Sept. 21, 2017 — New research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that equipping large trucks with advanced safety technologies has the potential to prevent up to 63,000 truck related crashes each year.
In 2015, large trucks were involved in more than 400,000 crashes that resulted in more than 4,000 deaths and 116,000 injuries; a four percent increase from 2014. AAA recommends that all large trucks get equipped with cost effective technologies that improve safety for everyone on the road.
“There’s no question that truck safety technology saves lives,” Dr. David Yang, executive director of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, says “This new research shows that the benefits of adding many of these technologies to trucks clearly outweigh the cost.”
The report, “Leveraging Large Truck Technology and Engineering to Realize Safety Gains,” examined the safety benefits and costs of installing four advanced safety technologies in both existing and new large trucks. The four technologies include lane departure warning systems, automatic emergency braking, air disc brakes and video-based onboard safety monitoring systems. Researchers found that:
It was found that lane departure warning systems can prevent up to 6,372 crashes, 1,342 injuries and 115 deaths each year. Video-based onboard safety monitoring systems can prevent as many as 63,000 crashes, 17,733 injuries and 293 deaths each year.
Automatic emergency braking can prevent up to 5,294 crashes, 2,753 injuries and 55 deaths each year. Whereas air disc brakes can prevent up to 2,411 crashes, 1,447 injuries and 37 deaths each year.
A recent AAA survey found that six out of ten U.S. adults (61 percent) feel less safe driving past large commercial trucks than driving past passenger cars.
About one in four U.S. adults (26 percent) say adding safety technology to large trucks would help them feel better about sharing the road.
