Uniting Alabama's Traffic Safety Efforts - Working Better Together
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Articles and Links on the Right Panel
  • SaDIP grant announcement presentation;
  • FMCSA Final Hours of Service Rule;
  • FMCSA Home Page;
  • FMCSA TACT Page;
  • FMCSA Safety and Security Page -- also see below;
  • FMCSA Alabama -- loaded with Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) information unique to Alabama;
  • FMCSA Share the Road.
From the FMCSA Safety and Security Page

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), in cooperation with its partners and customers, strives to reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities involving large trucks and buses.  The following is information on safety initiatives that are available via that link:
  • Spotlight on Sleep Apnea
  • Passenger Carrier Strike Force -- Audio Report
  • Pre-Employment Screening Program
  • TACT (Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks) Program
  • ETA Package: A Motor Carrier's Guide to Improving Highway Safety
  • Safety is Good Business -- Improve Your Bottom Line
  • Skill Performance Evaluation (SPE) Certification
  • Comprehensive Safety Analysis (CSA)
  • Safety Belt Program
  • Cargo Securement
  • Brake Safety
  • Drug and Alcohol Program
  • Accident Countermeasure Manual
  • Performance and Registration Information System Management (PRISM)


DESCRIPTION OF THE FMCSA/ALABAMA TACT PROGRAM
 
Crashes between Commercial Motor Vehicles (CMVs) and personal vehicles are often very spectacular and severe, mainly due to the physics involved. A small passenger car does not have much of chance up against an 18-wheeler. To help reduce crashes and fatalities caused by CMV-personal vehicle crashes, Congress directed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to work together to educate motorists on how to share the road safely with commercial motor vehicles. 
 
One result of this government agency collaboration was the development of the Ticketing Aggressive Cars and Trucks (TACT) program—a high-visibility traffic enforcement program that uses communication, enforcement, and evaluation activities to reduce car-truck crashes, fatalities, and injuries. According to FMCSA, the TACT program “is an evidence-based traffic enforcement model that can help States reduce crashes between large trucks and personal vehicles, by promoting safe driving behavior around commercial motor vehicles (CMVs).” TACT’s goal is to deter unsafe driving behaviors by personal vehicle and commercial motor vehicle drivers when they interact to share the road, and thereby to reduce CMV-private vehicle crashes, injuries, and fatalities.
 
Alabama got involved with the National TACT effort with planning efforts for a TACT Readiness grant application. The effort involved the Alabama Department of Public Safety (DPS) Motor Carrier Safety Unit (MCSU), which began conducting high visibility enforcement details in May 2008. This was not the main TACT program; it was implemented to collect data in support of the TACT Readiness grant application. This effort was supplemented in a follow-up by two separate enforcement details from which data were collected. 
 
Shortly before the Alabama TACT program was initiated, a news conference was called by Col. J. Christopher Murphy, Director of DPS, to announce the program, which included participation of officials from FMCSA, ALDOT, ATA, and several local law enforcement agencies. This participation showed the cooperation of not only the federal, state and local law enforcement, but also the trucking industry through its recognized trade association. The announced focus of TACT would be on those offenses and driver behaviors that cause severe (fatal or severe injury) crashes as given by data generated past car-truck crash records; among these are two vehicle crashes involving a personal vehicle and a CMV:
  • Aggressive Operation
  • Over speed limit
  • Driving too fast for conditions
  • Made improper turn
  • Improper or no signal
  • Crossed centerline
  • Disregard other road markings (i.e., those in traffic)
  • Following too closely
  • Swerved to avoid vehicle (for CMV-car crashes this would be an indication of the vehicles being too close to each other at the outset).
  • Improper passing
  • Improper lane change/use
  • Misjudge stopping distance
  • Other failed to yield (while in traffic, not at signs or signals)
  • Avoid vehicle/object/non-motorist (for CMV-car crashes this would be an indication of the vehicles being too close to each other at the outset).
 Prior to the program, the Critical Analysis Reporting Environment (CARE) was used to run several “hotspot” analyses to determine the best possible locations for the selective enforcement portion of the program. This was done with the aid of the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS), which also developed an interactive Web site whereby officers could locate the hotspots throughout the state. In particular, locations were sought that were especially over-represented in car-truck (CMV) crashes in which one of the vehicles was guilty of one or more of the offenses listed above (as opposed to crashes in general). Details of the location selection are given in the project description below.
 
The program itself involved two major components – a Public Information and Education (PI&E) component and a selective enforcement (SE) component. PI&E involved both industry and media participation. The SE involved the working special details in seven time periods between early September (Labor Day) and the end of the year. These efforts involved local agencies, general DPS Highway Patrol officers, and special DPS Motor Carrier Safety Unit (MCSU) officers. Enforcement details were scheduled for the following periods:
September 6-12, 2009 (1 week)
October 4-17, 2009 (2 weeks)
November 15 – December 12, 2009 (4 weeks)
The first two of these time slots (about three weeks total) were worked by both the DPS and the local city police CMV certified officers. The final period was worked only by DPS.  Details of the particular hours worked and the issued citation types are given in the project description below. The TACT program combined outreach, education, and evaluation with targeted enforcement activities to raise awareness among car and truck drivers about unsafe driving behaviors.
 
Detailed records were kept during the selective enforcement effort by means of a secure online enforcement summary form that was developed for participating law enforcement officers. Each TACT officer entered his/her name, department, enforcement location, enforcement time period, and counts for each type of citation issued. Citations were entered, further categorized by CMV and Non-CMV. Motor carrier officers also reported CMV inspections using this same form. Officers were required to submit a form for each separate location and time period they patrolled. Based on these data, daily, weekly, and monthly reports were automatically generated and available on the Internet. These reports were available for the entire state or for each participating agency or DPS troop. 
 
Over 30,000 citations and warnings were issued as part of the TACT program. Of these, the vast majority (94%) were issued to private motorists, and only about 10% of the contacts resulted in warnings as opposed to citations.
 
Three types of evaluations were conducted:
  A comparison of crashes before and during the TACT program, 
 A comparison of citations issued before and during the TACT program, and
 Two attitude surveys, one for participating officers and a second for truckers.
 
 
The crash comparison considered two types of crashes: all crashes involving CMVs, and two vehicle crashes involving a CMV and a Personal Vehicle (PV). The more significant findings were in the overall CMV crashes as opposed to the two vehicle case where a CMV and a PV were involved. This is a reasonable result in that the awareness of the program to CMV drivers would be much higher than that of the general public. In all cases a reduction in crashes was found. The following table presents a summary of the crash-reduction results and an averaging of the two, which might provide a more reasonable overall reduction estimate.
 
Estimates of Crash Savings for TACT Program Months
 
SEVERITY
CMV-INVOLVED
CMV-PV
AVERAGE
All Crashes
31.50
8.25*
19.88
Injury and Fatal
9.75
2.50*
6.13
Fatal Only
3.33
2.25
2.79
* Not highly significant
 
The analysis of eCite-issued citations was performed to determine if there was a more concentrated effort during the TACT program times to issue citations for TACT type offenses.
 
Change in Citations Issued During TACT Period
VIOLATION TYPE
May-Aug 2009*
Sep-Dec 2009
% Inc (+)/Dec (-)
Speeding
60,730
61,928
+2.0%**
Following Too Close
1,847
1,966
+6.4%**
Improper Lane Change
901
1,258
+39.6%**
Failure To Signal
443
628
+41.9%
No Seatbelt
28,941
25,589
-11.6%**
No Insurance
15,401
16,062
+4.3%**
Drivers License
10,599
11,432
+7.9%**
Improper Passing
262
260
-0.8%
 
* Adjusted so that the two four-month periods are comparable.
** Statistically significant increases at alpha less than 0.01.
 
All of the violation type categories showed statistical significant increases or decreases at the alpha level of 0.01 or less with the exception of Failure to Signal and Improper Passing.
 
The officer survey indicated that officers’ attitudes toward the TACT program are generally positive. The only possible exception was the question regarding whether the same thing could be accomplished without a statewide organized program. This question yielded close to a 50-50 split, so it cannot be considered to be either positive of negative toward the TACT program. The officers also indicated their support of the program in stating that they changed their approach as to what offenses they were more aware of and thus issued more citations in these areas.

Similarly, there was an overall positive attitude expressed toward the TACT program by the truckers, although their responses were generally not as positive in several aspects as that of law enforcement. The one notable exception was a question in which the vast majority (97.7%) of truckers indicated that the TACT approach was preferable to other approaches used in the past. As mentioned above, the law enforcement response to this was about even both ways. The truckers felt like law enforcement officers implementing TACT were generally fair, and if anything perhaps a bit biased toward the truckers. They indicated a strong positive feeling for the TACT program, and their belief that the general public also supported it.
 







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