Study gauges safety features in big rigs

Automatic braking, collision alerts can prevent 40% of rear-end crashes, it finds

DETROIT — Safety features such as automatic emergency braking and forward collision warnings could prevent more than 40% of crashes in which semis rear-end other vehicles, a new study has found.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research group supported by auto insurers, also found that when the rear crashes did happen, the systems cut the speeds by more than 50%, reducing damage and injuries.

The institute called on the federal government to require the systems on new large trucks and said many truck fleet operators are already adding emergency braking on their own.

“Rear-end crashes with trucks and other vehicles happen a lot, often with horrible consequences,” said Eric Teoh, the institute’s director of statistical services who did the study. “This is an important countermeasure to that.”

Trucks with collision warning systems reduced rear crashes by 44%, while automatic emergency braking cut rear crashes by 41%, the study found.

To reach his conclusions, Teoh examined crash data per vehicle mile traveled at 62 trucking companies that use tractor-trailers or other trucks weighing at least 33,000 pounds. The study found about 2,000 crashes that happened over more than 2 billion miles traveled from 2017-19.

The study compared trucks from the same companies that were equipped with collision warning alone, automatic emergency braking, and no crash prevention features at all, the institute said.

The institute also found that trucks equipped with collision warning systems had 22% fewer crashes than those without either technology. For automatic emergency braking, the figure was 12%.

“This is important information for trucking companies and drivers who are weighing the costs and benefits of these options on their next vehicles,” Teoh said.

The institute says U.S. crashes involving large trucks rose by nearly onethird since hitting a record low in 2009. A total of 4,136 people died in such crashes in 2018, with 119 of the deaths in rear-end crashes.

Two federal agencies that regulate heavy trucks, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said they will review the institute’s report.

The traffic safety agency said in a statement that it is nearly finished with a study examining the safety benefits of driver assist technology on heavy vehicles, while the motor carrier administration has been encouraging voluntary use of systems such as automatic emergency braking.

The Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, which represents independent truckers, said it can’t accept the study’s conclusions because it did not include real-world factors such as driver training and experience or a carrier’s safety record.