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

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.