The Effects of Technologies on Commercial Vehicle Company Safety and Service: A Supply Chain Perspective
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6. Summary and Conclusions

Because of the importance of safety, and the potential benefits for both the general public and the commercial vehicle industry of improving safety, the main goal of this project is to identify those commercial vehicle-related technologies that, through successful adoption, have had a positive impact on the safety of motor carrier companies. This is examined through two perspectives, one simply examining the effect of a technology implementation on safety, and the second identifying the effect of a successful adoption of a technology (as compared to a less successful adoption of a technology) on safety. It is anticipated that the information discovered in this project can be used by commercial vehicle companies to aid them in implementing technologies that will be of the greatest benefit to both them and their customers. In addition, the information can be used by government agencies to help target efforts toward advocating the implementation of technologies that have the greatest potential safety impact.

Given the importance of safety and controlling for other factors as much as possible, this study identifies technologies motor carriers have implemented that have an impact on safety. Technology adoption theory is used to explore specific aspects of the technologies that lead to successful or unsuccessful adoption. It was hypothesized that technologies with factors that lead to successful adoption will have a greater safety impact.

A nationwide database of interstate motor carriers maintained by the U.S. Department of Transportation contains safety-related information. Therefore, the only additional information needed to conduct the analysis was the technologies motor carriers have in place and the innovation adoption factors associated with the technology. Unfortunately, no database currently exists that has this information. Thus, a survey of a stratified random sample or carriers was used to obtain the necessary data. Information regarding technology use was collected in three areas of technologies—freight mobility, on-board safety monitoring, and electronic clearance. Each of these has the potential for a positive or negative safety impact depending on their implementation and use.

Negative binomial regression models with the dependent variables of three separate measures of safety (number of accidents, number of driver out-of-service inspections, and number of vehicle out of service inspections) were utilized to test each technology. The effect on safety with the simple implementation of each technology as well as the effect on safety with the successful adoption of each technology was examined.

The overall results are mixed. Considering the simple implementation of the technology, because of the high ratings of the freight mobility technologies in many adoption factors, the anticipation was that the use of these technologies would have a greater effect on safety than other technologies, such as the on-board safety monitoring technologies that do not rate high on average in any adoption factor. The models illustrate that the on-board safety monitoring technology of on-board computers for vehicle diagnostics have no significant effect on safety, in terms of either out-of-service inspections or crashes; unfortunately, the models illustrate that technologies in both the freight mobility area and the electronic clearance area have a negative effect on safety. Across all these technologies in both areas, those with significant parameter estimates indicated that the use of these technologies had a negative safety impact.

Examining the successful adoption of technology (as compared to those companies with less successful adoption), the results are also mixed. It was anticipated that the successful adoption of a technology (i.e., higher ratings on the adoption factors) would result in an effect on safety. This is the case when considering one adoption factor cluster with both cellular phone technology and on-board computers for vehicle diagnostics technology. As opposed to the results when considering simply the implementation of the technology, the results for these two technologies reveal that the companies that implement these technologies and rate one cluster of adoption factors higher are likely to have fewer accidents than companies that implement these technologies and rate the one cluster of adoption factors lower. The moderately significant results for one additional technology, the transponder for toll booth technology, indicate companies that implement this technology and rate the adoption factors higher have an increase in the number of inspections resulting in a driver placed out-of-service (the results with regard to accidents, however, were not significant).

With regard to cell phone technology, these results are very interesting. Simply implementing cell phone technology results in a negative impact on safety. However, when considering all companies that implement cell phone technology, those that more successfully adopt the technology have fewer accidents than those with lower ratings on the adoption factors.

Considering on-board computers for vehicle diagnostics, there is no safety effect noted with simply implementing the technology; however, of the companies implementing the technology, those that rate one cluster of adoption factors higher do have fewer accidents. Logically, if a company implements on-board computers for vehicle diagnostics technology, but does not take the time to actually learn and use the information from it, it makes sense that there will be no impact on safety. Conversely, companies with higher ratings on the adoption factors, experience a positive safety effect (e.g., those companies that successfully adopt this technology are safer than those that do not successfully adopt). No other technologies yield significant results.

6.1 Implications for Companies and Government

The main implication of this study for both commercial vehicle companies and government agencies is that simply implementing a technology, or advocating implementing a technology, may not give a desired result, and in some cases may even result in a negative impact on safety. Specifically, the study results reveal that companies that implement technologies in either the freight mobility or the electronic clearance areas have worse safety records than companies that do not implement these technologies.

However, for at least two of the technologies, out of all companies that implement the technologies, those companies that successfully adopt the technologies have better safety records than those companies that did not successfully adopt the technologies. The implication is that the company needs to take the time to learn the technology and integrate it fully into the company in the right way for it to have a positive impact. Similarly, government agencies should examine companies that have successfully implemented certain technologies and that have a good safety record to determine the steps they took during the implementation. Providing this information to other companies examining implementation of a technology could prove very useful and assist in a positive safety impact from the technology.

6.2 Further Research

This is the first study of its kind to attempt to link technology use to safety in the commercial vehicle industry. Safety is impacted by a wide variety of factors, and although there is some evidence of a link with successful adoption of certain technologies and safety, further research should attempt to obtain larger sample sizes of companies using particular technologies to test all technologies as well as interaction effects with the use of more than one technology. Additional data should also be obtained regarding other variables that may have a potential effect on the safety of a company, such as turnover rates, profitability, or general company policies that could have a moderating effect on other variables used in the analysis. In addition, a better understanding of company policies could help to explain some of the results observed.

For the model development, it may be useful for future research to examine the use of vehicle miles traveled instead of power units as the exposure variable and perhaps also create categories for the continuous variables, such as company size.

Although discussed briefly, future research could also further explore the use inventory-theoretic models for demonstrating the benefits of technology implementation.

References


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