About National Automotive Sampling System

The National Automotive Sampling System is an agency based in the United States that collects a wide range of information that helps assess the safety of vehicles and highway systems throughout the nation. It studied vehicle crashes and damage in order to produce estimates for the future.

How it Works

The NASS fields many teams of researchers that work to investigate crashes throughout the nation. These researchers cooperate with law enforcement agencies, medical workers and junkyards to get the information they need. Their primary objective is to discover how often crashes occur and what the typical conditions are. They evaluate damages done to both the occupants and the vehicle in order to assess the danger of the crash. If there is a safety hazard within a vehicle, such as protruding objects, which can become dangerous in the case of impact, they will record this and present the information to higher authorities such as the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration.

The NASS takes many steps to ensure its information is representative of the entire nation, randomly selecting a wide variety of locations in which to conduct study.

What it Does

The information collected by the NASS is used in order to improve the safety of highways and areas that are deemed dangerous. It can help produce vehicular design standards that improve safety for the passengers. By tracking this information over time, it is also capable of demonstrating what effects, for example, increased traffic and truck movement through a region is likely to have. The NASS also wields several child agencies, such as the Special Crash Investigation group and agencies specialized in determining the causation of crashes. The collection of large amounts of data in this fashion allows recognizable patterns to emerge in future crashes. This allows for the precise cause of a crash or system failure to be more easily recognized.