Traffic Safety Facts 2008: A Compilation of Motor Vehicle Crash Data From the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and the General Estimates System
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Summary
This document, *Traffic Safety Facts 2008*, is a comprehensive statistical report published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It compiles motor vehicle crash data from two primary federal databases: the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the National Automotive Sampling System General Estimates System (GES). The report aims to provide a unified source for traffic safety statistics, enabling the identification of safety problems, evaluation of safety standards, and support for policy decisions by government agencies, researchers, and the public. The methodology relies on combining census data from FARS, which records all fatal crashes involving a motor vehicle on public trafficways resulting in death within 30 days, with sample data from GES, which captures a nationally representative probability sample of police-reported crashes of all severities (fatal, injury, and property damage only). FARS data are collected by state analysts from police reports, vital statistics, and medical records, while GES data are derived from police accident reports. The report presents 2008 national statistics alongside historical trends dating back to the mid-1970s, categorized by crash severity, vehicle type, victim demographics, alcohol involvement, restraint use, and geographic location. In 2008, there were 5,811,000 police-reported motor vehicle traffic crashes in the United States. This total comprised 34,017 fatal crashes, 1,630,000 injury crashes, and 4,146,000 property-damage-only crashes. The crashes resulted in 42,000 fatalities and approximately 2.35 million injuries. Fatalities were distributed among vehicle occupants (26,689), motorcyclists (5,290), and nonoccupants such as pedestrians (37,261) and pedalcyclists (96,000 injured, though fatality counts for nonoccupants are aggregated in the text). Key national rates included 1.25 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled and 12.25 fatalities per 100,000 population. The estimated economic cost of traffic crashes was $230.6 billion. The report details specific trends, such as the proportion of drivers with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher in fatal crashes, restraint use rates among occupants, and fatality rates by age, sex, and vehicle type. It also provides state-by-state breakdowns of fatalities, injury rates, and specific factors like speeding and alcohol impairment. The significance of this report lies in its role as a foundational resource for highway safety analysis. By integrating fatal crash census data with broader crash sample data, NHTSA provides a holistic view of traffic safety performance. The data supports the evaluation of motor vehicle safety standards and highway safety initiatives, offering objective metrics for assessing the effectiveness of interventions such as occupant protection laws, alcohol enforcement, and infrastructure improvements. The detailed categorization of crashes by time, location, vehicle characteristics, and driver behavior allows stakeholders to target specific risk factors and monitor progress over time.
Key finding
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Methodology
dataset
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 (46 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 | 43 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 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.
- incidence prevalence
- demographic disparities
- comparative international
- fatality injury trends
- vru crash typology
- sex gender
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: crash risk outcomes, observational prevalence
- Methodological Resource: dataset resource