The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have started a three-year, $18-million project to produce a database of statistics on the causes of nationwide truck crashes.
Julie Anna Cirillo, FMCSA acting assistant administrator, said the database is necessary because unlike NHTSA's car crash data, FMCSA has no substantive data that could point to causes of truck accidents.
NHTSA's National Automotive Sampling System will develop the database to capture and analyze truck crash information and categorize potential causes of crashes.
Cirillo said FMCSA wants to "be the place to go" for answers to questions about causes of truck crashes.