Relative Contribution of Truck Drivers and Passenger Vehicle Drivers to Truck-Passenger Vehicle Traffic Crashes

摘要

There is considerable interest in determining crash causation and identifying contributing factors in truck crashes. Heavy trucks are involved in about 300,000 police-reportable crashes each year, of which about 5,000 involve a fatality. About 85% of fatalities in truck crashes occur outside of the truck, either in other vehicles involved in the crash, or pedestrians and bicyclists. Given the disproportion in the distribution of fatalities and injuries between trucks and passenger vehicles involved in crashes, there is a perception that trucks are primarily responsible for these crashes. However, moving beyond perception to analysis of crash data is necessary to make progress in reducing the toll of deaths and injuries. Is the traffic safety problem involving heavy trucks primarily attributable to truck drivers or do passenger vehicle drivers contribute substantially. A recent finding using data on fatal crashes seems to indicate that driving errors of passenger vehicle drivers contribute heavily to truck-passenger vehicle crashes. In two-vehicle, truck-passenger vehicle fatal crashes, some error on the part of the driver of the passenger vehicle is recorded significantly more often than the truck driver. Overall, truck drivers are coded with a driver-related factor in about 26.5% of the crashes, while passenger vehicle drivers are coded in over 80% of the crashes. Of the 5,453 twovehicle, truck-passenger vehicle fatal crashes in 1994 and 1995, as identified in the Trucks Involved in Fatal Accidents (TIFA) file, fully 4,395 of the passenger vehicle drivers were assigned a driver-related factor, compared with 1,447 of the truck drivers. In 70.3% of the crashes, the passenger vehicle driver alone was coded with a driver-related factor, while in only 16.2% of the crashes, the truck driver alone was found to have committed some error.