Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS)

Source

The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data is provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

This data is available for download here:

www.nhtsa.gov/file-downloads?p=nhtsa/downloads/FARS/

Documentation about this data is provided in the "Fatality Analysis Reporting System Analytical User’s Manual, 1975-2021"

(including, in particular, the ability to lookup state codes)

rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/78035

Description of the Data

According to the NHTSA website (see) www.nhtsa.gov/resources-guide/glossary-highway-safety-terms-and-definitions

this is (quote) "The nationwide census providing public yearly data regarding fatal injuries suffered in motor vehicle traffic crashes, as published by NHTSA."

We can download the files as follows:

for ((i=1975; i<=2021; i++)); do wget https://static.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/downloads/FARS/${i}/National/FARS${i}NationalCSV.zip; done

for ((i=1982; i<=2021; i++)); do wget https://static.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/downloads/FARS/${i}/National/FARS${i}NationalAuxiliaryCSV.zip; done

The 1996 Auxiliary file is named incorrectly (CVS instead of CSV), so we need to download it separately:

wget https://static.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/downloads/FARS/1996/National/FARS1996NationalAuxiliaryCVS.zip

(Dr Ward reported this to the NHTSA)

Now we can unzip the files and put them into directories:

for ((i=1975; i<=2005; i++)); do unzip FARS${i}NationalCSV.zip; mkdir ${i}; mv *.[Cc][Ss][Vv] ${i}; done

for ((i=2006; i<=2015; i++)); do unzip FARS${i}NationalCSV.zip; mkdir ${i}; mv FARS${i}NationalCSV/*.[Cc][Ss][Vv] ${i}; rmdir FARS${i}NationalCSV; done

for ((i=2016; i<=2019; i++)); do unzip FARS${i}NationalCSV.zip; mkdir ${i}; mv *.[Cc][Ss][Vv] ${i}; done

for ((i=2020; i<=2021; i++)); do unzip FARS${i}NationalCSV.zip; mkdir ${i}; mv FARS${i}NationalCSV/*.[Cc][Ss][Vv] ${i}; rmdir FARS${i}NationalCSV; done

for ((i=1982; i<=2019; i++)); do unzip FARS${i}NationalAuxiliary*.zip; mv *.[Cc][Ss][Vv] ${i}; done

for ((i=2020; i<=2021; i++)); do unzip FARS${i}NationalAuxiliaryCSV.zip; mv FARS${i}NationalAuxiliaryCSV/*.[Cc][Ss][Vv] ${i}; rmdir FARS${i}NationalAuxiliaryCSV; done

rm FARS*.zip

Transformations to the original data source

We build the 7581.csv file:

head -n1 1975/ACCIDENT.CSV >7581.csv
for ((i=1975;i<=1981;i++)); do sed -e 1d ${i}/ACCIDENT.CSV; done >>7581.csv

and we build the states.csv file manually from the pdf file:

rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/78035

If the pdf file is not available, it is in the Wayback Machine:

web.archive.org/web/20230525220726/https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813417