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Comment by jbeales | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to see a comparison of accidents, (or better, deaths), per million miles of personal vehicles vs. trucks. I'm pretty sure trucks will come out as causing fewer accidents/deaths.

I actually did the math for the 2009 - 2013 thing, and truck tonnage increased by 21.75%, so a 17% increase in accidents means that trucks got safer over that time.

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From the tables of fatalities per 100 million miles that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration compiles [0], the accident rate for trucks went up from 1.03 to 1.29. Passenger vehicle crashes are actually lower, going from 1.03 to 1. These are still on the low end historically: both rates were around 1.36 15 years ago.

[0] http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/data-and-statistics/large-tr.... I'm using tables 4 and 5.

Thanks for the tables. They also show that the 2012 rates were somewhat lower than the 2007 rates, and much lower than they ever were before 2007 (>= 1.95).

I still think it's right to expect sustained improvement over the long-term.

Over the years, I've actually come to think those kind of statistics are kind of irrelevant. It comes off as rationalisation in the end. As soon as you start inputting people's lives in a cost/benefit analysis, I get really sad.

What changed my mind? The effectiveness of Sweden's Vision Zero project: http://www.visionzeroinitiative.com/en/Concept/Does-the-visi... http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/11/the-swedish-approach-...

> I'd like to see a comparison of accidents, (or better, deaths), per million miles of personal vehicles vs. trucks. I'm pretty sure trucks will come out as causing fewer accidents/deaths.

Possibly true but irrelevant. You could go a trillion miles per fatality, but only the total fatalities matter, perhaps as a percentage of all road fatalities.

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