University of Minnesota researchers have developed an interactive map of every fatality that has occurred in the nation, detailing age of the driver, whether alcohol or speeding was involved, and if the driver was wearing a seatbelt.

Enter your address at www.saferoadmaps.org and you will see a map or satellite image of all of the road fatalities that have occurred in the area. The hope that this kind of information will drive awareness of road safety issues, and be used as a policy tool to help create better road safety regulation. It is also preventative, showing the effects of existing policies on road fatalities, particulary for those people living in rural areas.

Researchers in the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety (CERS) at the University of Minnesota built www.saferoadmaps.org to show how public policy on road safety makes a difference.

"This tool sheds light on the importance of strong public policy that helps save lives in states across the nation," said Lee Munnich, director of CERS in the university’s Humphrey Institute for Public Affiars. "When you can visually see how many lives can be saved, it really changes how the public and policy makers see our roads."

Saferoadmaps.org will be useful to a wide range of drivers, from rural to urban driver’s as well as drivers education teachers, parents and policy makers. It will also serve as an important illustration for teaching new drivers the importance of safety and give veteran drivers an opportunity to explore their most common routes and make sensible adjustments.

"By mapping out these fatalities, we can visually see what a large problem we have in our country," Munnich said. "It is time to start working towards prevention and each one of these dots on the map represents that."

The data for the site comes from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). FARS is manned by state employees. They cull data from police accident reports, state vehicle registration files, state driving license files, state highway department data, vital statistics, death certificates, hospital records, and the like. Presently, the system contains 38,588 accidents, which resulted in 42,642 fatalities, involved 57,943 vehicles and 98,040 people. The data is from 2006, the most currently available.