How We Count

Check Our Work

You never have to take our word for a number. Every source we use is public, free, and linked below. Pull the same files we pulled and you should land on the same figures we did.

Where the death counts come from

Every death count on this site starts with NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). It's the federal government's full count of fatal motor vehicle crashes on U.S. public roads, not a sample. FARS draws on police reports, coroner and medical examiner records, and state crash files. The national record goes back to 1975. We use FARS data from 2000 through 2024. NHTSA publishes FARS at nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-reporting-system-fars , and the full raw files are free to download.

Where the injury estimates come from

Injury numbers come from NHTSA's Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS). CRSS samples police-reported crashes of every severity, not just fatal ones. The sample is built to stand in for the whole country, and NHTSA scales it up to a national estimate. We use CRSS to estimate how many people are injured for every death FARS records. We always label that number an estimate. Our current build covers CRSS data from 2016 through 2023, and it doesn't break out to the state or county level.

Where the population numbers come from

Every rate on this site is deaths per 100,000 residents. The population side of that math comes from U.S. Census Bureau estimates for the matching year and place, whether that's a state or a county.

What we do with the files

We download the public files NHTSA and the Census Bureau publish. We calculate every number ourselves from the raw records. We don't rely on outside summaries or press releases for the numbers we report.

Get the data behind any number

Journalists, researchers, and public officials can request the exact cut of data behind any number on this site. Reach us through our about page, or see our methodology for how we build each number.