Large Goods Vehicles
(asked on 2nd December 2014) - View Source
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what interim assessment he has made of the incidence of collisions involving vehicles participating in the Longer HGV Semi-Trailer Trial.
The annual report on the longer semi-trailer (LST) trial published in June 2014 included an interim assessment of collisions involving vehicles participating in the trial. This is published on the Government’s website and can be found at the following link:
This report includes analysis of reported road collisions involving LSTs resulting in injury, which shows that the incidence of such collisions is lower than that for the GB Articulated fleet in general. Longer semi-trailer trial vehicles operating between September 2012 and December 2013 were involved in five incidents in which someone was injured, 4 of them slight injuries and one serious injury (broken arm). Of these, one slight and one serious injury occurred on public roads, the remainder in depots or other private areas.
For the general population of heavy goods vehicles, casualty data are only available for incidents that occur on public roads. Comparing these data, longer semi-trailer trial vehicles were involved in injury incidents on public roads at a rate of 48.8 per billion vehicle kilometres. This compares with a rate of 187.4 injury incidents per billion vehicle kilometres for all articulated heavy goods vehicles in Great Britain over the period 2010-2012. The number of casualties in incidents involving all articulated HGVs was an average of over 3,400 per year over this period.
In addition, the report estimated that between 600 thousand and 900 thousand HGV vehicle kilometres have been removed from the road as a result of longer semi-trailer operations between September 2012 and December 2013. This will help to further reduce the risk of incidents occurring.