Mining Large-Truck Crash Causation Study Data for Noncrash State-of-the-Fleet Information

The Large Truck Crash Causation Study (LTCCS) database includes data on whether or not the critical event had anything to do with a particular truck and driver, as well as the results of a post-crash inspection of the truck and driver. The inspections revealed whether the violations existed prior to the crash and whether they were sufficient to put the vehicle and/or driver out of service. By comparing the inspection data for trucks that did not contribute to the critical event to that for trucks which did contribute to the critical event, it was possible to form an impression of the overall status of trucks on the road during 2001-2003. In all cases, pre-crash violations were the most common type of violation coded during the inspections. For vehicles that did not contribute to the critical event, 74% of the violations noted were for pre-crash conditions; 17% of those resulted in an out-of-service condition. For vehicles that did contribute to the crash’s critical event, 77% of the violations noted were for pre-crash conditions and 20% of those resulted in an out-of-service condition. While the prevalence of pre-crash violations cannot be used to distinguish between the drivers and vehicles who or did not contribute to the cause of their crashes, the pattern of out-of-service violations can. A higher proportion of pre-crash driver-related out-of-service violations was noted for the driver/vehicle pairings that were scored as contributing to the crash than for those drivers and vehicles who did not contribute the cause of the crash.