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This paper documents and synthesizes the major qualitative survey efforts within the United States relating to stakeholder design, use, and perspectives of onboard truck safety technologies. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) have conducted a survey synthesis and meta-analysis to consolidate, analyze, and identify gaps in existing survey research on safety technologies. Over the past several years, there has been an increasing interest in onboard truck safety technologies. At different times, entities such as FMCSA, FHWA, American Trucking Associations (ATA), and ATRI have undertaken different survey projects to document and understand onboard safety technology applications. While a wide variety of data has been collected by these projects, there has been little effort to aggregate data across projects. The current synthesis includes analysis of more than 11 survey, interview, and focus group instruments, representing 558 respondents and 56 unique questions. Preliminary results indicate that while existing research addresses many issues related to carrier purchase and use of technologies, there is a considerable gap in research addressing driver attitudes, experiences, and preferences. Satellite or cellular communication between terminal and vehicle and Global Positioning System are the technologies most commonly used by carriers. Most carriers that have a safety technology installed on their fleets have already realized the desired safety benefits, often intangible from a quantitative perspective. Cost and lack of clear data about benefits are the two biggest factors preventing wider installation of safety technologies.

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This paper presents a comprehensive, multidimensional evaluation of the federal interstate commercial driving hours-of-service (HOS) rules implemented on January 4, 2004. The study analyzes changes in fleet crash rates following the rule change and reactions of industry personnel (drivers and fleet safety managers) to the new rules. Information on industry personnel reaction to the new HOS rules was assessed through focus groups and a survey of nearly 1,000 drivers. In general, industry personnel like the new rules. Pluralities of drivers say that driving is easier and they are less fatigued. Drivers and companies like the 34-h restart but do not like the 14-h daily restriction on tour-of-duty duration. The study also gathered and aggregated 2003 and 2004 data from 23 mostly medium to large trucking fleets on vehicle mileage, DOT-reportable collisions, and driver injuries. Altogether, these 23 fleets traveled more than 10 billion miles annually in 2004 and represented approximately 8% of all large-truck mileage in the United States. This aggregated, “within subjects” comparison of HOS-related fleet safety and health data is the largest such compilation ever performed in the United States. Aggregated statistics for the 23 fleets showed statistically significant decreases in rates of collision (–3.7%) and preventable collision (–4.7%). There were even greater reductions in rates of driver injury (–12.6%) and driver collision-related injury (–7.6%). Taken together, these findings document that the trucking industry reaction has generally been favorable to the new HOS rules and that implementation of the new rules has been accompanied by a reduction in collision and injury rates.