Traffic Safety Facts 2009: a Compilation of Motor Vehicle Crash Data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and the General Estimates System
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Summary
**Traffic Safety Facts 2009** is a comprehensive statistical report published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that compiles motor vehicle crash data for the United States. The report addresses the need for a unified source of traffic safety statistics by integrating data from two primary NHTSA systems: the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the National Automotive Sampling System General Estimates System (GES). This compilation aims to provide an objective basis for evaluating highway safety initiatives, identifying safety problems, and informing policymakers, researchers, and the public. The methodology relies on combining a census of fatal crashes with a representative sample of all police-reported crashes. FARS, operational since 1975, collects data on every fatal crash involving a motor vehicle on a public trafficway, where death occurs within 30 days. State analysts code over 100 data elements from police reports, medical records, and licensing files. GES, operational since 1988, utilizes a nationally representative probability sample of police-reported crashes of all severities, including property damage, injury, and death. The report presents descriptive statistics derived from these datasets, covering trends from 1966 to 2009, as well as specific 2009 national and state-level data. In 2009, there were 5,505,000 police-reported motor vehicle traffic crashes, resulting in 30,797 fatalities, 1,517,000 injuries, and 3,957,000 property-damage-only incidents. The report details victim demographics, noting that occupants accounted for the majority of fatalities (24,474) and injuries (2,011,000), while nonoccupants, including pedestrians and pedalcyclists, accounted for 4,462 fatalities and 90,000 injuries. National fatality rates were recorded as 1.14 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled and 11.01 per 100,000 population. The data further breaks down crashes by vehicle type, time of day, alcohol involvement, restraint use, and geographic location. For instance, it highlights trends in alcohol-impaired driving, noting the proportion of drivers with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 or higher across different age groups and vehicle types. The significance of this report lies in its role as a definitive resource for understanding the scope and nature of traffic safety issues in the United States. By providing granular data on crash circumstances, victim characteristics, and state-specific performance, the report supports the evaluation of safety standards and the development of targeted interventions. It serves as a critical tool for federal and state governments, industry stakeholders, and researchers to monitor progress in reducing traffic fatalities and injuries, thereby guiding future highway safety policies and educational campaigns.
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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 (43 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 | 40 | 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
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- 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