Arizona Department of Public Safety Recognized by National Trucking Industry Research Organization for Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Effectiveness

Phoenix, AZ – The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), the trucking industry’s not-for-profit research organization, has just released the update to its renowned Crash Predictor Model, which statistically quantifies the likelihood of future crash involvement based on specific truck driving behaviors (e.g. prior crashes, violations and convictions).

ATRI’s analysis draws on data from over 435,000 U.S. truck drivers over a two-year time frame to expose nearly a dozen behaviors that raise a driver’s risk of being involved in a future truck crash by more than 50 percent.

Understanding that traffic enforcement, particularly those activities that target the crash predictor behaviors, is an effective tool for mitigating crashes, ATRI’s research quantifies the “top tier” states which emphasizes those states that have proven track records of maximizing their enforcement resources while minimizing their share of the nation’s truck crashes. Arizona was ranked eight overall in ATRI’s report.

“DPS’ Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit is a first class partner when it comes to commercial vehicle safety,” said Arizona Trucking Association President, Tony Bradley. “I am glad to see their enforcement efforts recognized as an effective way to keep everyone safe on our roads and highways.”

Other key findings from ATRI’s Crash Predictor Model Update are:

• The top two behaviors for predicting future crash involvement, each with more than 100% increased likelihood of a future crash, are a reckless driving violation and a failure to yield right of way violation.
• Prior crash involvement continues to have a statistically significant relationship to future crash involvement with a 74% increase of the likelihood of being in a future crash.
• Women truck drivers were safer than male counterparts in every statistically significant safety behavior and men were 20% more likely to be involved in a crash than women.
• Several stable behaviors have emerged across all three ATRI Crash Predictor Models (2005, 2011 and 2018) as statistically significant predictors of future crash involvement including convictions for improper lane/location, reckless/careless/inattentive/negligent driving and improper or erratic lane change.

A copy of this report is available from ATRI at www.truckingresearch.org.