Trucking news and briefs for Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023:
Traffic fatalities increased year-over-year every quarter from the third quarter of 2020 through the first quarter of 2022, according to NHTSA. Estimates for the second and third quarters of 2022 show slight dips in traffic fatalities.NHTSA
A statistical projection of traffic fatalities for the first nine months of 2022 shows that an estimated 31,785 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes. This represents a marginal decrease of about 0.2% as compared to 31,850 fatalities projected to have occurred in the first nine months of 2021.
The estimated slight dip in fatalities comes as the Federal Highway Administration preliminarily reported that vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the first nine months of 2022 increased by about 39 billion miles.
With the rise in miles traveled, the fatality rate for the first nine months of 2022 decreased to 1.30 fatalities per 100 million VMT, down from the projected rate of 1.32 fatalities per 100 million VMT in the first nine months of 2021.
NHTSA also reported that, through the first six months of 2022, estimated traffic fatalities in crashes involving at least one large truck (with a GVWR of more than 10,000 pounds) were up 10% from 2021.
NHTSA notes that the actual counts for 2021 and 2022 and the ensuing percentage changes from 2021 to 2022 will be further revised as the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) annual report files for 2021 are available, as well as when the FARS final file for 2021 and annual report file for 2022 are available next year. These estimates may be further refined when the projections for the whole of 2022 are released in late April.
