US Department of Transportation
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) oversees federal transportation policy and operates multiple agencies that publish public REST APIs covering trucking and motor carrier safety (FMCSA), vehicle product information and safety recalls (NHTSA), aviation safety and airspace data (FAA), transit statistics, and transportation data portals. DOT APIs are free public government services requiring API key registration via Login.gov or the relevant agency developer portal.
Limited machine-readable signal and partial portal coverage — documentation a human can read, but little a machine or agent can consume without scraping.
API Evangelist profiles US Department of Transportation the way a machine reads it — 89 machine-readable artifacts across 12 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — US Department of Transportation scores 43.4/100 (thin), with a separate agent-readiness read of 39/100 (agent aware). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile US Department of Transportation
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for US Department of Transportation. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 12
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
FMCSA QCMobile API
The FMCSA QCMobile API provides safety performance data for U.S. Department of Transportation registered motor carriers. Developers can query carrier registration information, l...
FMCSA SaferBus API
The FMCSA SaferBus API is a RESTful service making available safety performance data for U.S. DOT-registered bus companies. It enables developers to build consumer-facing produc...
NHTSA vPIC Vehicle API
The NHTSA Vehicle Product Information Catalog (vPIC) API provides programmatic access to vehicle make, model, manufacturer, and type data compiled by NHTSA. Key capabilities inc...
NHTSA Datasets and APIs
NHTSA provides public datasets and APIs covering vehicle safety complaints, recalls, safety ratings (NCAP), and defect investigations. Complaint data entered into NHTSA's Office...
DOT Open Data Portal
The U.S. Department of Transportation Open Data Portal provides access to transportation datasets published by DOT agencies including FMCSA, NHTSA, FTA, BTS, FAA, PHMSA, and mor...
US Department of Transportation childSeats API
Child Seat search and list endpoints
US Department of Transportation equipment API
Equipment search and list endpoints
US Department of Transportation ewr API
Early Warning Report endpoints
US Department of Transportation foreignCampaigns API
Foreign Campaign search and list endpoints
US Department of Transportation safetyIssues API
Recalls, Investigations, Complaints, and Manufacturer Communications
US Department of Transportation tires API
Tire search and list endpoints
US Department of Transportation vehicles API
Vehicle search and list endpoints
Scroll within the panel for all 12 ·
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Dot Plans Pricing
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Dot Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Dot Finops
FINOPSSemantic Vocabularies 2
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Dot Context
JSON-LDDot Provider Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 1
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
JSON Schema 68
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
AssociatedProduct
JSON SCHEMAAttributes
JSON SCHEMAChildseat
JSON SCHEMAChildSeatMode
JSON SCHEMAChildSeatModeRating
JSON SCHEMAComplaint
JSON SCHEMAComplaintAggregate
JSON SCHEMAComplaintComponent
JSON SCHEMAComponent
JSON SCHEMAComponents
JSON SCHEMACrashTestRating
JSON SCHEMADocument
JSON SCHEMADocuments
JSON SCHEMAEquipment
JSON SCHEMAEWRInjury
JSON SCHEMAEWRManufacturer
JSON SCHEMAEWRManufacturerDetail
JSON SCHEMAEWRProduction
JSON SCHEMAEWRPropertyDamage
JSON SCHEMAEWRReportPeriod
JSON SCHEMAEWRReportPeriodCategory
JSON SCHEMAFeature
JSON SCHEMAForeignCampaign
JSON SCHEMAInspectionStationDetails
JSON SCHEMAInvestigation
JSON SCHEMAInvestigationAggregate
JSON SCHEMAInvestigationComponent
JSON SCHEMAInvestigations
JSON SCHEMAMakes
JSON SCHEMAManufacturer
JSON SCHEMAManufacturerCommunication
JSON SCHEMAManufacturerCommunicationComponent
JSON SCHEMAMedia
JSON SCHEMAMessage
JSON SCHEMAMeta
JSON SCHEMAMFRCommunicationAggregate
JSON SCHEMAModels
JSON SCHEMAModelYears
JSON SCHEMANCAPRating
JSON SCHEMANote
JSON SCHEMAPagination
JSON SCHEMAPartialChildSeat
JSON SCHEMAPartialVehicle
JSON SCHEMAProduct
JSON SCHEMAProductComplaint
JSON SCHEMAProductManfacturerCommunication
JSON SCHEMAProducts
JSON SCHEMARating
JSON SCHEMARecall
JSON SCHEMARecallAggregate
JSON SCHEMARecallInvestigation
JSON SCHEMARecalls
JSON SCHEMARecommendedFeature
JSON SCHEMASafetyConcern
JSON SCHEMASafetyFeature
JSON SCHEMASafetyIssue
JSON SCHEMASafetyIssueAggregate
JSON SCHEMASafetyRatingAggregate
JSON SCHEMASafetyRatingFullAggregate
JSON SCHEMAtest
JSON SCHEMATire
JSON SCHEMATireBrand
JSON SCHEMATrims
JSON SCHEMAVehicle
JSON SCHEMAVehicleBasic
JSON SCHEMAVehicleDetails
JSON SCHEMAVehicleFull
JSON SCHEMAVehicleMinimal
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 68 ·
Examples 1
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Nhtsa Datasets Api Examples
EXAMPLESecurity Posture 1
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for US Department of Transportation — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Build 1
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 1
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 2
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 2
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 3
The organization behind the API
Other 1
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
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