UMTRI Project

Collection, Analysis, and Evaluation of Commercial Motor Vehicles Safety Data (TIFA/BIFA)

Sponsor: DOT/Federal Motor Carrier Safety Adminstration
Investigator: John Woodrooffe
09/30/2008 - 09/29/2011

Trucks Involved in Fatal Accidents (TIFA) is the most accurate and complete dataset of fatal truck crashes available. It is a census file on the fatal accident experience of medium and heavy trucks nationwide and is essential to any evaluation of truck safety issues.

UMTRI has managed the TIFA dataset since 1980 with support from several sources, most notably the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. TIFA combines UMTRI survey data with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) with complete national coverage and an enhanced description of the involved truck. More recently, a companion dataset known as Buses Involved in Fatal Accidents (BIFA) has been active.

The TIFA and BIFA projects include several unique data elements that are either unavailable or less accurate elsewhere. Over the past ten years, the TIFA file on average identifies 5.8 percent more trucks annually involved in fatal traffic accidents than NHTSA’s FARS file, which is the standard national file for fatal traffic crashes. The TIFA file is the only continuing crash database that can accurately identify important truck types, such as doubles, triples, and other longer combination vehicles. The TIFA data also incorporates several data items that significantly enhance its utility to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s mission in regulating carriers, drivers, hours of service, and hazardous materials and in advancing the fundamental understanding of truck crashes.

Data elements include an accident type variable, modeled on the accident type variable in NHTSA’s GES file, but unavailable in national fatal crash data; accurate and detailed configuration; detailed identification of operator type, including the DOT number; identification of trip type and hours of driving; and a detailed identification of cargo body and cargo type, including the type of hazardous material. The TIFA methodology also provides a flexible structure that can be exploited to collect data to address truck safety issues as they arise. Recent examples include supplementary data collection on rollover, tanker crashworthiness, and underride in fatal truck crashes. In addition, since the TIFA protocol begins with the collection of hard-copy police reports, these reports are available for ad hoc supplementary data collection as needed.