The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is taking a look at how states collect crash data.
Specifically, the agency is examining crash data collection practices when there is only property damage. This week, NHTSA published a request for information in the Federal Register asking for feedback.
States have varying dollar thresholds for when law enforcement is required to complete a report for property-damage-only crashes. When a crash is below the reportable threshold, states may allow civilians to complete a crash report designed specifically for them.
Some jurisdictions within states have stopped collecting property-damage-only crashes to save law enforcement time and resources. Other jurisdictions have stopped sending sworn officers to respond to these crashes.
It is unclear how the lack of uniform reporting has affected the quality of the crash data.
In addition to differences in reporting threshold amounts, states vary on whether they use full or abbreviated reports and whether they require a tow.
“NHTSA is seeking to identify states and jurisdictions that have modified their property-damage-only crash reporting threshold to or are using citizen or non-sworn officers to report property-damage-only crashes and to determine the impacts of these practices on crash data analyses and agencies’ budgets and time,” the agency said in the notice. “NHTSA seeks comments from all interested parties, including state crash data owners, highway safety offices, law enforcement and other stakeholders to help NHTSA’s research into state property-damage-only crash data collection practices.”
How to comment
The notice includes a list of questions that NHTSA would like answered. Comments will be accepted through Dec. 16. To participate, click here or go to the Regulations.gov website and enter NHTSA-2024-0023.
Once received, it is unclear exactly how NHTSA will use the information going forward. The agency said it will review and consider the information provided as it conducts the next phase of its crash reporting research, but it will not respond to comments. LL
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