FARS Reportability Screening

Screening; What and Why?

The FARS team will set up cases as it receives credible information of a fatal crash. Once the case is setup a FARS analyst will examine the case materials to make a provisional determination of whether the crash is reportable as a fatality to the NHTSA FARS system.

The Goal of Screening

Screening has a very practical goal, to make a reasonably accurate assessment of FARS reportability and to do so quickly and efficiently. Effective screening allows us to report most fatalities promptly and to efficiently allocate query and

Screening outcomes

There are three possible outcomes of this case screening

Fast and efficient, but also analytical and corrigible

In the past this screening was done intuitively by an analyst with decades of experience. We no longer have that 30 second snap decision screening capability and do not intend to reproducer it. Instead we aim to be systematic, to articulate reasons for decisions, and to correct and improve our processes with experience. It is important to accept that screening decisions are provisional. Doing so frees up to make reasonable decisions quickly, to decide not to decide if necessary and to reevaluate decisions as new information becomes available.

Rebuttable presumption versus active investigation

FARS Case and Dismissed From Consideration cases are generally taken as correctly assigned, subject to verification as part of source documentation collection, case coding, and NHTSA FARS data finalization.