Crash avoidance: new opportunities for behavior analysis.

This article describes research done by a team at The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The team examined police crash reports from 11 states to determine those behavioral factors most frequently reported by police to have caused vehicle crashes. The states were selected because each had detailed police reports with descriptions of behaviors contributing to the crashes. States not included in final data set either had no description of crash-contributing behaviors or the state's crash data were not available from NHTSA.