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Updated:
2/11/2008 10:30:00 AM
NHTSA Seeks Ways to Use Technology to Reduce Truck-Involved Fatalities
By Jonathan S. Reiskin, Associate News Editor
This story appears in the Feb. 11 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
A high-ranking federal safety regulator said truck-involved fatalities have been stuck at a “relatively flat” level for years, and that trend leads officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recommend using “Buck Rogers”-style technologies to lower accident rates.
Stephen Kratzke, NHTSA’s associate administrator for rulemaking, told truck parts makers meeting in Las Vegas late last month that his agency this year could release rules on brake stopping distance, brake hose materials, and electronic and roll stability control. In the longer term, he said, the agency might address tire-pressure, lane-departure and forward-collision warning systems, but it wants to solicit industry opinion in doing so.
“Returns on what we have been doing are limited, but now we can do what was unthinkable 30 years ago, when it would have sounded like something from Buck Rogers. The best use of technology is to help prevent an accident,” Kratzke told members of the Heavy-Duty Manufacturers Association.
Kratzke said regulators at his agency are motivated by the fact that “highway crashes are the leading cause of death in the United States for people from birth through 35 years old. This is a number we have to drive down.”
He said truck-involved fatalities have hovered between 4,900 and 5,400 a year since 1995, but added that, when deaths are adjusted for millions of vehicle-miles traveled, the rates have declined (12-17, p. 1), “so exposure-based risk is less.”
“The laws of physics make it challenging to protect occupants in cars and light trucks when there is a crash with a large truck. Therefore, the focus has to be on using technologies to help prevent these crashes,” Kratzke said.
A rule tightening the standard for stopping distances for trucks has been prominently atop NHTSA’s agenda since late 2005, and Kratz-ke said a final rule is expected by midyear.
Kratzke said brake-stopping standards for trucks were first set in 1995 and that a December 2005 proposal called for a reduction of 20% to 30%.
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