FARS {gamclass}

US fatal road accident data for automobiles, 1998 to 2010

Description

Data are from the US FARS (Fatality Analysis Recording System) archive that is intended to include every accident in which there was at least one fatality. Data are limited to vehicles where the front seat passenger seat was occupied. Values are given for selected variables only.

Usage

FARS

Format

A data frame with 134332 observations on the following 18 variables.

caseid

a character vector. “state:casenum:vnum”

state

a numeric vector. See the FARS website for details

age

a numeric vector; 998=not reported; 999=not known. Cases with age < 16 have been omitted

airbag

a numeric vector

injury

a numeric vector; 4 indicates death. Blanks, unknown, and “Died prior to accident” have been omitted

Restraint

a numeric vector

sex

1=male, 2=female, 9=unknown

inimpact

a numeric vector; direction of initial impact. Categories 1 to 12 describe clock positions, so that 1,11, and 12 relate to near frontal impacts; 0 is not a collision; 13: top; 14: undercarriage. 18, introduced in 2005 has been omitted, as have 404 values in additional categories for 2010. 99 denotes a missing value.

modelyr

a numeric vector

airbagAvail

a factor with levels no yes NA-code

airbagDeploy

a factor with levels no yes NA-code

D_injury

a numeric vector

D_airbagAvail

a factor with levels no yes NA-code

D_airbagDeploy

a factor with levels no yes NA-code

D_Restraint

a factor with levels no yes NA-code

year

year of accident

Details

Data is for automabiles where the right passenger seat was occupied, with one observation for each such passenger. Observations for vehicles where the most harmful event was a fire or explosion or immersion or gas inhalation, or where someone fell or jumped from the vehicle, are omitted. Data are limited to vehicle body types 1 to 19,48,49,61, or 62. This excludes large trucks, pickup trucks, vans and buses. The 2009 and 2010 data does not include information on whether airbags were installed.

Note

The papers given as references demonstrate the use of Fatal Accident Recording System data to assess the effectiveness of airbags (even differences between different types of airbags) and seatbelts. Useful results can be obtained by matching driver mortality, with and without airbags, to mortality rates for right front seat passengers in cars without passenger airbags.

Source

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

References

https://maths-people.anu.edu.au/~johnm/nzsr/taws.html

Olson CM, Cummings P, Rivara FP. 2006. Association of first- and second-generation air bags with front occupant death in car crashes: a matched cohort study. Am J Epidemiol 164:161-169

Cummings, P; McKnight, B, 2010. Accounting for vehicle, crash, and occupant characteristics in traffic crash studies. Injury Prevention 16: 363-366

Braver, ER; Shardell, M; Teoh, ER, 2010. How have changes in air bag designs affected frontal crash mortality? Ann Epidemiol 20:499-510.

Examples

data(FARS)