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 National Governors’ Association (NGA) recommended threshold. MCMIS data are used for the tables on vehicle configuration (Table 37), gross vehicle weight rating (Table 39), and hazardous materials (Table 40 and Table 41). NGA nonfatal crashes tend to be more serious than GES nonfatal crashes, because the NGA threshold requires at least one vehicle in the crash to have been towed due to damage or at least one person to have been taken to a hospital immediately from the crash for medical attention. Below is a summary of some of the vehicle information presented:

• In 2003, 4,669 large trucks were involved in fatal crashes, 89,000 were involved in injury crashes, and 363,000 were involved in property damage only crashes.
• Large trucks made up 8 percent of all vehicles in fatal crashes, 3 percent of all vehicles in injury crashes, and 5 percent of all vehicles in property damage only crashes.
• Hazardous materials (HM) placards were present on 4 percent of the large trucks involved in fatal crashes and 2 percent of those in nonfatal crashes. HM was released from the cargo compartments of 13 percent of the placarded trucks.
• “Collision with motor vehicle in transport” was recorded as the most harmful event for 79 percent of the large trucks involved in fatal crashes.
• Doubles (truck tractors pulling two trailers) made up only 3 percent of the large trucks involved in crashes, and triples (tractors pulling three trailers) accounted for less than 0.5 percent of all large trucks in crashes.