When a new year of data arrives

The latest year on this site is 2024. FARS lags the calendar because each crash must be coded from documents that take months to assemble: the death-certificate matching alone runs into the following year, and NHTSA then checks the state files before publishing.

NHTSA's cycle

• Early estimates. NHTSA publishes a statistical projection of the national total for a year within a few months of its end. These are not FARS counts and do not appear on this site.
• Annual file. About nine to twelve months after the end of a year, NHTSA releases that year's FARS file for the first time, together with a revision of the previous year. This is the file used here for 2024.
• Final file. A year after that, the year is released again as final. Differences between annual and final are usually small (tens of crashes nationally) but county-level figures can move.

What this means for the pages here

Pages describe 2024 as "the latest data year" and the ten-year window as 2015–2024. When NHTSA publishes 2025, the site is rebuilt: the window moves forward one year, 2024 is replaced by its revised version, and every rate and share is recomputed. Figures quoted from this site should carry the data year.

Older years

Years before 2015 are stable and are not revised; the site keeps a processed copy of 1975–2014 and downloads only recent years when it rebuilds. If NHTSA ever republished an old year, the copy would be regenerated.