{
  "id": "1999-december-fatal-accidents",
  "slug": "1999-december-fatal-accidents",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-december-fatal-accidents.html",
  "year": 1999,
  "month": "December",
  "monthNum": 12,
  "headline": "Fatal accidents",
  "kicker": "NICAR DATA LIBRARY",
  "author_name": "Maryjo Sylwester",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "NICAR",
  "summary": "The Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS) dataset, maintained by the U.S. Department of Transportation since 1975, contains detailed information on fatal traffic accidents and can be used by journalists for enterprise stories and breaking news reporting. The database includes comprehensive data on accident conditions, vehicles, drivers, and fatalities, with examples of how newsrooms have used it to investigate highway safety and accident trends.",
  "keywords": [
    "accidents",
    "database",
    "journalism"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Public Safety",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Investigative Methods"
  ],
  "technologies": [],
  "full_text": "The Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS) dataset, which includes fatal accidents on U.S. public roads where at least one person died within 30 days of the accident, can be used for a variety of enterprise stories and as a resource for breaking news. NICAR has data available from 1975 through the end of 1998.\n\nThe data, collected by the U.S. Department of Transportation since 1975, includes an impressive array of details on each accident, including:\n\nWeather, light and road conditions.\nWhether a school bus, police or emergency vehicle was involved.\nPrevious speeding, drunk driving and other convictions of drivers.\nAlcohol and drug test types and results.\nSeat belt use and air bag deployment.\nPerson killed was on the job at the time.\nAccident following a police pursuit.\nAccidents in designated school zones.\nDrivers cited for inattentiveness, drunk driving or other violations.\nVehicle make, model and body.\n\nNew in the 1998 data are fields identifying the motor carrier identification number (which is required for trucks and buses crossing state lines) and driver height and weight.\n\nThe Roanoke (Va.) Times used the FARS data, along with state data on vehicle miles driven, to show that an interstate in Virginia was not as deadly as many people had come to believe.\n\nThe Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. used FARS to report that fatal accidents had increased on a highway after the speed limit was increased to 65 mph. But they also discovered the increase was not unusual, after comparing the change to historical data.\n\nHaving the dataset readily available in your newsroom could also pay off for breaking news. For example, the next time someone is killed on the local interstate, you could be the first to say exactly how many people have been killed on that highway in the past 15 years. (The DOT didn't start including the exact name of the highway until the 1982 data).\n\nThe database consists of four relational tables representing the four levels of information police collect: accident, vehicle, person and driver.\n\nMore information is available on the NICAR Web site at www.nicar.org/datadfars MaryJo Sylwester can be reached by e-mail at maryjo@nicar.org",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "2002-november-december-bits-and-bytes",
      "score": 0.385
    },
    {
      "slug": "2001-januaryfebruary-valuable-accident-data",
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    {
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  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-december-fatal-accidents.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-december-fatal-accidents.json"
}