While experts point out that fatal truck crashes have significantly dropped through the years thanks largely to vehicle design changes and advanced driver assistance systems, there’s still plenty of room for improvement among drivers and equipment manufacturers.
The fatality rate in passenger vehicles involved in collisions with large trucks dropped roughly 71% over the past five decades, according to Raul Arbelaez, vice president of the Vehicle Research Center at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Truck drivers are safer too.
“The rate of fatalities in large truck crashes by vehicle miles traveled has fallen over time for both large truck occupants and passenger vehicle occupants,” Arbelaez told CCJ. “In 1975, 2,757 passenger vehicle occupants died in crashes involving large trucks, at a rate of 3.39 deaths per 100 million truck miles traveled. In 2021, 3,217 passenger vehicle occupant deaths occurred at a rate of 0.98 per 100 million truck miles traveled.”
In addition to safer vehicle designs, Arbelaez credits increased ADAS features, which initially rolled out for luxury cars and eventually became available in large trucks where the results have been impressive.
“IIHS has studied the effectiveness of forward collision warning (FCW) and automatic emergency braking (AEB) technologies in large trucks,” Arbelaez said. “In a 2021 study, we found that trucks equipped with FCW had 44% fewer rear-end crashes than unequipped vehicles. Trucks with AEB had 41% fewer rear-end crashes. The crashes that did occur often were at lower speeds for trucks equipped with either technology.”
But for all the safety improvements realized through increased ADAS adoption, is personal device use among drivers possibly negating some of those gains?
