Truck Fatalities Rise 8.7%

Fatalities in U.S. highway accidents involving large trucks increased 8.7% in 2010, the first increase in four years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said last week.

NHTSA said in its annual report that 3,675 people died in truck-related accidents in 2010, an increase of 295 from the 2009 total of 3,380.

In addition, the number of people injured in truck-related accidents rose to 19,000 in 2010, from 17,000 in 2009, a 12% increase.

At the same time, truck occupant fatalities increased by 6%, to 529 in 2010 from 499 in 2009.

“We’re still trying to figure out clearly what [caused] this uptick,” NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said at the Dec. 8 press conference where the report was unveiled.

Increased truck traffic because of the economic recovery could be a factor, he said. The Federal Highway Administration tracks truck miles traveled each year but is not expected to complete its 2010 mileage analysis until next month.

Until the mileage figures are released, it is impossible to determine if trucking’s fatality rate went up or down in 2010, because the rate is determined by measuring the fatalities and the number of miles driven.

American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the new fatality numbers.

“Every fatality on our highways is a tragedy, and the uptick in the 2010 preliminary report concerns us deeply,” Graves said. “Without more information and analysis, though, it is difficult to draw conclusions about what this preliminary data means.”

Graves said he hoped policymakers “will avoid the error” of overemphasizing the recent data “at the expense of the overall, long-term trend, which has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Truck-related accident fatalities have declined in six of the past 10 years.

Although truck-related fatalities went up this year, they still represent a 30% decline from 2000 when 5,282 people died in truck-related fatalities, according to the NHTSA data.

Despite the rise in fatalities in truck accidents, NHTSA said that overall traffic fatalities declined in 2010 to the lowest number — 32,885 — since 1949, when 30,246 people died in traffic accidents.

Truck-related fatality numbers are a central issue in the legal battle over the driver hours-of-service rule, with truckers arguing that the existing 11-hour rule is safe and critics saying the hours a driver can stay behind the wheel should be reduced to 10 to minimize fatigue.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is expected to announce a final HOS rule by the end of the year.

ATA, shippers and manufacturers have said a reduction in hours would be costly for a recovering economy and is unnecessary, given the trucking industry’s steadily improving safety record.

Safety advocates and Teamsters union officials argue that more lives could be saved if driver hours were reduced.

“If fatalities are going up, it only re-emphasizes the need for hours-of-service regulation,” said Gregory Beck, the Washington attorney representing the Teamsters in an HOS case currently before a federal appeals court (11-7, p. 3).

Beck took issue with ATA’s contention that the current 11-hour rule, in force since 2004, does not need to be changed because fatalities have declined in most years since then, despite the longer driving hours allowed.

In 2004, there were 5,245 fatalities in crashes involving large trucks. From 2004 to 2010, fatalities increased in only two years. The declining fatalities numbers “indicated general improvements in other kinds of safety,” not the driving hours, he said.

Other critics of the current 11-hour rule said they were not surprised that truck fatalities jumped as the economy improved.

Henry Jasny, general counsel for the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said his group has “been warning that this would occur because it is a historic pattern that has held true during and after past recessions.”

When FHWA releases its truck mileage figures for 2010, they are expected to show a significant increase over 2009 and 2008, the deep recession years when much less freight moved.

Tonnage figures published by ATA reflect the recession’s effect. In 2008, the year the economy began its downturn, carriers hauled 10.2 billion tons of freight. The number of truck-related fatalities that year was 4,245.

In 2009, ATA said carriers hauled only 8.5 billion tons of freight. As of October this year, as fatalities have risen, tonnage was up 5.7% over the previous 12 months.

“Clearly, with the uptick in the economy, there could be more truck trips, therefore that could be part of . . . why we’re seeing this particular [fatality] uptick,” said NHTSA’s Strickland.

However, Strickland said, the trucking industry has made long-term safety gains, and “we usually hold these gains for the long term.”

“So, while we are going to take a look, long-term, at some of the factors . . . we do think the uptick in more truck travel might have been part of it,” he said.

Staff Reporter Timothy Cama contributed to this article.