The Fatality Analysis Reporting System is NHTSA's census of fatal motor-vehicle crashes. Every state has analysts who read police crash reports, death certificates, hospital records and other documents and code each qualifying crash into a standard set of tables. The national file for 2024 contains 36,297 crashes and 39,254 deaths.

The qualifying rule

A crash is in FARS when it involved a motor vehicle travelling on a trafficway customarily open to the public and resulted in the death of at least one person (occupant or not) within 30 days of the crash. Three consequences follow:

• A death 31 days after the crash is not counted, however clearly it resulted from the crash.
• Crashes on private property (car parks, driveways, private roads) are not counted.
• A crash with no motor vehicle in transport (for example a bicycle striking a pedestrian) is not counted.

Crashes and deaths

FARS has one accident record per crash with a FATALS field giving the number of people who died. "Fatal crashes" on this site counts records; "deaths" sums FATALS. Nationally there are about 1.09 deaths per fatal crash.

"Involving alcohol"

FARS records for each driver whether police reported drinking (DR_DRINK) and, where a test was taken or NHTSA imputes one, a blood alcohol concentration. This site's alcohol share uses the police-reported flag: a crash counts if at least one driver was reported as drinking. NHTSA's better-known "alcohol-impaired driving" statistic instead counts crashes with a driver at 0.08 g/dL or above, with missing BACs imputed statistically; it runs a few points higher and is not reproduced here because the imputation files are separate from the main tables. The caveat printed on every page is NHTSA's own: the drunk-driving measure is based on the highest BAC of any driver in the crash.

"Speeding-related"

Each vehicle record carries a SPEEDREL code set by the state analyst from the crash report: no; yes, racing; yes, exceeded the speed limit; yes, too fast for conditions; yes, specifics unknown. A crash is speeding-related here when any driver has one of the "yes" codes. Like the drinking flag it is a police judgement, not a measurement.

Pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, restraints

The person table records each person's type (driver, passenger, pedestrian, bicyclist and so on), the body type of the vehicle they occupied, the injury severity and the restraint or helmet use. Shares on this site are of people killed (injury severity "fatal"), which is why pedestrian and motorcyclist shares are shares of deaths while alcohol and speeding shares are shares of crashes.

What FARS does not tell you

• Non-fatal crashes. FARS has no injury-only crashes; NHTSA's Crash Report Sampling System estimates those from a sample.
• Fault. FARS codes conditions and behaviours; it does not assign legal responsibility.
• Exposure. FARS gives counts. To compare places fairly you need a denominator; this site uses resident population, NHTSA also uses vehicle-miles travelled.