Abstract Purpose A traffic safety analysis that is based on registered crashes often suffers from underreporting, which may result in biased conclusions and lead to misguided crash-prevention strategies. Self-reporting traffic crashes is a complementary method to obtain crash information that is often not available in official databases. By surveying studies from around the world, this paper aims to map the current practices in the collection of data from self-reporting traffic crashes. Method A systematic literature search was carried out in three databases, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Transport Research International Documentation (TRID), resulting in 134 reviewed studies. Results Self-reported crash studies were found to be more common in Europe, North America and Australasia, but there are few studies in developing countries. The reviewed studies mostly focused on adult road users (i.e. legal age of obtaining driving license and with no upper limit) and car users. Questionnaires (either paper based or online) were the most often used method, and 1 year was the most common recall period used. Regardless of its drawbacks, the reviewed studies showed that researchers ‘trust’ self-reports. Conclusion More studies should be conducted, especially targeting adolescent and young adults (age of 15–30 years) and vulnerable road users (VRUs). Developing countries should increase their efforts when it comes to using self-reporting to better assess the actual traffic safety situation and produce knowledge-based appropriate safety measures. Utilisation of smartphone application to assist data collection in self-reporting study for in-depth crash analysis should be explored further.