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The 2018 U.S. Recreational Boat Accident Database consists of four relational tables containing data on recreational boating accidents that resulted in death or injury requiring more than first aid. Accidents involving vessel loss, vessel damage of more than $2,000 or disappearance of a person under circumstances that indicate death or injury are also included.

The 2013-2018 data files are posted AS IS from the Coast Guard in Access database format (.accdb or .mdb), and NICAR has not cleaned or changed the data in any way. NICAR has also exported 2016 and 2017 data to four CSV tables with double quote text qualifiers for each of those years. No data has been cleaned or changed.

Use the “design view” of each table for descriptions of and codes for each field.

The U.S. Coast Guard has declined to give data for the state of California since 2005 because of a California statute. California is included in all the previous years. Since then, the Coast Guard declined to give data for several other states that also refused to let the Coast Guard release their data. Some states do not allow for the release of particular data. Please read the documentation to see which states are included in what years and which states prohibit the release of some data.

For 2018: CA was not released. AZ, CT, KS, MA, MN, NJ, NV, PA, UT and WA did not release all columns.

For 2017: CA and PA were not released. AZ, CT, MA, MN, NJ, NV, UT and WA did not release all columns.

For 2016: AK, CA and PA were not released. AZ, CT, MA, MN, NJ, NV and UT did not release all columns.

For 2015: AK, CA, CT, DC, HI, MI, MS, NJ, OR, PA, TX and WA were not released.

For 2014: AK, CA, CT, HI, MI, MS, OR, PA, and WA were not released.

NICAR is also offering the 1994 – 2012 data for free, which has been cleaned and reformatted into DBF files which contain multiple years of data. Please read the included documentation for these files. Data prior to 1994 is also included, but the format changed in 1994 so the earlier years are separate.

Record layouts and samples of this database