FMCSA’s Safety Research Forum open for registration

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will have its annual Safety Research Forum later this month.

The virtual meetings are scheduled for 1 to 4 p.m. Eastern April 24 and April 25.

Truck drivers and other stakeholders can register for the forum here.

“The event will focus primarily on the work being performed by FMCSA’s Office of Research, with staff members presenting short summaries of some of their most interesting and important projects,” the agency wrote.

The April 24 presentations will feature FMCSA’s Analysis Division and new Crash Data Analytics Division. FMCSA’s Applied Research Division and Advanced Technology Division will be the featured presenters on April 25.

Other speakers include:

• Brian Stansbury, FMCSA’s chief counsel
• Tom Keane, FMCSA’s associate administrator for the Office of Research and Registration
• Wendy Liberante, FMCSA’s director for Office of Policy and Strategic Planning & Regulations
• Ken Riddle, FMCSA’s Office of Registration director
• Mike Fox, senior highway accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board

Some of the agenda’s topics will include presentations on crash data, drug usage rates, fraud prevention, truck parking research, new entrant training and advanced technology.

A full list of speakers can be found here.

Previous FMCSA forums have revealed such data as that most truck drivers are not to blame in fatal crashes.

In 2021, FMCSA’s Brian Bannister noted that 90.6% of truck drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2019 did not receive a moving violation. Even more, the truck drivers in these cases had no driver-related factors recorded 67.1% of the time.

“We should note that a little more than two-thirds of the truck fatal crashes have no driver-related factors cited to the truck driver,” Bannister said. “That’s compared to only 40% of passenger vehicle drivers having no factors cited to them.” LL