Trucker news · Crashes & Safety
FMCSA to Study 2,000 Fatal Truck Crashes to Find What Actually Causes Them
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November 3, 2026 · 7:31 PM MDT · 3 min read
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The FMCSA is funding a nationwide study of fatal crashes involving heavy-duty trucks, collecting detailed data on about 2,000 crashes across some 30 states — the first study of its kind in more than two decades.
The FMCSA is funding a nationwide study of fatal crashes involving heavy-duty trucks, collecting detailed data on about 2,000 crashes across some 30 states.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is putting grant funding toward a nationwide study of fatal crashes involving heavy-duty trucks. The agency announced November 3 that the funding will help eligible state and local agencies gather and report detailed crash information through its Crash Causal Factors Program, according to TheTrucker.
FMCSA plans to collect detailed information on approximately 2,000 fatal crashes in about 30 states over a two-year period. Full data collection is expected to begin in 2027, following a pilot study. Researchers will analyze factors involving drivers, vehicles, motor carriers and roadway conditions to identify patterns and potential opportunities to prevent crashes.
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The study will build on FMCSA's earlier Large Truck Crash Causation Study, which examined 967 crashes involving large trucks between 2001 and 2003. That study is more than twenty years old, and the industry has changed around it — new equipment, new technology, new traffic patterns. The new Heavy-Duty Truck Study will focus specifically on fatal crashes involving Class 7 and Class 8 trucks with gross vehicle weight ratings of 26,001 pounds or more.
That focus is deliberate. About 70 percent of large trucks involved in fatal crashes are heavy-duty trucks, Class 7 and 8, according to FMCSA's Crash Causal Factors Program page. And the trend the study is meant to reverse is stark: from 2016 to 2022, fatal crashes involving large trucks and buses in the United States increased 26.4 percent.
The study will collect data from the crash site and from the vehicles and parties involved, covering driver factors such as qualifications, fatigue, distraction, history, health and behaviors; vehicle factors such as maintenance, defects, inspection history, vehicle design and load characteristics; motor carrier factors such as operation type and carrier performance; and environmental factors such as roadway design, infrastructure, weather, road condition and work zones. It will also look at the role of light vehicles and vulnerable road users in crash risk.
Applications for the grant funding must be submitted by December 28, 2026. A final report and a public database of anonymized crash information will follow the data collection and analysis. For drivers, the payoff is simple: the last study of this depth is old enough to vote, and the next one will finally say — with data, not anecdotes — what is actually killing people out there.
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