Onboard Safety Systems Effectiveness Evaluation for Commercial Motor Vehicles

• Activity Number: 651
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 4, 2011 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Matthew Camden*+ and Feng Guo and Jeffrey Hickman and Richard Hanowski
• Companies: Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
• Keywords: Commercial Motor Vehicles ; Onboard Safety Systems ; Retrospective Cohort Approach ; Generalized Linear Model

Abstract

Advanced collision avoidance systems have been identified as one method to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries resultant from crashes involving commercial motor vehicle. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the efficacy of three onboard safety systems (OBSS): lane departure warning (LDW) systems, roll stability control (RSC) systems, and forward collision warning (FCW) systems. Three calendar years of crash and vehicle data were collected from 14 carriers (including 89,010 crashes from 153,172 truck years). The study employed a retrospective cohort approach to assess the efficacy of the three OBSSs (along with three commonly used indexes, including risk rate difference, risk rate ratio, and odds ratio). Furthermore, the relative risk between OBSS and Non-OBSS cohorts was estimated using a generalized linear model. There was no statistically significant difference in the crash rate ratio (CRR) between the non-FCW and FCW cohorts (CRR = 0.997, p = 0.991). However, there was a statistically significant difference between the non-LDW and LDW cohorts (CRR = 1.55, p < 0.001) and the non-RSC and RSC cohorts (CRR = 1.917, p = 0.001).