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[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 200 (Wednesday, October 16, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 83545-83547]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-23099]

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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Agency Request for Information; State Property Damage Only (PDO) 
Data Collection Practices

AGENCY: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 
Department of Transportation (DOT).

ACTION: Request for information.

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SUMMARY: This notice requests information from interested parties to 
assist the agency in researching property damage only (PDO) crash data 
collection practices across the United States. State statutes dictate 
that law enforcement should complete a crash report for PDO crashes 
meeting a set of criteria including when damage is above a certain 
dollar threshold that varies by State. When a crash is below the 
reportable threshold, States may allow civilians to complete a crash 
report designed specifically for them. In some cases, jurisdictions 
within States have stopped collecting PDO crashes in an effort to save 
officer time and/or money. Other jurisdictions have stopped sending 
sworn officers to respond to PDO crashes. However, the impacts of these 
changes on crash data collection are not well documented or understood. 
NHTSA is seeking to identify States and jurisdictions that have 
modified their PDO crash reporting threshold or are using citizen or 
non-sworn officers to

[[Page 83546]]

report PDO crashes, and to determine the impacts of these practices on 
crash data analyses and agencies' budgets and time. NHTSA seeks 
comments from all interested parties, including State crash data 
owners, highway safety offices, law enforcement, and other stakeholders 
to help inform NHTSA's research into State PDO crash data collection 
practices.

DATES: Comments must be received on or before December 16, 2024.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments using the Federal Docket Management 
System Docket ID NHTSA-2024-0023 by any of the following methods:
     Federal Rulemaking Portal: Go to https://www.regulations.gov. Follow the online instructions for submitting 
comments.
     Mail: Send comments to: Docket Management Facility, U.S. 
Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, 
Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590.
     Fax: Written comments may be faxed to (202) 493-2251.
     Hand Delivery: If you plan to submit written comments by 
hand or courier, please do so at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West 
Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590 between 9 
a.m. and 5 p.m. eastern time, Monday through Friday, except Federal 
holidays.
    Please submit all comments to the Docket by December 16, 2024.
    When you submit your comments, please remember to mention the 
agency and the docket number of this document within your 
correspondence. Please note that all comments received will be posted 
without change to https://www.regulations.gov, including any personal 
information provided. Please see the ``Privacy Act'' heading below.
    Privacy Act: Anyone can search the electronic form of all comments 
received into any of our dockets by the name of the individual 
submitting the comments (or signing the comments, if submitted on 
behalf of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review 
DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement in the Federal Register published 
on April 11, 2000 (65 FR 19477-78) or at https://www.transportation.gov/privacy.
    Confidential Information: If you wish to submit any information 
under a claim of confidentiality, you should submit three copies of 
your complete submission, including the information you claim to be 
confidential business information, to the Chief Counsel, NHTSA, 1200 
New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. In addition, you should 
submit two copies, from which you have deleted the claimed confidential 
business information, to Docket Management at the address given above 
under ADDRESSES. When you send a comment containing information claimed 
to be confidential business information, you should include a cover 
letter setting forth the information specified in our confidential 
business information regulation (49 CFR part 512).
    Docket: For access to the docket to read the proposed changes to 
MMUCC, background documents, or comments received, go to http://www.regulations.gov at any time and follow the online instructions for 
accessing the dockets. Or go to West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-
140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590, between 9 a.m. 
and 5 p.m., Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, except Federal 
holidays.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Please contact Beau Burdett, National 
Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA (telephone: 202-366-7338 or 
email: [email protected]).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: From a national perspective, data 
comparability among States is important to practitioners' understanding 
of trends and countermeasure effectiveness. However, the United States 
does not have a single, uniform crash reporting standard. Fatal crashes 
are reported to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) using a 
uniform set of data elements and case-inclusion criteria. A common way 
that States code crash severity is using the KABCO scale. KABCO is an 
abbreviation for the different levels of injury severity: Killed (fatal 
injury), A-level (suspected serious) injury, B-level (suspected minor) 
injury, C-level (possible) injury, or Property Damage Only (no injury). 
Though not all States use the KABCO scale, all are required to use a 
uniform definition for both fatalities and serious (A-level) injuries. 
The Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Safety Performance 
Management Measures (23 CFR part 490) and the National Highway Traffic 
Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Uniform Procedures for State Highway 
Safety Grant Programs (23 CFR part 1300) establish a single, national 
definition for States to report serious (A-level) injuries per the 
Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC). MMUCC supplies voluntary 
standard definitions of other crash severity levels (B- and C-level 
injuries, and property damage only--PDO).
    Crash reporting criteria vary widely among States, especially 
concerning PDO crashes. Variations include differences in reporting 
threshold amounts, the use of full or abbreviated reports, the 
reporter's identity (sworn officers, non-law enforcement investigators, 
or citizens), and factors other than monetary value, like towaway 
necessity. The impact of practice variations on crash data quality, 
particularly PDO reporting, is unclear.
    To better understand State PDO data collection practices NHTSA 
began a research project. To date the research project has compiled 
State PDO thresholds as outlined in State statutes for the past 15 
years, investigated the use of abbreviated reports for PDO crashes, and 
conducted a literature review on the extent and costs of PDO crashes, 
crash reporting thresholds, and alternatives to PDO reporting by sworn 
officers. The next phase of this research effort moves from examining 
existing literature and State statutes on PDO data collection practices 
to speaking with select States and agencies regarding their practices 
and conducting crash data analyses to investigate the impact of 
different PDO data collection practices on data quality and safety 
analyses.
    This notice requests information from interested parties, including 
State crash data owners, highway safety offices, law enforcement, and 
other stakeholders to assist NHTSA in conducting research to 
investigate different PDO crash data collection practices across the 
United States and the impacts of these PDO data collection practices 
(e.g., economic impacts such as cost or time savings, impacts to 
traffic safety analyses, impacts to vulnerable road users, etc.). NHTSA 
plans to utilize the information provided under this Request for 
Information to enhance and support the development of the next phase in 
the research project.

Request for Information

    The agency is interested in information that would help develop and 
implement the next phase of research into State PDO data collection 
practices. This includes information about States' PDO thresholds (the 
research team is examining all changes in the property-damage aspects 
of reporting thresholds: changes in the minimum dollar amount of 
damage, changes from a dollar-amount threshold to a towaway threshold, 
and elimination of the threshold altogether); the use of citizen/driver 
report forms; and whether States utilize non-sworn officers to report 
PDO crashes. NHTSA hereby seeks further information based on the below 
questions. This list is not exhaustive, and we encourage commenters to 
provide any further

[[Page 83547]]

information that they believe is relevant to inform the agency as it 
seeks to conduct the next phase of research into State PDO data 
collection practices.
    (1) How does your State/jurisdiction determine if a crash report 
came from a sworn law enforcement officer or from a non-sworn officer?
    a. Ideally, this would be a data element in the crash report 
database showing the type of person who generated the report/data. If 
there are codes for sworn officer, non-sworn officer, and citizen 
(involved party), that would answer this question and Question #3 as 
well. However, having the indicator for sworn or non-sworn is important 
for this first question. Does your crash database include a data 
element that supports this?
    b. Officer badge number could be a second possible way to 
differentiate crash reports from sworn- versus non-sworn officers. Do 
you have badge numbers in the crash report/crash database and badge 
number lists identifying the type of officer (sworn versus non-sworn)?
    c. Can you provide information on any training differences for 
sworn versus non-sworn officers related to their crash reporting 
processes, knowledge, or duties?
    (2) Can your State supply summary statistics of crash data 
surrounding the most recent change in the crash reporting threshold 
(i.e., the frequency of crashes before and after the change)?
    a. We are most concerned with threshold changes in the past 15 
years (i.e., 2009 or more recent). We would hope to get the frequency 
of crashes for each KABCO severity for 5 years before and after the 
change. If your State changed its threshold in 2009, for example, we 
would ask for data from two periods: 2004 to 2008, and 2009 to 2013. 
Based on that example, can your system supply summary statistics of 
crash data for the period 5 years before and 5 years after the last 
threshold change?
    b. If the reporting threshold change took place mid-year (rather 
than on January 1st), we would need to know the implementation date for 
the change. In that case, we would like to receive the frequency of 
crashes for the year the change took place plus data for 5 years before 
and 5 years after the change (11 years' data total, including the 
change year). Can your system provide data to meet that request?
    c. If it has been fewer than 5 years since your most recent 
threshold change, can you provide any available post-change crash 
frequency data and can we also obtain the crash frequency for 5 years 
before that change?
    d. If there has been more than one change in threshold in the past 
15 years, can you please describe the before- and after-change periods 
for each of the successive threshold changes and tell us if crash 
frequency data would be available for those periods?
    (3) Does your State use citizen/driver report forms for crash 
reporting?
    a. How does your State collect the data from crash-involved 
persons?
    b. How is the data from these reports stored? Specifically, is it 
added to the statewide crash database and, if so, are those reports 
tagged in some way to indicate that the data comes from a citizen/
driver report?
    c. How is the data from citizen/driver reports used? Specifically, 
is it used in safety analyses and, if so, which types of analyses 
(e.g., safety analyses of locations, analyses of driver contributing 
factors, indications of belt use, other)?
    d. If a crash results in both a report written by a law enforcement 
officer (sworn or non-sworn) and a citizen report, are both versions 
stored in the statewide crash database? Are both used in safety 
analyses? Are the data blended from both sources (and if so, how)?
    This notice is for information purposes only. The agency will 
review and consider information provided in response to this notice as 
it conducts the next phase of research into State PDO data collection 
practices but will not respond to comments.

Chou-Lin Chen,
Associate Administrator for the National Center for Statistics and 
Analysis.
[FR Doc. 2024-23099 Filed 10-15-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4910-59-P
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