FMCSA, NHTSA to Study Truck Crashes

U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater on Wednesday announced the start of a two-year study of the causes of crashes involving large trucks as part of the Department of Transportation's effort to help reduce the number of fatalities in such incidents.

he study – which will involve on-scene data collection – is the first national effort to gather crash data to pinpoint factors of large truck crashes. The study's primary goal is to identify the specific causes of fatal and injury crashes involving large trucks, so the government and all interested parties will be better able to help prevent them from occurring in the first place.

The unprecedented study is a joint effort between DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999 authorized the study.

Beginning this month, teams of crash researchers from the NHTSA's National Automotive Sampling System and state truck inspectors will investigate fatal and injury crashes involving large trucks in 17 states. Crash details will be collected at crash scenes on involved drivers and vehicles, the roadway, and the environment.

More than 1,000 crashes will be investigated during the study. Information collected by the researchers and inspectors will be forwarded to NHTSA motor vehicle crash experts. As part of the project, the Volpe Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Mass., will build a crash database that will be reviewed and analyzed by FMCSA and NHTSA, then made available to the public.