Crash Data
Crash Data
CDOT maintains a crash database for the purpose of improving traffic and highway safety as required by 23 U.S.C. Section 148 and 23 U.S.C. Section 405 requirements of the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) as well as other Federal and State rules and guidance. All crash data listings, reports and dashboards are protected under 23 U.S.C. Section 407.
Crash Data Dashboards
Transportation safety is a top priority for Colorado. CDOT Traffic Safety & Engineering Services developed performance dashboards displaying all reporting public roadway crashes in Colorado to better understand numbers, causes, types, and locations of crashes in order to develop effective countermeasures and meet performance targets.
Disclaimer: Colorado traffic crashes as presented in the dashboard are approximate and subject to change. The official number of traffic fatalities in Colorado can be found on NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) site.
Statewide Summary
Additional summary crash data can be provided upon request that is otherwise unavailable on this site (e.g., older crash data). More recent statewide crash data listings (i.e., 2021 and 2022) are generally not available at this time. For requests of crash records, requests should be sent to the Department of Revenue (DOR). CDOT is not the legal custodian of these records and will refer requests to DOR. Copies of original crash records may also be available directly from the responding law enforcement agency. Click HERE for additional details and contact information.
The summary data provided:
- will be in a tabular format;
- will be for a specific location or geographical area filtered for a specific crash type, weather condition, and/or date range; and
- will not include personal identifying information, such as, names, driver's license numbers, addresses, birth dates, license plate numbers, vehicle identification numbers (VIN), local and state identifiers (i.e. case numbers).
CDOT only provides summary data and does not provide or publish the database in its entirety.
To improve timeliness and help ensure that the data provided meets the requestor’s needs, it is recommended that the following information be included by the requestor:
Location: The location that data is being requested for. Provide mileposts, if possible, for highways or at a minimum, cross street information for the beginning and end points on a corridor. LAT/Long and GIS data is not available for most non-state highway crashes so if local roads are included in the request, CDOT will attempt to provide the crash data as close to what is requested as possible.
Dates: Beginning and end dates for the request, such as January 1, 2018 – December 31, 2019, or the most recent five years of data. For engineering analysis, we generally recommend three years of data for high volume roadways in urban areas and five years of data for more rural, low volume roadways. This typically provides sufficient information for safety analyses and is a general rule of thumb for engineering analysis.
Process
When a crash occurs, after an officer investigates and fills out a crash form (DR3447), the form is sent to the Department of Revenue (DOR). DOR processes the records and enters them into a database called DRIVES where the official, legal record is maintained. CDOT receives data from the DRIVES system for all crashes, excluding private property and counter reports. (Counter reports are self‐reported by drivers and are not investigated by a law enforcement officer).
CDOT has a process that enhances the crash data received from DOR so that data can be used more efficiently for engineering and research purposes. This process adds an additional field for crash type, corrects common errors, updates the location information where available, and normalizes the data. This cleansing process creates a working database that CDOT then uses for engineering safety analysis and evaluation of safety for infrastructure projects. Some examples of how this data is used is to assess Level of Service of Safety (LOSS) for highway segments and intersections, identification of crash patterns, statewide strategic safety planning, evaluation of safety performance measures, and development of crash prediction models and diagnostic norms.
The most recent data is available on the CDOT website in the form of statewide crash listings. There is a single file for each full year. Users can access the crash data dashboards on the CDOT website to see more current incoming data, which may not have gone through the enhancements mentioned above, but rather contains the base elements as was originally written into the crash report.
FARS is a separate database containing only fatal records and contains more detailed fields than the more general state database that includes all crashes. FARS is a nationwide census providing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Congress, and the American public yearly data regarding fatal injuries suffered in motor vehicle traffic crashes. Fatal data is finalized and published on December 31 of the following year. For example, 2015 fatal data was published on December 31, 2016. This allows for a thorough examination of records to ensure the most accurate data possible. The information in the FARS database is collected through a variety of sources, including coroner toxicology results, death certificates, initial fatal blotter notifications, and fatal supplement information. Fatal crashes included in the database meet the NHTSA definition of a fatal crash, which may not include all crashes involving a death. Examples of crashes that are not in the FARS database include deaths not resulting from the injuries sustained in the crash such as suicides or medical conditions.
