Updated:
Truck Fatalities Fall 12%
Truck-related highway fatalities plummeted 12% in 2008 to 4,229, the lowest total since the federal government began keeping records, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.
The drop was the third decline in three years and pushed the number of truck-related deaths to its lowest point since NHTSA began tracking the statistic in 1975. The number of people killed in large-truck accidents was 593 below 2007’s total, NHTSA said.
Overall highways fatalities fell 9.7% to 37,261, NHTSA said. “While the number of highway deaths in America has decreased, we still have a long way to go,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.
In 1999, when Congress created FMCSA, truck deaths accounted for 12.9% of all highway fatalities. Last year, they accounted for 11.3%, the lowest percentage since the agency was formed and down from 11.7% in 2007.
This was the fourth straight annual decline in the proportion of large-truck fatalities to all highway deaths. Last year also was the second straight year that fatalities totaled less than 5,000; a benchmark commonly used by enforcement and agency groups to assess truck safety.
Deaths of truck drivers and passengers also fell dramatically in 2008, dropping 16% to 677, the lowest point since 1994.
The Federal Highway Administration has yet to publish its estimates for truck miles traveled in 2008, but the agency estimated that miles traveled by all vehicles in 2008 fell 2.7% to 2.92 trillion.
While government and industry officials hailed the lower fatality total, some observers said the decline was partly related to a drop in truck miles driven.
Steve Campbell, executive director of the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Alliance, called the safety improvements “very impressive,” but added, “The obvious question is, ‘How much did mileage go down?’ ”
“We think this 12% reduction is something to be very encouraged about,” Rose McMurray, acting head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, told Light & Medium Truck. “Clearly everyone would agree that with the downturn in the economy, the fact that truckers were logging fewer miles last year contributed to the reduction.”