|
By Dean Croke, DAT Freight & Analytics
A new report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 42,915 people died in motor vehicle crashes last year, a 10.5% increase from 2020. This is the highest number of deaths since 2005 and the largest annual percentage increase since the agency established its Fatality Analysis Reporting System in 1975.
Dr. Steven Cliff, NHTSA’s Deputy Administrator, called traffic deaths a “national crisis” and he’s right: when the results are finalized, 44 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico expect more traffic deaths in 2021 compared to 2020.
It’s easy to understand why traffic deaths were on the rise. As economies reopened in 2021 and people started driving more, the number of vehicle-miles traveled jumped by about 325 billion miles, or about 11.2%, compared to 2020.
It didn’t matter where you traveled as virtually every type of roadway experienced an increase in fatal crashes: rural interstates, up 15%; urban interstates, up 11%; urban arterials, up 15%; and local roads, up 20%. Daytime and nighttime fatalities both increased by 11% from 2020 to 2021. Motorcycles, pedestrians, bicycles, passenger cars, commercial vehicles—traffic deaths were higher across the board.
Truck safety
With more vehicles on the road, fatalities in crashes involving at least one large truck (gross vehicle weight rating of more than 10,000 lbs.) increased 13% last year.
For their part, trucking companies are highly motivated to invest in better drivers, equipment, maintenance and training. Not only are insurance costs spiking, the average verdict size for a lawsuit above $1 million involving a truck crash has soared from $2.3 million in 2010 to almost $25 million today. Nuclear verdicts—a jury award exceeding $10 million—can easily put a trucking company out of business.
When lawsuits go against the carrier, hours-of-service violations and fatigue are common factors. This brings us to the question of how effective regulatory solutions can be at reducing fatalities.
Regulating the wrong things
Based on crash data, the much-touted safety benefits of the federal electronic logging device (ELD) mandate never materialized. According to a 2021 study by the Supply Chain Management Research Center at the University of Arkansas, the number of accidents increased after ELD
|
enforcement began on April 1, 2018, and were higher among small carriers and independent owner-operators relative to large asset-based carriers.
It’s a controversial thought but ELDs are an example of regulating the wrong thing. A commercial driver can be 100% compliant with the ELD mandate and sound asleep at the wheel at the same time. We implore and even demand that drivers be safe yet force them to adhere to rules that take away the flexibility to sleep when they need it.
In the case of ELDs and hours of service, the best we can do is make sure everyone involved with the movement of freight understands the importance of sleep. This includes schedules that help drivers maximize night-sleep opportunities each week, get at least six hours of continuous sleep every 24 hours and start work at the same time every day. Any of these would reduce the risk of a fatal crash. Unfortunately, none of them is addressed in the regulations.
Real fixes
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) includes $6 billion in federal funds over five years to fund local efforts to reduce roadway crashes and fatalities. Well-maintained road surfaces, signage and pavement markings are essential to a driver’s health and wellbeing. More designated parking spaces would mean drivers could spend less time hunting for safe, legal places to take their mandated rest. Allocating funds to these projects and getting them under way certainly would make highway travel safer.
These would be positive steps for government to take.
What we don’t need is another prescriptive regulatory framework in the name of safety that takes away a professional driver’s ability to manage the vehicle in traffic. But we can talk about speed limiters in another column.
Dean Croke is the principal industry analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics, which operates the industry’s largest load board network and the DAT iQ data analytics service. Dean publishes weekly market updates on truckload freight at dat.com.
|
