An official website of the United States government
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
The problem: Accidents, deaths, and injuries are "lagging" indicators, in the sense that they tell us after things have already gone wrong. "Leading" indicators, on the other hand, might be useful in...
Deaths and injuries are a major cost in transportation. Transportation fatalities rank third as the cause of lost years of life in the U.S. (behind heart disease and cancer). Several travel modes have death counts whose impact exceeds that of AIDS. But the Department of...
Sustaining the momentum achieved during the modal workshops and national conference is key to furthering the objectives of Safety In Numbers and moving from discussion to action. Stakeholders have continually...
The problem: The purpose in collecting data is to enable analysis to help understand the causes and circumstances of transportation-related deaths and injuries, and then to help reduce deaths and injuries. But...
The problem: The essence of data analysis is finding patterns and relationships. To the extent that our programs are guided by data analysis, people need easy access to a variety of data and the ability to link those data to reveal...
The problem: Much of our safety data are reported only on an annual basis, and for most of our safety data there are reporting lags of up to several months after the accident or end of reporting period. When we reported safety...
The problem: Virtually all transportation accidents are preceded by a chain of events or circumstancesany one of which might have prevented the accident if it had gone another way. In a large number of cases,...
The problem: Each of the modes uses a different set of denominators for evaluating changes in safety risk.
Some programs (e.g., general aviation, recreational boating) use primarily a count of deaths or...The problem: Over time, each mode has developed its own taxonomy for describing the circumstances surrounding accidents. In fact, much of the focus has been on defining "causes" of accidents and developing "causal"...
The problem: The Department of Transportation maintains in excess of 40 programs that capture either safety data or crucial related information, such as measures of exposure. But a recent data quality review requested by Congress...