Our Mission

PlainRoadSafety exists because we believe road safety data should inform public awareness, not sit buried in government archives. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration collects a comprehensive census of every fatal motor vehicle crash in the United States, but the raw FARS data is distributed across dozens of coded files that require specialized knowledge to interpret.

We built PlainRoadSafety to make this critical public safety data accessible, searchable, and understandable for everyone. Our mission is to help researchers, policymakers, journalists, educators, and concerned citizens understand road fatality patterns, where they happen, why they happen, and how they change over time. Whether you are a state legislator evaluating the impact of a speed limit change, a journalist investigating pedestrian safety trends, or a parent researching the safest counties to raise a family, PlainRoadSafety helps you find answers grounded in data.

We believe that understanding the causes and patterns of traffic fatalities is the first step toward reducing them. Every data point on this site represents a real person lost, presenting that data clearly and honestly is our way of honoring their memory and contributing to safer roads.

Our Data Sources

All data on PlainRoadSafety comes from the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), a nationwide census maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. FARS provides Congress and the American public with annual data on fatal injuries suffered in motor vehicle traffic crashes.

• Geographic scope: All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, covering 3,137 counties and county-equivalent jurisdictions.
• Time period: 2015 through 2023, providing 9 years of data for meaningful trend analysis.
• Metrics tracked: Total fatalities, fatality rates per 100,000 population (using Census population estimates), fatality rates per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT), cause category breakdowns, rural vs. urban splits, and year-over-year trends.
• Cause categories: Alcohol-impaired driving, speeding, pedestrian fatalities, cyclist fatalities, unrestrained occupants, distracted driving, weather-related crashes, nighttime crashes, and additional contributing factors as coded by FARS.

FARS data is collected by state-level analysts from police crash reports, death certificates, state vehicle registration files, and other sources, then reviewed and standardized by NHTSA for national consistency.

How We Process the Data

Our methodology starts with downloading annual FARS data files from NHTSA's Crash Stats portal. We parse individual crash records and compute aggregated fatality counts, rates per 100,000 population, and rates per 100 million vehicle miles traveled at both the state and county level. Contributing cause categories - alcohol-impaired, speeding, pedestrian, cyclist, unrestrained, and others, are tagged per crash using FARS variable coding.

Population figures for rate calculations come from U.S. Census Bureau estimates matched to the corresponding data year. Vehicle miles traveled data comes from the Federal Highway Administration's Highway Statistics series. We present 9 years of data (2015-2023) to enable meaningful trend analysis and allow users to distinguish long-term patterns from single-year anomalies.

A critical methodological note: because a single fatal crash can involve multiple contributing factors (for example, a crash caused by both alcohol impairment and speeding), cause category percentages may sum to more than 100%. We present this data as NHTSA codes it, without forcing mutually exclusive categories.

Data Currency

NHTSA publishes final FARS data annually, typically with a 1-2 year lag from the current calendar year. This delay reflects the time required for states to compile, code, and submit crash records, and for NHTSA to review and validate the data for national publication. Our update schedule follows NHTSA's release cycle, we incorporate each new annual dataset as it becomes available.

The most recent data currently covers through 2023. Preliminary data for more recent years may be available from NHTSA's early estimates program, but PlainRoadSafety uses only final, validated FARS data to ensure accuracy and consistency. Data freshness indicators appear on state and county pages.

Editorial Independence

Content on PlainRoadSafety is compiled by our editorial team from official source data. Raw data from NHTSA FARS is reformatted into readable profiles by our editorial team and verified against the source before publication. The PlainRoadSafety editorial team is responsible for editorial standards, methodology, and corrections.

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from automakers, insurers, or transportation companies. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense, advertisers do not influence which locations we cover or how we present data, and they do not receive preferential placement.

Limitations and Disclaimers

• Fatal crashes only. FARS exclusively records crashes resulting in at least one fatality within 30 days. Non-fatal injury crashes and property-damage-only crashes are not included, meaning the data reflects the most severe outcomes only.
• Cause categories overlap. A single fatal crash may be coded with multiple contributing factors. Summing cause category percentages will exceed 100% because categories are not mutually exclusive.
• County attribution limitations. Crash location is determined by the reporting police jurisdiction. In some cases, jurisdictional boundaries may not precisely align with Census county boundaries.
• Data publication lag. Final FARS data is typically available 1-2 years after the crash year. Conditions may have changed significantly since the most recent data period.
• Not a safety advisory. This site presents historical data for informational and research purposes. Do not rely solely on this data for personal safety decisions. Always follow official guidance from local authorities, state departments of transportation, and emergency services.

PlainRoadSafety is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to NHTSA, the Federal Highway Administration, or any government agency. Users should consult the official FARS data for critical research, policy decisions, or legal matters.

Editorial Team

PlainRoadSafety is published by PlainRoadSafety Editorial, a small independent team that builds public-data portals so that government safety records remain accessible to the people they describe. Our editorial work on PlainRoadSafety is led by editors with backgrounds in transportation-data analysis, public-safety records journalism, and traffic-engineering research, disciplines that combine to vet what NHTSA publishes, surface its limitations, and translate technical taxonomies (FARS crash codes, contributing-factor categorization, NHTSA injury severity scales) into language a road-safety researcher, journalist, or community advocate can actually use.

We do not employ practicing transportation engineers and do not publish original safety advice. Instead, our editorial standard is verification, citation, and transparency: every data field we surface is traceable to an NHTSA FARS publication, every caveat (FARS publication lag of 1-2 years, scope exclusions, contributing-factor inference) is disclosed at the page level, and every methodology decision is documented at /methodology. When source data has known shortcomings, for example, FARS reporting can lag by up to two years and contributing-factor coding varies between investigators, we say so on the page where the data appears, not buried in a footer.

Editorial questions, fact corrections, and source-attribution issues should go to hello@plainroadsafety.com. We are accountable for what we publish: every correction we make is reflected in the next data refresh, and our update schedule is documented at the top of this page so readers can see how recent the underlying figures are. PlainRoadSafety does not accept paid placement, sponsored listings, or any incentive that would compromise the neutrality of how crash data and contributing factors appear on the site.

Contact

For questions, feedback, or data correction requests, contact us at hello@plainroadsafety.com. We welcome input from road safety researchers, advocacy organizations, and transportation professionals.