Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS)

The Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) collects data from police-reported crashes involving all types of motor vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists; this includes property damage only crashes as well as those resulting in injuries and fatalities. CRSS obtains its data from a nationally representative probability sample selected from the estimated six million police-reported crashes that occur annually in the United States. By focusing attention on police-reported crashes, CRSS concentrates on the crashes of greatest concern to the highway safety community and the general public. CRSS depends on the voluntary participation and cooperation of State and law enforcement agencies. This allows the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and its contractors to access the crash reports to review, list, and categorize the crashes. The crash reports provide essential data: detailed information regarding the location of the crash, the vehicles, and the people involved. The reports are official local and State government forms that include the location of the crash and the pre-crash environment, explains the number and types of vehicles involved as well as describing the persons, injuries and other variables to express how the person was involved in the crash. No personally identifiable information is collected or released via the CRSS program. Selected crashes are released to the public in the annual CRSS file following quality control processes conducted by NHTSA. These data files are used by NHTSA and the general public for highway safety research purposes.

The latest form for Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) expires 2022-12-31 and can be found here.

EDT (Implementation)

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Transportation - Ground Transportation