US Traffic Accidents Across 49 States from 2016 to 2023

From February 2016 to March 2023, this dataset contains approximately 7.7 million accident records collected across 49 U.S. states. It was compiled in real-time via multiple Traffic APIs from sources like state DOTs and law enforcement. The dataset was created by Sobhan Moosavi and colleagues for research purposes.

Use Cases

• Predict real-time car accidents based on environmental and traffic conditions mentioned in the description.
• Study accident hotspot locations using the geospatial and temporal coverage.
• Analyze the impact of precipitation or other environmental stimuli on accident occurrence.
• Investigate the impact of COVID-19 on traffic behavior and accidents using the recent data range.

Strengths

• Approximately 7.7 million accident records provide a large-scale basis for analysis.
• Covers 49 U.S. states and a 7-year time range from February 2016 to March 2023.
• Data was collected from multiple authoritative sources, including state DOTs and law enforcement.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• The dataset may be missing data for certain days due to network connectivity issues during collection.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Collected via multiple Traffic APIs from entities like U.S. and state departments of transportation.

Collection Method

Real-time collection from streaming traffic incident APIs.

Time Range

February 2016 to March 2023

Freshness

The dataset will no longer be updated; the March 2023 version is the latest.

Geography

49 states of the USA (Contiguous United States)