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National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) chief Mark Rosekind assured lawmakers in a recent letter that the agency is taking a series of steps to decrease the number of alcohol-impaired motorists who get behind the wheel. “Safety on our roads must remain a top priority,” the lawmakers said. “Prompt action by NHTSA to implement FAST […]
For the purpose of this fact sheet, children are defined as 14 years old and younger. Motor vehicle traffic crashes are a leading killer of children. Of the 32,675 motor vehicle traffic fatalities in 2014 in the United States, 1,070 (3%) were children 14 and younger.
A large truck as defined in this fact sheet is any medium or heavy truck, excluding buses and motor homes, with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) greater than 10,000 pounds. In 2014, 85 percent of the large trucks involved in fatal traffic crashes were heavy large trucks (GVWR > 26,000 lbs.). In 2014 there […]
For the purposes of this fact sheet, the term young driver refers to a person 15 to 20 years old operating a motor vehicle involved in a crash. People in this age group generally obtain their licenses for the first time and many are under a graduated driver licensing program as they learn driving skills. […]
For the purposes of this fact sheet, the term older—in relation to population, drivers, occupants, and nonoccupants—refers to people 65 and older. In this fact sheet, the 2014 older population information is presented in the following order. In 2014, there were 5,709 people 65 and older killed and an estimated 221,000 injured in motor vehicle […]
NHTSA: Traffic fatalities decreased by 1% from 2013 to 2014 (32,894 to 32,675) for the United States.
NHTSA considers a crash to be speeding-related if the driver was charged with a speeding-related offense or if a police officer indicated that racing, driving too fast for conditions, or exceeding the posted speed limit was a contributing factor in the crash. In this fact sheet the 2014 information on speeding-related data in fatal crashes […]
When seat belt use is examined for the Nation, not limited to fatal crash data, the use rate was 87 percent in 2014. In 2005 the national seat belt use rate was 82 percent. This information comes from the National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS) which is the only survey that provides nationwide probability-based observed […]
The number of motor vehicle crash fatalities on U.S. roadways in 2014 continued the general decline that started in 2006. The Nation lost 32,675 people in crashes on roadways during 2014, down from 32,894 in 2013. The estimated number of people injured on the Nation’s roads increased in 2014, rising from 2.31 to 2.34 million […]
Parents and caregivers struggle to comply with child passenger safety (CPS) recommendations, and frequently make mistakes when choosing and installing restraints. The objective of this project was to develop and test various methods of framing CPS recommendations, and to determine how to best communicate CPS information to parents/caregivers.