Truck-Involved Fatality Rate Declines 12.3 Percent in 2008

Arlington, VA....The trucking industry is safer than ever, according to truck Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) figures just released by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and previously released National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) data on crashes. The truck-involved ffatality rate has come down more than 20 percent and is at its lowest since the U.S. Department of Transportation began keeping those records in 1975. The fatality rate has declined more than 66 percent since 1975.Persons injured in large truck crashes went from 44.4 per 100 million miles to 39.6, an 11 percent reduction. Injury rates are based on the FHWA's figures that report VMT by truck increased in 2008 to 227.45 billion miles from 227.06 billion in 2007. During that same time, NHTSA reports that the actual number of truck-involved injuries fell to 101,000 from 90,000.
Data on truck-involved fatal crashes can be found here:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811172.pdf.
Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by truck can be found here:
http://www.truckline.com/Newsroom/Industry%20Documents/2008%20VMT.pdf
In addition to an established platform of successful safety initiatives, ATA unveiled a bold highway safety agenda in June 2009 designed to further reduce the number of highway-related fatalities and injuries for all drivers on the nation's highways.
The 18 safety policies include promoting greater safety belt use by commercial drivers; re-instituting a national maximum speed limit for all vehicles; speed governing of all trucks; and a decade-long initiative to create a national clearinghouse for drug and alcohol test. To view ATA's entire safety agenda, visit www.truckline.com/safety