A study of heavy truck and bus collisions conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) concludes that video-based driver safety programs could potentially save over 800 lives per year, prevent 25,000 commercial vehicle crashes, and reduce injuries associated with such crashes by nearly 40,000 annually.
Lytx Inc. commission VTTI to conduct the study of its DriveCam video-based driver monitoring system, evaluating the potential safety benefits of equipping all U.S. trucks and buses with DriveCam in relation to the large national crash database called the General Estimates System (GES). The GES database includes information about the vehicle, injuries and fatalities, violations, and contributing factors for a sample of crashes during calendar years 2010 to 2012.
Jeffrey Hickman, leader of the behavioral analysis and applications group within VTTI’s Center for Truck and Bus Safety, said his team’s research concluded that if all U.S. heavy trucks and buses used the DriveCam, that would prevent 25,007 collisions, prevent 39,006 injuries, and save 801 lives every year – reductions of 35%, 36% and 20%, respectively, when compared to annual heavy truck/bus crash data.
“If driver behavior is the primary reason for traffic crashes, then approaches that pinpoint and focus on reducing risky driving behavior are likely to be the most effective in reducing crashes,” Hickman noted in the study.
“Motor vehicle crashes are often predictable and preventable, yet many drivers choose to behave in ways that put themselves and others at risk for a vehicle crash and/or serious injuries,” he pointed out. “The most efficacious onboard safety monitoring systems use in-vehicle video technology to gather driving behaviors that can be addressed and corrected, thereby reducing future crash risk.”
“The results of this study underscore our mission - we harness the power of video, predictive analytics and cloud technologies to prevent collisions, save lives and transform businesses,” added Brandon Nixon, Lytx’s chairman and CEO. “Someone dies in a vehicle collision in the U.S. every 15 minutes … [and] the sad truth is that 90% of these tragedies are due to human error and are avoidable.”
