The agency is required by 49 U.S.C. 33104(b)(4) to periodically obtain and publish accurate and reliable theft data. The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) of the FBI provides this data to the NHTSA. The NCIC is a governmental system that receives vehicle theft data from approximately 18,000 criminal justice agencies and other law enforcement authorities throughout the United States. This national data includes the reported thefts of self-insured and uninsured vehicles, not all of which are reported to other data sources.

NHTSA is also the agency responsible for establishing the median theft rate for passenger motor vehicles (cars, multipurpose passenger vehicles [MPV], and light trucks – 6,000 pounds or less gross vehicle weight rating). For MYs 2004 through 2014, the established median was 3.5826 thefts per 1,000 vehicles produced. The theft data shows that those model year vehicles whose theft rates exceeded the established median were stolen more often than those vehicles whose theft rates fell below the median for that calendar year.