Swift double fatal I-8 San Diego

Huh. I'll be ######.

Oh boy indeed.

Details. AInt they something....

 

Meaningless stat without more information though.

Not sure how they talked about it in your local news casts but I'm guessing they didn't provide much in the way of context.

I worked it out a while back in a different thread. When you take into account the number of drivers Swift has each driver is involved in the equivalent of one reportable crash every 20 years approximately.

Now consider they're a training company and consider that in many of the crashes they aren't the one who causes it.

It sounds dramatic when you throw out a number like 2500 but did you know that there are more than 10 times as many crashes in the US each day than there are in Canada? That must mean Americans are horrible drivers compared to Canadians. There's many more crashes in Los Angeles each day than in Boise. Those Boiseans are much better drivers!

 

Before we get any further into exciteable discussion visit this following.

Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts

Right hand pane of the site has the 2015 going back to the 70's data in PDF form. Start reading.

https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/sites/fmc...tics/Large-Truck-and-Bus-Crash-Facts-2015.pdf

For help of those with limited data I took the liberty to select one page and one overall chart...

The tables in this chapter present crash statistics for large trucks and buses over time. Fatal crash statistics
generally are available from 1975, the first year of FARS data, through 2015. In some cases, such as for alcohol
involvement, data are available only from 1981 or 1982 through 2015. Nonfatal crash statistics are presented for
1995 through 2015. The statistics shown in this chapter represent crashes, vehicles, drivers, fatalities, and injuries
in crashes. Below is a summary of some of the trend information in this section:
◆
In 2015, 4,311 large trucks and buses were involved in fatal crashes, an 8-percent increase from 2014.
Although the number of large trucks and buses in fatal crashes has increased by 26 percent from its low
of 3,432 in 2009, the 2015 number is still 18 percent lower than the 21st-century peak of 5,231 in 2005.
From 2014 to 2015, large truck and bus fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled by all motor
vehicles increased by 1.7 percent, from 0.138 to 0.140.
◆
There was a 34-percent decrease in the number of fatal crashes involving large trucks or buses between
2005 and 2009, followed by an increase of 20 percent between 2009 and 2015. From 2014 to 2015, the
number of fatal crashes involving large trucks or buses increased by 5 percent.
◆
The number of injury crashes involving large trucks or buses decreased steadily from 89,000 in 2005 to
60,000 in 2009 (a decline of 33 percent). This decline was followed by an increase of 62 percent from
2009 to 2015.
◆
On average, from 2005 to 2015, intercity buses accounted for 13 percent, and school buses and transit
buses accounted for 41 percent and 33 percent, respectively, of all buses involved in fatal crashes.
◆
Over the past year (from 2014 to 2015):
❖
The number of large trucks involved in fatal crashes increased by 8 percent, from 3,749 to 4,050, and
the large truck involvement rate (large trucks involved in fatal crashes per 100 million miles traveled
by large trucks) increased by 8 percent, from 1.34 to 1.45.
❖
The number of large trucks involved in injury crashes decreased by 1 percent, from 88,000 to 87,000,
and the large truck involvement rate in injury crashes decreased by 2 percent.
❖
The number of large trucks involved in property damage only crashes decreased by 1 percent, from
346,000 to 342,000, and the large truck involvement rate in property damage only crashes decreased
by 2 percent.
❖
The number of buses involved in fatal crashes increased from 236 to 261, an increase of 11 percent,
and the bus involvement rate in fatal crashes increased by 9 percent.
❖
Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by large trucks increased by 0.3 percent, and bus VMT increased by
1.4 percent.

The second page with the chart failed to render correctly here. So you will need to visit it to understand how many exact souls were killed by trucks and buses dating from 2015 to 1975.

Essentially in 1975 about 4400 souls killed in bus-truck crashes.

In 2015 only 3800 souls killed while vehicle count and miles have gone up enormously.

Every year in between has claimed a range between 3000 to 5000 souls.

 

I can't look at the data you're citing but it's not fair or accurate to take one arbitrary year many decades ago and compare to another arbitrary year in current times. All I want to see what the trend graph looks like in VMT context, especially over about the past 15 years

Furthermore, I think it's worth pointing out that automobile safety features and technology has preserved many thousands of lives in recent history that would have been lost in the 1970-80 decades, while truck safety enhancements over the past 40 years have been marginal compared to automobile safety enhancements over the same period.

 

Swift has cameras in their trucks...fwd facing cams..

 

Darn shame,for sure.Right after this gets posted(washington state).I hope this driver suffered a mechanical failure-compared to operator error(texting?)
I remember years ago looking at "old laws still on the books" and 1 was no drinks,no eating while operating a motor vehicle.Because you dont have both hands on the wheel-or the ability to have both hands on the wheel.
I guess Washington state is re-enforcing a old law,adding phones, cigs etc.Funny they didnt mention reading a newspaper or putting on make up!
Remember many years ago there was a big drama hub bub going on about truckers no longer being able to use a cb radio because we are taking our hand off the wheel to use the mic?Wow-that'll be next.

 

We are already there, you cannot use a cell phone etc in a big truck Im told by a current driver it's 7500 fine...

What gets me is that CB. We still frying analoge power when we could have been peer to peer with computer digital power by now.

 

https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/sites/fmcsa.dot.gov/files/docs/Trends-fig3-2015.xls

FMCSA stats currently show Swift being involved in 54 fatals in the past two years. They show 1,918,576,289 miles for 2016. So let's almost double that to 3.8 billion miles in the two year period. 54 fatal divided by 38 (3.8 billion is 38 x 100 million) and we get 1.42 fatal crashes per 100 million miles traveled for Swift. Just a tad higher than the 1.35 average for trucks in that period.

As much as we like to point to Swift as being horrible they're about as average as you can get when it comes to being involved in fatal crashes.

 

That chart is good for one reference, but still does;t get to the crux of what I'm interested in.

In considering "overall truck safety", I still think the number of "major crashes" is more key than the number of "fatal crashes". To my way of thinking, improved safety standards is responsible for most of this reduction in fatalities. Is there a similar chart showing major crashes (using whatever metric they used to qualify a crash as major)? I contend major crasher per VMT is trending upward even though the fatality count is trending downward, and this is because of huge safety improvements in automobiles the last 30 years. But I base this only on "perception" which could be due to modern connected world we now live in, that has grown year by year the last 15 years, so my gut feeling could be wrong.

I mean that's great that fatalities are trending downward, but I also want to see major truck crashes per VMT plateau or trend downward. Until then, we're doing a lousy job as an industry in hiring and creating and retaining safe[r] drivers.

 

All kinds of info at the link @x1Heavy put up. They seem to break it down to fatality, injury and property damage. So going with injury I think your perception is correct.

There was a steady decline from 95 to 06. In 2007 they changed how they measure miles travelled, presumably to a more accurate method. The decline continued through '09 and has been on the rise since. It hasn't yet reached pre 2007 levels per VMT but that is likely due to the changes in methodology as the number of injuries per year has . Miles traveled increased by just under 40% from 2006 to 2007 according to the chart below, most if not all of that likely due to the change in methodology.

As with all stats much can be read into them but I think it's safe to say we're not headed in the right direction.