States asked to provide timely, standardized roadway crash data

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) wants timely, standardized crash data from states, and it’s making $350 million in grants available to help them supply it.

States, territories and tribes are encouraged to apply for State Electronic Data Collection (SEDC) program grants to standardize state crash data collection systems to enable complete, consistent electronic data transfer to NHTSA.

State crash data helps NHTSA get a clear picture of what’s happening on U.S. roads and shapes its strategies, research, rulemaking and education campaigns, the agency said.

The SEDC grants are available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and are open to all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Secretary of the Interior if acting on behalf of an Indian tribe.

NHTSA currently gets its crash data from police accident reports provided by states through two ways: the State Data System (SDS) and the Electronic Data Transfer (EDT) protocol.

The EDT collects data from participating state crash systems through a nightly electronic data transfer. However, most states that submit crash data to NHTSA do so annually via the SDS, which uses electronic media, secured mail or secure file transfer protocol (SFTP).

Having full participation in the State Electronic Data Collection program will improve fatality data about motorists as well as pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users, NHTSA said.

Grants will be awarded to states that detail how they will modernize and standardize their data collection systems.

Applications are due by May 1. NHTSA plans to award the grants by December 2024.

Grant recipients will have five years to implement full electronic data transfers to NHTSA.

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