Load NHTSA data to DuckDB

NHTSA provides various public APIs including the Product Information Catalog and Vehicle Listing (vPIC) and the Crash data API for accessing vehicle specifications, crash statistics, and manufacturer information. Everything needed to build a working NHTSA → DuckDB pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your NHTSA to DuckDB pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

PromptCopy prompt
Run uvx dlthub-init@latest to build a pipeline from NHTSA to DuckDB and run it on dltHub

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the NHTSA API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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NHTSA API at a glance

These values come from the NHTSA API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the NHTSA API?

The NHTSA APIs are public and do not require any authentication, registration, or API keys for usage.

No credentials required. The NHTSA API is public, so there is nothing to obtain and nothing to add to .dlt/secrets.toml — the pipeline above runs as written.

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What NHTSA data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the NHTSA endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new NHTSA records?

The NHTSA API reference does not document a timestamp or sequence field for these endpoints, so there is nothing to advertise here as verified. Pick a field from the endpoints table above that increases with every write, then set it as the cursor_path.

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{"name": "models_for_make_id", "endpoint": {
    "path": "vehicles/GetModelsForMakeId/{makeId}?format=json",
    # Replace with a field that increases on every write.
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "REPLACE_ME", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated NHTSA pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading vehicles/DecodeVin/{vin} and crashes/GetCaseDetails from the NHTSA API into DuckDB:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def nhtsa_source():
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api or https://crashviewer.nhtsa.dot.gov/crashviewer",
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "models_for_make_id", "endpoint": {"path": "vehicles/GetModelsForMakeId/{makeId}?format=json"}},
            {"name": "all_manufacturers", "endpoint": {"path": "vehicles/GetAllManufacturers?format=json"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_nhtsa_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="nhtsa_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="nhtsa_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(nhtsa_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_nhtsa_to_duckdb()

Run it with python nhtsa_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query NHTSA data in DuckDB?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("nhtsa_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.models_for_make_id.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM nhtsa_data.models_for_make_id LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the NHTSA to DuckDB pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw NHTSA loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load NHTSA data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack