Abstract
There have been efforts to restrict older trucks in many jurisdictions all over the world. The primary goal of the restrictions is to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to the environmental benefits, it is also possible that the truck age restriction could contribute to the enhancement of traffic safety. Older trucks are subject to longer travel-miles than newer trucks and tend to have higher mechanical failure rates. Extremely few studies have been done to explore the impact of trucks’ age on their crash occurrence due to mechanical problems. This study aims to investigate the association between the truck crashes due to mechanical issues and the truck age. Two approaches are adopted to achieve the objective. First, a chi-square test reveals that the proportions of the mechanical failures among older trucks are higher than those among newer ones ( χ 2 = 256.199, p < 0.0001 ). Second, the modeling results indicate that the number of truck crashes due to mechanical failures is significantly increased by the truck age. The findings suggest that policies restricting older trucks should consider not only environmental effects but also traffic safety benefits.
Highlights
In the recent decades, a number of governments have started restricting older trucks on highways. e main goal of the restriction is to minimize environmental impacts from the older trucks
Summary and Conclusions e study investigated the relationship between the number of truck crashes due to mechanical failure and truck age. e first analysis compared the proportion of mechanical failure crashes by age group. e result showed that only 2.0% of the truck-involved crashes occurred due to mechanical failure for the trucks aged 0–9 years
A Poisson model was developed to find the association between the number of mechanical failure truck crashes and truck age
Summary
A number of governments have started restricting older trucks on highways. e main goal of the restriction is to minimize environmental impacts from the older trucks. A number of governments have started restricting older trucks on highways. E main goal of the restriction is to minimize environmental impacts from the older trucks. Some governments encourage truck drivers to replace old trucks with new ones by providing incentives [2]. Incentive-based, voluntary vehicle replacement programs were found effective to reduce harmful air emissions by about 4%. Such voluntary programs are less effective compared to mandatory programs [3]. Low emission zones (LEZs) programs restrict access by the most polluting vehicles. Several studies have proven that LEZs are effective to decrease air pollutants’ concentrations in urban areas by restricting old trucks [5, 6]
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