The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration needs to
improve the monitoring and oversight of its traffic safety
data program, the Government Accountability Office has said.
It said variations in the quality of data across states
about when and why auto crashes occur make the information
less usable in preventing the millions of auto-related
deaths and injuries that occur each year.
Congress is currently considering whether to reauthorize
or expand NHTSA’s grant program designed to help states
improve the safety-data systems used to collect and
analyze crash data from police and sheriff’s offices and
other agencies, said GAO. It recommended that the safety
administration improve the management of its grant
documentation, as well as monitoring and oversight of
grant funds, something the Department of Transportation
agreed with.
While states reported carrying out a range of activities
to improve traffic safety data systems with NHTSA grants,
the documents they submitted to NHTSA lacked information
about what the activities accomplished — so little is
known about the extent to which these activities improved
the systems, according to GAO-05-24.
It said that while state oversight of the grant program
complies with statutory requirements, it fails to provide
an accurate picture of what states are accomplishing
because “the agency did not provide adequate guidance to
ensure that states provided accurate and complete data on
what they were accomplishing with their grants.”
Additionally, the agency did not have an effective process
for monitoring progress, though it has started to take
actions aimed at strengthening oversight, said GAO.
