Steve Fields, an America’s Road Team Captain at Yellow Corp. (CCJ Top 250, No. 6) and 36-year professional truck driver, said eight out of 10 cars that pass him on the road are doing something other than driving.
Between distracted driving and attorneys’ radio ads and billboards on interstates claiming to win nuclear verdict-size injury cases, passenger car drivers are the scariest thing truck drivers face on the road.
Technology and defensive driving are the answer. That’s what the safety professionals said during the Future of Safety educational session at the American Trucking Associations Management Conference & Exhibition in San Diego.
Lytx technology has discovered that truck driver attention is up. According to Lytx data, drowsy driving is down 18%, blank stares are down 53%, unbelted drivers are down 24%, and drivers not scanning the roadway are down 7% in 2022 compared to 2021. But the data also shows that road risk trends are up; like posted speed violations (19%) and policy speed violations (53%).
Dan Murray, senior vice president at the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), said Federal Highway Administration data shows that 71% of the time, car drivers are at fault in crashes involving a passenger car and a commercial truck. Likewise, the University of Michigan did a study that looked at property damage and injuries – leaving out crashes that resulted in car driver deaths so everyone involved would be present to comment – and found that 68% of the time the car driver was primarily responsible.
“The bottom line is crashes are very rare, and the number of crashes where the truck driver is negligent is extremely small,” Murray said. “So we do need to keep an eye on safety, but it's really important (to focus) on the primary factor, which most of the time is not the truck driver.”
The environment has changed because car drivers are not paying attention to what's going on around them, said Joshua Vance, vice president of safety and compliance at J.B. Hunt Transport (No. 3). While technology like Lytx’s video telematics has been implemented to help fleets improve truck driver behavior, Vance said external cameras that provide video during collisions are just as important because they can exonerate the truck driver when accidents do occur.
