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Motor vehicle travel is the primary means of transportation in the United States, providing an unparalleled degree of mobility. Yet for all its advantages, motor vehicle crashes in 2013 were the leading cause of death for children age 4 and every age from 16 to 24.1 The mission of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration […]
Legislation being proposed in the U.S. House and Senate today would require federal auto regulators to include information about collision-avoidance systems in their new car safety ratings. The legislation is being proposed by U.S. Sens. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., and U.S. Reps. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. It comes just […]
A statistical projection of traffic fatalities shows that an estimated 32,675 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2014. This represents a very marginal decrease of about 0.1 percent as compared to the 32,719 fatalities that were reported to have occurred in 2013, as shown in Table 1. Also in 2014, fatalities decreased in the first (down 3.9%), second (down […]
In 2014, seat belt use rates in the United States ranged from a low of 68.9 percent in South Dakota to a high of 97.8 percent in Oregon. Nineteen States, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands achieved belt use rates of 90 percent or higher. These results are from probability-based observational surveys […]
The National Child Restraint Use Special Study documents how car seats and booster seats are used in the field, drivers’ attitudes and beliefs about car seats and booster seats and their confidence with installing them, and lower anchor connectors and tether strap installations. Misuse of car seats and boosters seats can be derived from the […]
The national seat belt use rate in 2013 was 87 percent, up slightly from 86 percent in 2012. This is a substantial increase from 58 percent in 1994. This information comes from the National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS), which is the only survey that provides nationwide probability-based observed data on seat belt use in the United States […]
DOT HS 812 128 The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s traffic crash data provides the underpinning for informed highway safety decision-making at the Federal, State, and local levels. Accurate, accessible, timely, and standardized data allows decision-makers to: determine the primary factors related to the sources of crashes and their outcomes develop and evaluate effective safety […]
In 2013, the use of seat belts in passenger vehicles saved an estimated 12,584 lives (occupants 5 and older), and an estimated 2,388 lives (occupants 13 and older) were saved by frontal air bags. An estimated 263 lives (child occupants 4 and younger) were saved by the use of child restraints, and 1,630 lives were saved by the use of […]
Distractions — including chatting with a passenger, texting and grooming — were factors in nearly 60 percent of moderate-to-severe teen crashes reviewed in a study funded by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and conducted by the University of Iowa. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had estimated that distraction played a role in 14 […]
This Research Note provides updated information on fatalities and injuries among the overall population as well as among children 14 and younger who were involved in “motor vehicle non-crash incidents” (herein referred to as non-crash incidents). The data on such incidents are obtained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) through its Not-in-Traffic Surveillance […]