Traffic Tech: The 2016 Motor Vehicle Occupant Safety Survey: 911 Systems
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)
Summary
This report analyzes findings from the 2016 Motor Vehicle Occupant Safety Survey (MVOSS) to evaluate public usage of and expectations for 911 emergency systems, specifically in the context of motor vehicle crashes (MVCs). The study was motivated by the critical role of timely emergency response in reducing traffic fatalities and the ongoing transition of the U.S. 911 infrastructure toward Next Generation 911 (NG911). As cellular phones replace landlines, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) seeks to understand how the public interacts with 911 to inform system upgrades and improve post-crash care. The data derives from Survey B of the 2016 MVOSS, administered between June 2016 and February 2017. Researchers recruited a nationally representative sample of approximately 12,000 individuals aged 18 and older using address-based sampling across 10 NHTSA regions. The final dataset consisted of 5,410 completed surveys, with 49% completed online and the remainder via mail. Respondents received financial incentives for participation, and the data was weighted to produce national estimates. The results indicate that traffic safety issues are the primary drivers for 911 calls from vehicles. Among respondents who used wireless phones to report emergencies while driving or riding, 62% called to report MVCs, 31% reported reckless or aggressive drivers, and 29% reported drunk drivers. Regarding service requests, 54% of callers sought ambulance or EMS services, 45% requested police, and 10% requested fire department response. A significant gap exists between public expectations and current system capabilities: 91% of respondents expected pre-arrival medical instructions from 911 operators, yet only 39% of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) provided such services in 2018. Furthermore, only 30% of respondents were confident that 911 could locate them without explicit direction, despite 69% expressing willingness to pay at least $5 more in fees or taxes for faster location services. In the event of system overload, 21% of respondents indicated they would send a text message, highlighting a demand for text-to-911 capabilities that only 37% of U.S. counties possessed as of June 2019. The report concludes that improving 911 infrastructure is essential for NHTSA’s goal of eliminating traffic fatalities. The findings underscore the need for expanded Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD) services and the implementation of NG911, which supports text, data, and multimedia submissions. The authors suggest that state highway safety partners should actively promote 911 use for reporting dangerous driving behaviors and that PSAPs require additional resources to meet public expectations for location accuracy and service availability.
Key finding
Most respondents expected pre-arrival instructions and precise caller location services from 911, yet many Public Safety Answering Points lack these capabilities, creating a gap between public expectations and current system capacity.
Methodology
survey
Sample size: 5410
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | rosap | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 24 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Empirical Findings: observational prevalence