[telot1]

Unfortunately there isn't a standard way to collect this data on a national level. Believe it or not its up to that local jurisdiction, or State (in the case of state patrol) to dictate what information they gather and how it is gathered. This makes comparisons and real statistical analysis quite difficult.

Source: I'm in the traffic safety industry.

[ouid]

There is no federal database of traffic fatalities? In terms of human resources we lose on the order of 150 billion (40000 <lives>*7,000,000 <$/life> /2 ) dollars a year in traffic fatalities. That's not including the lost work from injuries. That's like 1% of the GDP. You would think that this would be a good enough reason to at least compile a database of causes. Even an incomplete one could be useful.

[davito88]

There is https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

[ouid]

I meant a database of individual fatalities. That was probably not clear.

[davito88]

Ah. FARS does include data for each crash and each victim. It can be a mess to dig through: https://github.com/wgetsnaps/ftp.nhtsa.dot.gov--fars

Also, California has their own database that includes all crashes in the state down to crash/victim level: http://iswitrs.chp.ca.gov/Reports/jsp/userLogin.jsp (You have to create a free account)

There are other datasets too: http://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/1755/automobile-...