Fatality Rate Hits New Low
This story appears in the Jan. 25 print edition of Transport Topics.
The rate of fatalities in accidents involving trucks fell 12.3% in 2008 from the previous year — the largest year-to-year drop on record — to its lowest level on record, according to an American Trucking Associations analysis of Department of Transportation data.
ATA reported last week that the rate at which people were killed in truck-involved crashes fell to 1.86 per 100 million miles traveled during 2008, the lowest since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Highway Administration began compiling data in 1975. In 2007, the fatality rate was 2.12 per 100 million miles traveled.
NHTSA reported that a record-low 4,229 truck-related fatalities occurred in 2008, resulting from 3,733 incidents in which a truck was involved. Meanwhile, FHWA calculated that trucks traveled 227.5 billion miles that year.
Also, the number of people injured in large truck crashes dropped 11% to 39.6 per 100 million miles, NHTSA said.
According to NHTSA, the fatality rate for all vehicles — passenger cars, buses, light trucks and motorcycles — also fell in 2008, dropping 6.6% from 2007.
The decline in the fatality rate was the fourth in a row and the eighth in the past decade, with the only increases occurring in 2003 and 2004.
“These latest figures underscore the trucking industry’s tremendous commitment to safety,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement. He said that trucking continues “to improve our safety performance while operating under the hours-of-service rules.”
The drop in number of fatalities, injuries and crashes occurred despite an increase in the number of truck miles traveled to 227.5 billion miles in 2008, from 227.06 billion in 2007.
The fatality rate has trended steadily downward since DOT began tracking the data in 1975. The highest fatality rate since then was 6.15 per 100 million miles in 1979.
“The steady decline in highway fatalities involving large commercial trucks reminds us that we can, and must, do more to ensure that only the safest commercial vehicles and drivers are able to operate,” FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said in a statement.
When the record-low number of fatalities was announced in July, some transportation officials suggested the recession may have depressed the total number of miles driven by trucks, thus lowering the fatality figures. However, last week trucking and safety officials said that while the weak economy may have played some role, there were other factors, too.
Steve Keppler, interim executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said that enforcement agencies have been “focusing on risk and spending a lot of energy on driver-related activities.”
Keppler also said the recession has boosted safety by pushing some unsafe carriers out of business. “I think you’ve seen the carriers that are on the margins . . . have exited the industry and the ones that are left are responsible both financially but also on the safety front.”
Dave Osiecki, ATA senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs, said that the cause of the improvements was “hard to parse out.” He credited regulatory and trucking safety improvements, but he also said the economy was a factor, in part because it drove down passenger traffic.
“There’s fewer cars on the road, and perhaps a little less congestion,” he said, “and that has a result on safety and truck rates.”
The recession, Osiecki said, has given “fleets the opportunity to focus on improving the quality of their drivers.”
At the same time, it pushed “unsophisticated fleets that really didn’t know their costs, and couldn’t sustain themselves, out of the business,” he added, “and those marginal fleets have historically had safety problems.”
