A Consolidated Database of Police-Reported Motor Vehicle Traffic Accidents in the United States for Actuarial Applications

Abstract

We describe a methodology for extracting a representative sample of motor vehicle traffic accidents from the United States during the period 2001-2020, and present some results from an analysis of the data. The source of the publicly available data is the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A nationally representative sample of 1,583,520 people involved in 20 years of fatal and non-fatal accidents is analyzed to examine the effects on the injury severity of motor vehicle occupants. We examine the impact of traditional personal automobile insurance rating factors such as gender, age and previous traffic infractions on serious and fatal injuries. An estimated cost of the accidents is used to highlight the rating factors which have the highest influence in prediction accuracy.

Keywords: Motor vehicle traffic accidents data, Multinomial logistic regression, Rating factors, KABCO injury severity scale.