Vehicles

This chapter presents information on large trucks involved in fatal, injury, and property damage only crashes. Some of the data in this chapter come from the MCMIS Crash File, which contains data on trucks and buses in crashes that meet the SAFETYNET recommended threshold. MCMIS data are used for the tables on vehicle configuration (Table 47), crashes by cargo body type (Table 48), gross vehicle weight rating (Table 49), hazardous materials cargo (Table 50), and hazardous materials released (Table 51). SAFETYNET nonfatal crashes tend to be more serious than GES nonfatal crashes, because the SAFETYNET threshold requires at least one injury involving immediate medical attention away from the crash scene, or at least one vehicle disabled as a result of the crash and transported away from the crash scene. Below is a summary of some of the vehicle information in this section:

• In 2008, 4,066 large trucks were involved in fatal crashes, 66,000 were involved in injury crashes, and 309,000 were involved in property damage only crashes.
• Large trucks made up 8 percent of all vehicles in fatal crashes, 2 percent of all vehicles in injury crashes, and 4 percent of all vehicles in property damage only crashes.
• Hazardous materials (HM) placards were present on 3 percent of the large trucks involved in fatal crashes and 1 percent of those in nonfatal crashes. HM was released from the cargo compartments of 13 percent of the placarded trucks.
• “Collision with vehicle in transport” was recorded as the most harmful event for 75 percent of the large trucks involved in fatal crashes.
• Singles (truck tractors pulling a single semi-trailer) accounted for 62 percent of the large trucks involved in fatal crashes. Doubles (tractors pulling two trailers) made up 3 percent of the large trucks involved in fatal crashes. Triples (tractors pulling three trailers) accounted for less than 0.1 percent of all large trucks involved in fatal crashes in 2008.