This codebook documents data sets describing a sample of motor vehicle accidents that occurred in the USA during calendar year 2008. The data sets were generated by the Transportation Data Center at the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) from data collected by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The cooperation of NHTSA is gratefully acknowledged. These data are a copy of the NHTSA files released on May 22, 2009. The data are a sample of the 2008 motor vehicle accidents for which candidate accidents were chosen with varying probabilities according to a scheme detailed in the Users Manual. Accident reports chosen for inclusion represent accidents of all types with personal injuries ranging from minor to serious that were drawn from geographic areas reflecting the geography, roadway mileage, population, and traffic densities typical of the continental United States. The data set supplied by NHTSA is relational in structure with a number of separate relations that describe accident parameters, vehicles and drivers, and persons (i.e., occupants and non-motorists). This structure has been reformatted into a set of four rectangular files described below. A relational data set is maintained, however, and persons interested in rectangular file structures not supplied in the system data sets should contact the Data Center. In the 2008 GES file there are 247 vehicles with no occupants and these vehicles are not represented in the occupant level data set. Prior years of GES data had a similar number of such cases. In 2005 NHTSA began coding not-in-transport vehicles and their occupants, if any. These vehicles include legally parked and working vehicles. To remain consistent with prior years these vehicle and occupant records are not included in the ADAAS datasets except in the non-motorist file. The characteristics of the four system data sets that have been developed are presented. The codebook itself is divided into five sections that document the accident, crash event, vehicle & driver, occupant, and non-motorist records, respectively. The univariate frequencies and percentages displayed in each section are taken from the corresponding data set: vehicle and driver frequencies from GES07VEH, non-motorist frequencies from GES08NMT, etc.). An index at the end of the codebook cross references words used in the codebook by variable and code value number. (Author/publisher) This report may be accessed by Internet users at http://www.umtri.umich.edu/content/Ges2008.pdf
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