Vehicle Safety Data Sources

There are many sources in the United States that can be used, directly or indirectly, to obtain truck and bus safety-related data. The main ones are as follows [18]  

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Chapters 7 and 8 are devoted to rail safety and to truck and bus safety, respectively. Chapter 7 covers topics such as causes of railway-related accidents and incidents, general classifications of rail accidents by effects and causes, rail derailment accidents and incidents and their causes, telescoping-related railway accidents, railway accidents in selected countries, railroad tank car safety, and methods for performing rail safety analysis. Some of the topics covered in Chapter 8 are top truck and bus safety issues, truck safety-related facts and figures, the most-cited truck safety-related problems, safety-related truck inspection tips, bus and coach occupant fatalities and serious injuries, transit bus safety and key design-related safety feature areas, and vehicle safety data sources. 

Federal law requires that manufactures and distributors of chemicals provide users with Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs), which are designed to provide the information needed to protect users from any hazards that may be associated with the product. MSDSs have become the primary vehicle through which the potential hazards of materials obtained from commercial sources are communicated to the laboratory worker. Institutions are required by law to retain and make readily available to workws the MSDSs provided by chemical suppliers. 

The general outline of the whole process is illustrated in Fig. 3.1. The basis for evaluation are data sources of various kinds as input for detailed modeling. Basically, a stochastic simulation generates virtual traffic including the vehicle with and without the measure in question as weU as other participants, the relevant environmental and boundary conditions. The results are evaluated regarding positive and negative safety effects of the measure. 

Safety Evaluation Areas (SEAs) involved SafeStat analytically assessing a motor carrier in four Safety Evaluation Areas (SEAs) Accident SEA, Driver SEA, Vehicle SEA, and Safety Management SEA. Each SEA was based on two or more indicators supported by different data sources. The SEAs were replaced by the seven Behavior Analysis Safety Improvement Categories (BASICs) under the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) model that uses the Safety Measurement System (SMS) instead of SafeStat. 

What are the main sources for obtaining data related to vehicle safety ... 

Because of the estimating procedure the National Safety Council statistics may undercount U.S. workplace fatalities. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has also calculated worlq>lace fatality rates since the late 1930s but the scope of their survey has changed so dramatically that one cannot use the BLS data to identify a time trend. Nevertheless, the BLS s most recent data collection effort creates the most reliable source of information on fatal workplace accidents in the United States. 1 The BLS conducted a census of fatal occupational injuries for 1992 using data from death certificates, workers compensation claims, medical examiners records, autopsy reports, motor vehicle accident records, and OSH A and Mine Safety and Health Administration fatal injury reports. The BLS estimated Ae average worker in the United... 

National Safety Council (NSC) For several decades, the National Safety Council (NSC) has compiled data on accidents, incidents, injuries, illnesses, and deaths. An annual publication provided detailed analysis of the data. For many years the publication title was Accident Facts. More recently, the title is Injury Facts. This publication breaks down data and analysis into three groups occupational, motor vehicle, and home and community. Also the publication now reports information on intentional injuries, such as assaults and self-harm. Data come from a variety of sources. 

Source Data from Olson, R.L. et al. 2009. Driver distraction in commercial vehicle operations, final report. Report No. FMCSA-RRR-09-042. Washington, DC Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, http //www.fmcsa.dot.gov/facts-research/research-technology/report/FMCSA-RRR-09-042.pdf. 

For this study, we analyzed all records of injirry acciderrts from the natiortal Austrian accident database, where cyclists were involved. The data covers the years 2002 until 2011 since data for 2012 was not available at the time of writing. While studies [ELV 99, LAN 03] recommend the use of hospital data for safety assessments, police data for accidents was used in this study since hospital data is not available for analysis in Austria. While accident insurance providers do collect data from hospitals, current data privacy laws do not allow for a consolidation of accident data from police and hospital sources. For the city of Vienna, the resulting dataset contains a total of 6,287 accidents. The database consists of several tables which describe the accidents. The accident table contains information about the location of the accident, the weather conditions, as well as the date and type of the accident. The participants table contains information about the participants such as age, degree of injury and type of vehicle. Table 10.4 shows the trends of the yearly nnmber of accidents. Fignre 10.1 presents a comparison of the trends of accident counts and bicycle counts based on the initial values for 2002. In the analysis time frame between 2002 and 2011, the data show no correlation between trends of accident counts and bicycle counts (R = 0.03). This suggests the validity of the concept of safety in numbers , which states, that an increase in the modal share of bicycles leads to a decrease in the number of accidents per cycled kilometer. 

The FHWA therefore has to rely on a variety of sources of information. First, they have data on accidents obtained from reports filed by attending police officers. Second, they have access to traffic violations written by police officers. Third they have complaints submitted by members of the public. Fourth they have local "intelligence" from their own inspectorate. Fifth, they have some idea of the "profile" of poor carriers such as size, corporate structure, and the type of work they are engaged in. Sixth they have the Safety Audits described earlier in the chapter. Finally there is a system of uniform inspections of vehicles and drivers which are conducted at the roadside. Over one-and-a-half million trucks are inspected each year. Many are conducted at existing weigh stations where all trucks are required to stop when stations are open. Other vehicles are pulled over by specialist officers who patrol in cars. 

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