Of the many major roles the FMCSA has, one of its most important is to gather and analyze crash and safety statistics for the government and other interested parties-such as truck insurance companies. In fact, one can hardly imagine more dedicated, avid readers of FMCSA reports than commercial truck insurance carriers.
You can be sure when they see a trend or an emerging pattern in these studies, presto! Truck insurance rates will soon be adjusted... and usually upward. A large, well-educated actuarial and statistical staff at FMCSA is devoted exclusively to keeping track of all kinds of massive, complex safety data and interpreting it for public information purposes. Most of its studies and stats are available on its website and make for interesting reading and reflection.
One of the most wide reaching and significant studies that this arm of FMCSA researched and wrote up was its huge project called "The Large Truck Crash Causation Study" (LTCCS). Its purpose was not so much to wag a disapproving finger at truckers, as to figure out what critical factors were decisive in causing major smash-ups. The sampling used was large, over a 1000 major accidents involving trucks weighing over 10,000 pounds, which means the study's findings are sound and statistically valid.
According to FMCSA, "The Large Truck Crash Causation Study (LTCCS) is based on a three-year data collection project conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).
LTCCS is the first-ever national study to attempt to determine the critical events and associated factors that contribute to serious large truck crashes allowing DOT and others to implement effective countermeasures to reduce the occurrence and severity of these crashes... From the 120,000 large truck crashes that occurred between April 2001 and December 2003, a nationally representative sample was selected. Each crash in the LTCCS sample involved at least one large truck and resulted in a fatality or injury."
The study is heavy on explanation of its methodology and intricate statistical analysis, but a few lines jump right off the screen, even to the casual reader.
"Three major types of critical events were assigned to large trucks:
- Running out of the travel lane, either into another lane or off the road (32 percent of the large trucks in the LTCCS sample were assigned this critical event)
- Vehicle loss of control due to traveling too fast for conditions, cargo shift, vehicle systems failure, poor road conditions, or other reasons (29 percent)
- Colliding with the rear end of another vehicle in the truck's travel lane (22 percent)."
Since the study was completed, the FMCSA has embarked on a major overhaul of its tracking and monitoring the safety records of motor carriers. It's all online and stirring up a lot of dust, but maybe it will work. In that sense, this first of its kind scientific study of the real causes of crashes has already borne fruit. Check out the FMCSA website for all the juicy details.