The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been gathering Event Data Recorder (EDR) information in its data collection programs since the late 1990s. The various EDR data elements collected in NHTSA’s crash databases provide insight into the vehicles’ safety systems and actions leading up to a crash. This EDR data will be a key source as focus on crash avoidance countermeasures increase and crashworthiness countermeasures are optimized in the automotive safety community. The purpose of this paper is to describe the evolution of EDR data collection in NHTSA’s in-depth crash investigation programs leading up to the implementation of the Code of Federal Regulation (CFR) 49 Part 563. Additionally, the paper will discuss the techniques used to collect EDR data, and detail future plans for their coding in NHTSA’s crash databases.