The National Institute for Safety Research, Inc. (NISR) was incorporated in the State of Maryland in 1980. Our mission is to provide safety-oriented research and training services to federal and state agencies as well as private industry. 

NISR specializes in:

·    highway safety research;

·    traffic accident data collection training;

·    traffic records standardization;

·    performance and impact evaluation; and

·    transportation systems and analysis.

The company has notable experience and expertise in the interpretation, classification, evaluation, development and training of data elements as they pertain to data collection and traffic records in the United States.

In its twenty-nine year history, NISR has been highly successful as a prime contractor for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

NISR has also served as a subcontractor in research and training efforts performed for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), and the National Safety Council (NSC).

As NHTSA’ s training contractor for the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) since 1980, NISR assisted in the development of all of the FARS documents, courseware, coding conventions, guidelines, elements and definitions.

NISR provides its services to the FMCSA as part of a national data quality improvement project.  As part of these services, NISR assists States in the areas of law enforcement training and crash data collection and evaluation.

NISR serves the insurance industry through Equifax Services, Inc. and Choicepoint, Inc. for over 25 years.  NISR developed a national standard for State traffic violations known as the Standard Violations Code (SVC) for Equifax and Choicepoint.  NISR has a joint copyright with Choicepoint for the SVC.

NISR produces the Manual on the Classification of Motor Vehicle Traffic Accidents (ANSI D-16.1) for the National Safety Council (NSC). This is an American National Standard of definitions for classifying all traffic crashes in the United States.