Underride Safety Protection: Benefit-Cost Assessment of Rear-Impact Guards for the North Dakota Farm Truck Fleet

Abstract

Objective: The North Dakota Legislature recently passed a law exempting the state's agricultural truck fleet from a federal safety program requirement for rear-guard equipment on large trucks. This equipment has been shown to reduce crash severity when a passenger vehicle collides with the rear of the truck. This study uses truck fleet, truck crash, and injury severity data to estimate the public safety benefit derived from passenger-vehicle underride protection during rear-end crashes involving large agricultural trucks in North Dakota.

Methods: A benefit-cost analysis of crash injury avoidance is developed based on the frequency and severity of rear-end truck collisions in North Dakota between 2001 and 2007.

Results: The injury avoidance benefits and commercial vehicle safety grant benefits are estimated to be $11.4 to $20.2 million during the seven-year depreciable truck life.

Conclusion: The public safety benefits for rear-impact guards are higher than the estimated lifetime cost for the equipment and maintenance of $8.1 million.

Keywords:

• Large trucks
• Rear-end guards
• Economics
• Benefit-cost

Notes

¹ Monetized QALY is a systematic tool for valuing functional capacity loss in standardized non-monetary units related to individual utility. It measures the utility loss associated with health impairment.

^a Estimated based on previous three years.

² Effectiveness rate of 15 percent is estimated for the rear impact guards (U.S. Department of Transportation 1995).