The effects of technologies on commercial vehicle company safety and service: A supply chain perspective.

摘要

Because of the importance of safety, and the potential benefits for both the general public and the commercial vehicle industry of improving safety, the main goal of this project was to identify those commercial vehicle-related technologies that, through successful adoption, have had a positive impact on the safety of motor carrier companies. This was examined through two perspectives---one simply examining the effect of a technology implementation on safety, and the second identifying the effect of a successful adoption of a technology on safety. It was hypothesized that technologies with factors that lead to successful adoption will have a greater safety impact.; Negative binomial regression models with the dependent variables of three separate measures of safety were utilized to test each technology, and the overall results were mixed. The models for on-board safety monitoring technologies (that did not rate high on average for any adoption factor) illustrated no significant effect on safety; however, the models for technologies in both the freight mobility area and the electronic clearance area illustrated a negative effect on safety. In addition, the results for two specific technologies revealed that the companies who have implemented these technologies and rated the adoption factors higher (e.g., successfully adopted the technology) are likely to have fewer accidents than companies who implemented these technologies and rated the adoption factors lower.; The main implication of this study for both commercial vehicle companies and government agencies is that simply implementing a technology, or advocating implementing a technology, may not give a desired result, and in some cases may even result in a negative impact on safety. The company needs to take the time to learn the technology and integrate it fully into the company in the right way in order for it to have a positive impact. Similarly, government agencies should examine companies that have successfully implemented certain technologies and that have a good safety record to determine the steps they took during the implementation. Providing this information to other companies examining implementing a technology could prove very useful and assist them toward a positive safety impact from the technology.