Truck Safety Coalition accuses ATA of diverting attention away from truck accident death toll

On behalf of Terence Gross of Gross & Schuster, P.A. posted in Car Accidents on Thursday, March 28, 2013.

A recent repot by the American Trucking Associations found that 80 percent of car-truck accidents are caused by car drivers rather than truck drivers. The ATA findings reportedly upset the Truck Safety Coalition, and prompted them to send the ATA a latter castigating the report.

The original report, known as the Relative Contribution/Fault in Car-Truck Crashes, was primarily done to make the case that the lack of crash accountability and fault in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program. The study was actually an overview of studies done over the last 10 years at the University of Michigan, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

One of the main points of contention for the Trucking Safety Coalition is that the report “rehashes and misuses” previous studies in order to place blame upon drivers of passenger vehicles for causing the most two vehicle crashes involving light passenger vehicles and large trucks. The coalition’s letter cites figures from the Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Insurance Institute of Highway Safety which seem to suggest an alternate view.

According to the Trucking Safety Coalition, it is important to remember 97 percent of the people who die are the occupants of cars and light trucks. The American Trucking Associations, they say, misused the previous studies and diverting attention away from the unacceptable death toll caused by big trucks. In reality, the studies do no indicate who is at fault in such accidents.

Source: Commercial Carrier Journal, “Truck Safety Coalition takes ATA to task over crash faults report,” James Jailet, February 26, 2013