Introduction

The complete Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts annual reports contain vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and vehicle registration data that are made available only in the late autumn or early winter. For the 2008 report, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is publishing this online Early Release of the annual report, based solely on crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and FMCSA. These data are enough to complete most of the tables in the published annual report; however, any tables that depend on VMT and vehicle registration data for the calculation of crash rates will be missing 2008 data for some of the rows and columns. In these early release tables, missing data are indicated by dashes.

When VMT and vehicle registration data become available, FMCSA will revise the tables in this report that depend on those data, add additional tables, and publish the final version of the full 2008 report in print and online (PDF and HTML) editions.

Final online versions of the Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts 2007 report are available on FMCSA’s A&I web site at:
LargeTruckCrashFacts2007.pdf and 2007LargeTruckCrashFacts.htm.

Contents

The links below will open Microsoft Excel files for the four data chapters of the Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts 2008 report. The Trends chapter shows data for 2008 in the context of available historical data for past years. In the other chapters, the 2008 data are shown in different ways, according to what is being counted. The Crashes chapter counts numbers of crashes; the Vehicles chapter counts vehicles in crashes; and the People chapter counts persons of all types involved in crashes.
Four different types of counts are shown:
- Crashes: Numbers of crashes involving various vehicle types.
- Vehicles in Crashes: Numbers of vehicles involved in crashes. These counts may be larger than the number of crashes (fatal, injury, or property damage only), because more than one vehicle may be involved in a single crash.
- People in Crashes: Numbers of people killed or injured in crashes. These counts generally are larger than the number of crashes (fatal or injury), because more than one person may be killed or injured in a single crash. People killed or injured may be occupants of a truck or bus, occupants of another vehicle, or nonmotorists (pedestrians or pedalcyclists).
- Drivers in Crashes: Numbers of vehicle drivers involved in crashes. These counts generally are equal to the numbers of vehicles involved in crashes.