AAA has released a new study that makes the claim that commercial vehicle safety technology could prevent 68,000 crashes per year.
The report was released on Thursday by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, a nonprofit research and education organization.
WLWT5 reported, “From 2012 to 2016, the study said there were 103,833 crashes involving large trucks in Ohio resulting in 811 fatalities and more than 29,000 injuries.”
These statistics indicate that there were on average 71 crashes every day for 4 years, all involving large trucks.
Thousands Of Lives Saved With Better Truck Safety Technology, New Research Finds via @forbes https://t.co/Wkw18eLttH
— AAA (@AAAnews) September 22, 2017
AAA’s study also revealed that 6 out of 10 people feel unsafe driving past large trucks compared to driving past cars.
AAA focused their study on improving roads in Cincinnati, Ohio specifically because they constantly have a large number of large trucks on their roads.
AAA Driving School manager Mike Belcoure said, “You can’t go on any of the major highways around here — 71, 75, 275 — without being surrounded by semi trucks. If you think about 6 out of 10 people are uncomfortable.”
“I thought it would have been more. We need to figure out a way to make people more comfortable around trucks.”
The new technology is reported, “Things like lane departure learning systems or onboard video safety systems that help the driver monitor the traffic and cars around them so they are not leaving lanes when cars are in their blind spots,” Belcoure said. “You are talking about thousands of less crashes a year and hundreds of less deaths a year. Just adding lane departure warning system or the video safety — the onboard safety monitoring. Even something as simple as the truck having air disc brakes. It saves lives and makes it more safe on the road.”
The number of crashes prevented and lives saved by adding safety technology to large trucks far outweigh the cost! https://t.co/b3hbOrTfUB pic.twitter.com/xoLS2daEan
— AAA (@AAAnews) September 21, 2017
The study did not include original research on the effectiveness of the technologies themselves: the study mostly focused on the all of the best available evidence from other studies regarding safety equipment.
Jake Nelson, AAA director of Traffic Safety Advocacy and Research, commented, “Adding these safety technologies to the trucking fleet is not only cost-effective, but doing so helps to alleviate driver concerns and prevents crashes.”
The study results are as follows:
- Large-truck lane departure warning systems could prevent up to 6,372 crashes, 1,342 injuries and 115 deaths each year
- Video-based onboard safety monitoring systems could prevent as many as 63,000 crashes, 17,733 injuries and 293 deaths each year
- Automatic emergency braking could prevent up to 5,294 crashes, 2,753 injuries and 55 deaths each year
- Air disc brakes could prevent up to 2,411 crashes, 1,447 injuries and 37 deaths each year
“Overall acceptance of the technologies is difficult to measure,” Nelson also said.
A 2012 ATA study found that in car vs. truck crashes, the car driver is assigned fault for the crash more than 80% of the time.