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Safety

The trucking industry often undergoes intense public scrutiny because its fleets share their workspace - BC's roads and highways - with other vehicles of all types. As a result, when crashes involving large trucks occur, they receive considerable media coverage - more so than those involving only smaller vehicles. This can skew the public's view of truck safety. The real story, however, is that truck crashes are relatively infrequent and the industry's safety record continually improves, with impressive decreases in numbers of crashes almost yearly since 1999.

BC's Trucking Safety Record

Most people recognize that the more someone drives, the greater the chance that the driver will be involved in an accident. "Road exposure" is commonly measured as vehicle kilometres driven and is an important factor for providing perspective on any safety record (e.g., consider a vehicle involved in one collision in 10,000 km vs. a vehicle involved in one collision in 1,000,000 km).

Unfortunately, ICBC collision date, our source for industry crash statistics, isn't compatible with Statistics Canada data on industry road exposure.1 So, instead of relying on road exposure statistics, we have used the total number of licensed vehicles based on the ICBC records as a proxy, to put heavy commercial vehicle (HVC) collisions into context.

This figure shows injury and fatal crashes per 10,000 licensed HCVs in BC from 1999 to 2006, the most recent year for which collision data is available from ICBC. The number of crashes has reduced from about 216 per 10,000 vehicles in 1999 to 184 per 10,000 in 2006, a decrease of 14.4 percent or 2.1 percent per year.

Putting our Safety Record into perspective

Many people believe that heavy trucks and their drivers are major causes of collisions. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Truck crashes are not as common as you might think. Based on ICBC data from 2006, collisions involving HCVs only accounted for 5.9 percent of all vehicle collisions in BC:

  • The vehicle itself was a contributing factor in only 6.2 percent of HCV collisions (0.4 percent of all vehicle collisions).
  • Human Error on part of the HCV driver or the driver of the other vehicle, weather conditions, or road design were contributing factors in the remaining 93.8 percent of collision involving HCVs (5.9 percent of all vehicle collisions).

Furthermore, traffic safety research in Canada and the US shows that the actions of car drivers contribute more to crashes involving passenger cars and large trucks than the actions of the truck drivers. According to Best Practices for Truck Safety, a 2009 report by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF) 2, in all collisions that took place from 2000 to 2006 in BC:

  • The truck driver was only at fault in 35.3 percent of all multi-vehicle casualty collisions (i.e., fatal and injury) involving an HCV.
  • The driver of the other vehicle was at fault in 40.9 percent of all multi-vehicle casualty collisions involving an HCV.
  • Fault could not be determined, meaning that it either lay with both drivers or otherwise could not be reliably established, in 23.8 percent of collisions.

TIRF's findings are consistent with those in other traffic safety research studies:

  • The US Large Truck Crash Causation Study (FMCSA 20073) found that in 56 percent of serious collisions involving one truck and one passenger vehicle, the passenger car driver was assigned the critical reason for the accident (i.e. was at fault). The vast majority of these reasons were related to driver factors (90 percent) and only about 10 percent were assigned to vehicle factors.
  • Hanowski et al (2007)4 found that 78 percent of critical reasons were initiated by drivers of light vehicles and only 22 percent by truck drivers in crashes involving large trucks and light vehicles. The vast majority of the reasons were also found to be driver rather than vehicle related.

Collision data shows that crashes involving HCVs are infrequent and steadily decreasing in occurrence. Nevertheless, the trucking industry isn't complacent when it comes to safety. Continued awareness of safety issues is paramount if the industry is to continue improving its safety record.

For additional information about specific strategies and recommendations to help the industry maintain its good standing and further build on its safety record, see BCTA's Safety Recommendations and Initiatives.

1ICBC defines a heavy commercial vehicle as weighing more than 10,900 kg. Statistics Canada, which provides vehicle kilometre data, defines a heavy commercial vehicle as weighing more than 15 tons (15,000 kg). Due to the lower weight threshold, ICBC data includes a larger population of vehicles than Statistics Canada data. As a result, using ICBC collision data and Statistics Canada vehicle kilometre data to calculate a crash rate (e.g., collisions/vehicle kilometre) would produce a substantial overestimate.

2 Jonah, Brian, Mayhew, Dan, Brown, Steve, Vanlaar, Ward, Macoux, Kyla (2009). Best Practices for Truck Safety. Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF): Ottawa.

3 FMCSA (2007). Large Truck Crash Causation Study. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration: Analysis Division. Publication No. FMCSA-RRA-07-017

4 Hanowki, R.J., Hickman, J.S., Wierwille, W.W., and Kiesler A. (2007). A descriptive analysis of light vehicle-heavy vehicle interactions using situational driving data. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 39, 169 to 179.