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Truck Safety: Share the Road Safely Program Needs Better Evaluation of Its Initiatives

GAO-03-680 Published: May 30, 2003. Publicly Released: May 30, 2003.
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Highlights

From 1992 through 2001, more than 50,000 people were killed in crashes involving large commercial trucks. Although more than 6,800 of these fatalities were truck occupants, approximately 40,000 were passengers in other vehicles and more than 4,000 were nonmotorists. The Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) conducts a number of truck safety programs, including the Share the Road Safely program, whose goal is to educate the public about driving safely around large trucks. GAO examined (1) whether the program's initiatives are linked to this goal and (2) how FMCSA evaluates its Share the Road Safely program. GAO recommends that the Department of Transportation (DOT) ensure that the Share the Road Safely program initiatives are directly linked to the program's goal and establish a systematic

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Transportation To ensure that FMCSA's Share the Road Safely program initiatives contribute to the agency's goal to reduce the number of collisions between large commercial trucks and other highway users, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FMCSA administrator to develop an explicit program strategy that clearly and directly links FMCSA's Share the Road Safely program initiatives to its goal and uses the results of the Large Truck Crash Causation Study as they become available, as well as other relevant highway safety data, in order to identify specific behaviors that contribute to passenger vehicle and large commercial truck crashes, thus more effectively targeting the limited resources of the Share the Road Safely program.
Closed – Implemented
In 2003, GAO recommended that FMCSA develop a program strategy that clearly links Share the Road Safely's initiatives to its goals, and uses the results of the Large Truck Causation Study and other highway safety data in order to identify and target behaviors that contribute to truck-car accidents. Congress transferred chief responsibility for STRS to NHTSA in 2004 and 2005, with FMCSA retaining a supporting role. In August 2004, in response to GAO recommendations, NHTSA, in consultation with FMCSA, developed a program plan for a pilot STRS program in Washington State. This pilot included activities to increase the public's awareness of truck safety and to improve their driving behavior. Moreover, plans clearly and logically showed how changes in these two areas would contribute to the program's goal of reducing collisions. Additionally, the pilot used Washington crash data and surveys of public opinion in order to identify causes of truck-car collisions in that state and to focus the pilot's activities accordingly.
Department of Transportation To ensure that FMCSA's Share the Road Safely program initiatives contribute to the agency's goal to reduce the number of collisions between large commercial trucks and other highway users, the Secretary of Transportation should direct the FMCSA administrator to establish a systematic strategy for evaluating the Share the Road Safely program's initiatives that makes greater use where practical of DOT's experience in designing and evaluating information dissemination programs to enhance highway safety.
Closed – Implemented
In 2003, GAO recommended that FMCSA establish a strategy for evaluating the Share the Road Safely program's initiatives that make use of DOT's expertise in evaluating information dissemination programs. Congress transferred chief responsibility for STRS to NHTSA in 2004 and 2005, with FMCSA retaining a supporting role. In August 2004, in response to GAO recommendations, NHTSA, in consultation with FMCSA, developed a program plan for a pilot STRS program in Washington State. NHTSA, Washington State, and FMCSA designed an evaluation that measured the effects of the pilot in several ways. It used surveys of the public in its targeted areas to measure how successful it was in disseminating its intended message, and it used analysis of videos shot on highways to determine whether driver behavior changed. Additionally, it used two sets of treatment and comparison groups in order to ensure that results observed were due to the activities of the pilot and not because of any external factors.

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Topics

Commercial motor vehicle operatorsHighway safetyInternal controlsMotor vehicle safetyProgram evaluationTruck driversHigh risk driversRail transit safetyPublic roads or highwaysTransportation