Potential Reduction in Large Truck and Bus Traffic Fatalities and Injuries Using Lytx's DriveCam Program

This study quantitatively evaluated the potential safety benefits of equipping all United States heavy trucks and buses in the U.S. with Lytx™ Inc.’s DriveCam® program. Heavy trucks and buses include the following vehicle types: single-unit truck (2 axle and greater than 10,000 lbs), single-unit truck (3 or more axles), truck pulling trailer(s), truck-tractor/semi-trailer, truck more than 10,000 lbs (cannot classify), bus/large van (seats 9 to 15 occupants including driver), and bus (seats more than 15 occupants including driver). The potential safety benefits of the DriveCam Program were evaluated by comparing the published efficacy of the DriveCam Program(Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 2009; Hickman & Hanowski, 2011) to a large national crash database, the General Estimates System (GES).

The GES database included information about the vehicle, injuries and fatalities, violations, and contributing factors for a sample of crashes during calendar years 2010 to 2012. The GES database was filtered to determine what percentage of heavy-truck and bus crashes resulting in an injury and/or fatality were likely to have been prevented with the DriveCam Program (excluding truck and bus crashes that appeared to be non-fault or the result of weather, road condition, vehicle malfunction, or alcohol/drugs).

The final data set included a total of 10,648 fatal truck and bus crashes (resulting in 11,993 fatalities) and 213,000 injurious truck and bus crashes (resulting in 330,000 injuries). Trucks and buses equipped with the DriveCam Program had the potential to reduce an average of 727 fatal truck and bus crashes (20.5 percent of the total fatal crashes) and save 801 lives (20.0 percent of the total fatalities) each year. Similar results were found for the analysis of injury crashes. Specifically, trucks and buses equipped with the DriveCam Program had the potential to reduce an average of 25,007 truck and bus injury crashes (35.2 percent of the total injury crashes) and save 39,066 injuries (35.5 percent of the total injuries) each year.