The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA), National Automotive Sampling System (NASS), has conducted detailed field crash investigations through its Crashworthiness Data System (CDS) since 1988. Each year CDS collects detailed information on a nationally representative, random sample of minor, serious and fatal, police-reported, tow-away traffic crashes involving passenger cars, light trucks and vans. CDS data supports research into the crashworthiness of passenger vehicles and the biomechanics of trauma, development of test equipment procedures and criteria, and the development and support of motor vehicle safety standards for occupant protection and consumer information programs.

Data collection into these real-world crashes involving child occupants provides a unique data set useful to the agency as well as the whole child occupant protection community.

In 2002, new and updated data collection methodologies related to child occupant restraints were incorporated into the NASS, CDS, Electronic Data Collection System. This paper presents a summary of these improved data collection methodologies.