Truck-Involved Fatality Rate Up 9% in 2010, DOT Data Show

This story appears in the March 12 print edition of Transport Topics.

The rate at which fatalities occurred in truck-involved crashes increased 9.4% in 2010 from the previous year’s all-time low, according to an analysis of Department of Transportation mileage data made public last week.

The number of people killed in crashes involving trucks increased to 1.28 per 100 million miles traveled, up from 1.17 in 2009, DOT said.

While the rate increased year over year, it was the second-lowest truck fatality rate since DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Highway Administration began compiling the data in 1975.

Prior to the increase in 2010, the number of fatalities had been declining since 2004, reaching a record low in 2009.

The new numbers are the most recent complete data available from the federal government. Although the raw number of truck-related crash fatalities in 2010 was made public in December, the release of miles-traveled data needed to compute the per-100-million-mile rate normally comes a few months later (12-12-11, p. 1).

In 2009, NHTSA reported a record low 3,380 fatalities. However, in 2010, the number of truck-related crash fatalities increased 8.7% to 3,675, despite a slight decline in total vehicle miles traveled.

The data, which include trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds, showed that trucks traveled 286.5 billion miles in 2010, down from 288.3 billion miles in 2009, FHWA said.

“We are, of course, disappointed, but not surprised, by the increase in the fatality rate, given the increase in the overall number of fatalities,” said Sean McNally, a spokesman for American Trucking Associations.

McNally said ATA is “examining” the miles-traveled data, which directly influence the fatality rate, “because it appears to contradict economic activity data — including ATA’s Truck Tonnage Index — that showed 2010 was a busier year for trucking than 2009.”

Freight tonnage increased 5.6% in 2010, while fuel consumption climbed 6.5% for combination trucks and 1.5% for all trucks, according to ATA’s economics department.

An FHWA spokesman declined comment on the new VMT numbers: “We simply let the data speak for themselves,” said the spokesman, Doug Hecox.

Hecox said the agency compiles the VMT data from reports provided by state departments of transportation, which conduct vehicle counts from traffic cameras, including some that operate on a 24-hour basis on various stretches of highways.

Despite the higher overall truck-fatality rate, ATA’s McNally said, the trucking federation was encouraged that the fatality rate for combination trucks, which are mostly tractors pulling semitrailers, remained essentially unchanged.

ATA said the rate for combination trucks increased in 2010 to 1.6 fatalities per 100 million miles from 1.5 in 2009.

Those rates tend to be higher because combination trucks are larger and usually travel at higher speeds on the highway, ATA added.

“It is also important to note that, even with this increase, 2010 was still the second-safest year in history for trucking, and the overall long-term trend as fleets do more to ensure that their vehicles and drivers are as safe as they can be continues to be positive,” McNally said.

“Those trends, while industry critics may choose to ignore them, are important, and we believe that 2010 is just a bump in the road on the way toward even greater improvements in years to come,” he said.

Daniel Blower, director of the Center for National Truck and Bus Statistics at the University of Michigan, said that while the new numbers might initially seem alarming to the industry, they don’t necessarily signal a new trend.

“It’s undoubtedly, unquestionably too soon to tell,” Blower told Transport Topics. “You need more than just one year. One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one year make a trend.”

In fact, Blower described the DOT’s system of estimating vehicle miles traveled as “imprecise.”

Henry Jasny, general counsel for the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety in Washington, D.C., said he couldn’t tell if the fatality rate numbers represented “just a spike, or a trend.”

“But to us, these figures make sense,” Jasny told TT. “These numbers are something we expected with the improvement in the economy.”

Jasny said the slight decline in miles traveled could be the result of the industry buying new trucks and becoming more efficient by making sure that when trucks leave the docks, they are completely full.

“During a recession, you probably get the outliers, the people that aren’t as efficient, dropping out of the system,” Jasny added. “So you have more efficient operations going forward.”

Ronald Knipling, a Washington, D.C., truck and traffic safety consultant, said that truck crashes are random events and unless the new numbers can be linked to some change in the industry’s performance, they don’t necessarily signal a new trend.

“I’ve certainly heard over the years that certain people challenge the mileage numbers — that they themselves are based on sampling and measurement systems — and I’ve heard them criticized,” said Knipling, whose research has been cited by ATA in the past. “It may be that one or two of the states did something different affecting the mileage.”