A Field Evaluation of Safety Issues in Local/short Haul Trucking

Abstract

Despite comprising the largest segment of the trucking industry, very little research has been directed at investigating safety issues in Local/Short Haul (L/SH) operations. To this end, the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is funding a research project aimed at investigating safety issues in L/SH. A two-phased research project was conducted to (1) determine the general safety issues in L/SH trucking and (2) determine the extent to which fatigue is an issue. Phase I of this research, which involved focus groups with L/SH drivers, has been described previously (Hanowski, et al., 1999). The present research outlines Phase II of this effort which involved conducting a field study with instrumented L/SH trucks. Two L/SH trucking companies and 42 drivers participated in this study. L/SH trucks were instrumented with a variety of data collection systems, and data were gathered as the drivers worked their normal delivery routes. The focus of the analyses is on critical incidents (i.e., crashes and near-crashes) that the L/SH drivers experienced.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Hanowski

R. J.

Wierwille

W. W.

Gellatly

A. W.

Dingus

T. A.

Knipling

R. R.

Carroll

(1999). Safety concerns of local/short haul truck drivers. Transportation Human Factors, 1(4), 377–386.

U.S. Department of Commerce (November, 1994). Truck inventory and use survey, 1992 census of transportation. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.