DOCUMENTING INJURIES IN NHTSA ’ s CISS PROGRAM

In 2012 the United States Congress issued a directive to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to modernize its nationally-representative crash databases and examine the data collected in those programs. In response, NHTSA initiated the Data Modernization Project to affirm its position as the leader in motor vehicle crash data collection and analysis, by collecting quality data to keep pace with emerging technology and evolving policy needs. To ensure the needs of the highway safety community were met, NHTSA sought input from users of the data including government, academia, and industry. One of the areas the stakeholders requested upgrades was in the injury coding portion of the crash investigation-based programs. Enhancements in NHTSA’s new nationally representative motor vehicle crash data collection, the Crash Investigation Sampling System (CISS), include more robust injury coding through an updated version of the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS), the addition of injury causation scenarios for severely injured occupants, and the use of state-of-the-art software. NHTSA has partnered with the Department of Defense (DOD) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) to use their Visual Anatomic Injury Descriptor (VisualAID) software to record injury information. The purpose of this paper is to describe the CISS injury coding process and detail the improvements users of the data can expect in the coming years.