Crash records & preventability
The federal crash record lists crashes meeting a reporting threshold: a fatality, an injury transported for medical treatment, or a vehicle towed from the scene. A crash is recorded regardless of fault. A truck rear-ended at a red light appears in the carrier's record the same way as a crash its driver caused.
Preventability determinations
Through the Crash Preventability Determination Program, FMCSA reviews certain defined crash types on request (submitted with evidence through DataQs) and can determine a crash was not preventable, which removes it from the carrier's safety-measurement calculations. The crash itself remains part of the public record. Most crashes are never submitted for review, so the public file is best read as an exposure record, not a fault ledger.
How to read crash data in context
Raw counts mislead in both directions: big fleets accumulate crashes by driving more miles, and a small carrier's two crashes can be a worse rate than a large carrier's twenty. fleetfax turns crash counts into a rate per million miles driven (from the carrier's own reported mileage) and compares it with the national average and with similar carriers, splits the record by severity (fatal, injury, tow-away) and by time, and flags an elevated crash rate or fatal crash history descriptively, always with the underlying records and the no-fault caveat attached.
fleetfax reads public FMCSA data and is not affiliated with FMCSA or the U.S. Department of Transportation. This page explains terminology; it is not legal advice.
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