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USDOT
has
announced the start of a two-year study of the causes of crashes involving large
trucks as part of the Department of Transportation's effort to help reduce the
number of fatalities in such incidents.
The effort is consistent with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration's stated goal of reducing heavy truck related fatalities by 50%
by 2010.
The study – which will involve on-scene data collection – is the first
national effort to gather crash data to pinpoint factors of large truck crashes.
The study's primary goal is to identify the specific causes of fatal and injury
crashes involving large trucks, so that the government and all interested parties
will be better able to help prevent them from occurring in the first place.
The unprecedented study is a joint effort between DOT's Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA).
The Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999 authorized the study.
Beginning this past January, teams of crash researchers from the NHTSA's National
Automotive Sampling System and state truck inspectors began
investigating fatal and injury crashes involving large trucks in 17
states. Crash details are being collected at crash scenes on involved drivers
and vehicles, the roadway, and the environment.
More than 1,000 crashes will be investigated during the study. Information
collected by the researchers and inspectors will be forwarded to NHTSA motor
vehicle crash experts. As part of the project, the Volpe National Transportation Systems
Center in Cambridge, Mass., will build a crash database that will be reviewed
and analyzed by FMCSA and NHTSA, and then be made available to the public.
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For
More Information ...
... see the USDOT home
page links to FMCSA, NHTSA, and VNTSC: www.dot.gov.
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