Top Predictors of Commercial Crashes from ATRI

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.

“ATRI’s Crash Predictor Model is a key input to our driver hiring and training practices.  Safety is our first concern and by understanding how driver histories relate to future crash probability, we can develop targeted solutions for minimizing safety risks,” said John M. Prewitt, Tideport Distributing, Inc. President.

Now in its third release, this latest ATRI crash predictor model includes analyses on the impact of age and gender on crash probability.  And to better understand the bottom line impacts of preventing crashes, this latest report includes industry average crash costs across six distinct crash types and severity.

Among the key findings from the 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.

Understanding that traffic enforcement, particularly those activities that target the crash predictor behaviors, is an effective tool for mitigating crashes, ATRI also provides a list of “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.  Indiana tops that list, followed by New Mexico, Washington, California and Maryland.