Safety advocacy groups continue to argue that commercial motor vehicle drivers pose a great danger to road safety. Organizations and political leaders tend to give in to your suggestions regarding their own agendas.

Attacks on our professional truck drivers have become too common and it’s time to set the record straight, using factual statistics.

SafeRoads.org is one of the leading voices condemning professional truckers and motor carriers on road safety, often mentioning that fatigue is a “Contributing factor in up to 30-40% of all heavy truck crashes.” The problem with this claim is that it is completely false.

Today, the truth is that commercial trucks are involved in 2.4% of all car accidents and more than 80% of those accidents are the fault of the non-commercial driver. Furthermore, only 16% of all truck driving accidents are due to the fault of the truck driver and of those fatality related accidents, only 4% of trucks are related to fatigue.

In fact, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has finally declared that “fatigue” ranks low on the list of causes of truck accidents. According to the FMCSA, truck driver fatigue was a factor in only 1.4% of all fatal truck accidents, this comes from the FMCSA’s own Analysis Division in their report: “2009: Historic decreases in truck accidents. “

Because safety groups continually discuss the safety hazards of motor carriers and their truck drivers, it is important to provide real statistics related to truck accidents and fatality rates, as compared to the record of car drivers.

The following is a list of 5 major carriers showing the miles traveled per year, reported crashes, number of fatalities resulting from those crashes (average), and the average number of crashes and fatalities per year, per 100,000 miles driven:

Motor carrier safety

1. National Schneider

Miles per year: 1,152,688,659

Accidents Reported: 463

Deaths: 16.5

Accidents per 100,000 miles: 0.40

Deaths per 100,000 miles: .0014

2. Crete Carrier

Miles per year: 524,000,000

Reported accidents: 198.5

Deaths: 7.5

Accidents per 100,000 miles: 0.37

Deaths per 100,000 miles: .0014

3. JB Hunt

Miles per year: 825,156,529

Accidents reported: 332.5

Deaths: 10.5

Accidents per 100,000 miles: 0.40

Deaths per 100,000 miles: .0013

Four. Cousin

Miles per year: 542,785,567

Accidents reported: 253.5

Deaths: 6.5

Accidents per 100,000 miles: 0.47

Deaths per 100,000 miles: .0012

5. Con-Way Freight (2009 report)

Miles per year: 371,073,137

Accidents Reported: 141

Deaths: 3

Accidents per 100,000 miles: 0.38

Deaths per 100,000 miles: .0008

When calculating a “Standard Frequency Rate”, 100,000 miles is the standard used. When looking at accident and fatality rates among car drivers and truckers, the average number of miles driven in a year must be counted in the equation.

A motorist who drives 100,000 miles a year has 20 times the risk of accident exposure than a driver who drives 10,000 miles in a year. The more miles spent behind the wheel, obviously, the accident / fatality factor increases.

Who do you consider to be the safest driver? The driver of a car with an accident in two years after 24,000 miles or the truck driver with two accidents in two years after 200,000 miles?

Automatic Driver Safety Record

Now, let’s compare the overall accident and fatality rates to the non-commercial driver:

  • As of May 19, 2010, the fatality rate for automobile drivers in the state of Arizona was 2.1 for every 100,000 miles driven.

As additional examples, for 2007, the latest date for available data, the automobile driver fatality rate per 100,000 miles driven was:

  • Massachusetts – 0.76
  • Rhode Island – 0.80
  • Pennsylvania – 1.37
  • Louisiana – 2.17
  • Montana – 2.45

Crashes involving large trucks are big news, and while a lost life is a tragedy, safety groups and non-commercial drivers must consider the hard facts when it comes to who the safest drivers in the world really are. road.

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