On average, each year more than 5,000 people die in large truck crashes, with nearly 4,000 of those being the result of passenger vehicles and trucks colliding. Alabama had 42 such fatal crashes in 2008, that resulted in 50 fatalities (one of the crashes caused 7 fatalities). These crashes are quite often quite spectacular and severe mainly due to the physics involved. A small passenger car does not have much of chance up against an 18-wheeler.
Studies done by CAPS personnel using CARE have shown that, in general, trucks tend to cause about 8% more than their share of crashes in general when there is a large truck and a passenger vehicle involved. However, for fatal crashes this proportion changes dramatically, and the large trucks only cause 25% of the crashes, while the passenger cars cause 75% of these fatal crashes. Why this discrepancy? First of all, there is a tendency to blame the trucks, but when a fatality is caused there is considerably more analysis of which of the vehicles was the causal vehicle. Also, the experience of truck drivers, some of whom have over a million miles of driving experience, will tend to enable them to take actions to avoid the more severe crashes. However, when they are placed in circumstances beyond their control, there might be little that they can do to avoid the fatal crash.
We have all seen cars rush around an 18 wheeler, cut them off getting back into the right lane, and then slow down. This is the type of behavior that can easily cause a fatal crash since the larger vehicle does not have the maneuverability or the breaking capabilities of the smaller vehicle. It is up to those driving the passenger vehicles to make themselves visible, stay out of the blind spots, and to the extent possible, just stay as far away from the larger vehicles as possible.
To help reduce crashes and fatalities, Congress directed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to work together to educate motorists on how to share the road safely with commercial motor vehicles (CMVs). The result of this government collaboration was the development of the Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT) program—a high-visibility traffic enforcement program that uses communication, enforcement, and evaluation activities to reduce CMV-related crashes, fatalities, and injuries.
TACT’s goal is to deter unsafe driving behaviors by passenger vehicle and commercial motor vehicle drivers when they interact to share the road, and thereby reduce CMV-passenger-car crashes, injuries, and fatalities.
The TACT program combines outreach, education, and evaluation with targeted enforcement activities to raise awareness among car and truck drivers about unsafe driving behaviors, which may include (but are not limited to): unsafe lane changes, tailgating, failing to signal lane changes, failing to yield the right of way, speeding, and aggressive driving (a combination of two or more unsafe behaviors caused by emotional issues).
At this point, CAPS has completed the first of the three TACT enforcement stages, target selection. This is complete and accessible on the Internet for all TACT law enforcement participants. Data collection and reporting tools for the second stage, enforcement, are in place. When the TACT enforcement details are complete the enforcement and crash data will be analyzed and compared with other time periods. The target selection, data collection and reporting tools created for TACT will continue to be available for future details and/or daily use (many post commanders have shown interest in this). The hot spot selection tool for fatal crashes is given in the diagram below.
***To view the image click here.***
TACT hotspots were identified for all urban and rural mileposted roadways in AL using 2006-2008 CMV and aggressive driving crash data. For DPS officers hotspots were identified per troop and per county. A unique sliding window hotspot identification technique was developed within CARE to locate road segments with crash counts above a given threshold. The crash count threshold varied per region. For example, road segments in a given rural county may have qualified if there were 4 crashes on a 3 mile road segment, while a more populated county may have required 7 crashes per 1 mile road segment. Hotspots were also identified for the participating municipalities for roadways in their jurisdiction.
Enforcement details were scheduled for the following periods:
- September 6-12, 2009
- October 4-17, 2009
- November 15 – December 12, 2009
A secure online enforcement summary form is now available for participating law enforcement. Each officer assigned to TACT will enter citation and warning summaries at this site. The summary includes the officers name, department, enforcement location, enforcement time period, and counts for each type of citation issued. Citations are categorized by CMV and Non-CMV. Motor carrier officers will also report CMV inspections using this form. Officers submit a form for each separate location and time period they patrol. Daily, weekly, and monthly reports are automatically generated and available on the Internet. These reports can be run for the entire state or per participating department.
Three types of summary reports will be generated when the time period for TACT enforcement is complete.
- Tabular/Spatial analysis of time patrolled per road segment (officer visibility).
- Tabular/Spatial analysis of citations issued per road segment (enforcement).
- Tabular/Spatial analysis of crashes that occurred in the target areas and surrounding areas. These will be compared with non-TACT time periods.
These reports will be available on the CAPS traffic safety research reports (under the Research tab), when they are completed.
Law enforcement officials who are interested in participating in TACT should contact the Alabama Department of Public Safety.
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