Pickup truck use in the National Personal Transportation Survey

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Abstract

To guide interventions to prevent injuries to pickup-truck occupants, we characterized pickup truck ownership, drivers and use in the 1995 National Personal Transportation Survey, which collects travel data from the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the US. SUDAAN software was used to account for the complex nature of the sample. Pickup truck ownership was more common in households with more vehicles, in rural households, in households living in single family homes and mobile homes, and in middle-income households. Among US regions, pickup truck ownership was highest among households in the mountain west. Pickup truck ownership was greater in households with two adults, whether or not children or youths were present, but this was largely due to the number of vehicles in these households. Driving a pickup on the sample day was more frequent among men, among drivers with less education and among full-time workers. A higher proportion of trips to work, work-related trips, longer trips and trips with fewer people were by pickup truck. Seat belt use was lower among pickup truck drivers than drivers of other vehicles. For only 0.5% of households (those with three or more members and a pickup truck as their only vehicle), restrictions on travel in cargo areas might be burdensome. Restrictions on cargo area travel, strengthening existing seat belt laws and social marketing strategies might increase the safety of pickup truck occupants.

Introduction

A pickup truck is defined as a light truck with a low-sided open body. Over the past several years, pickup trucks have become increasingly popular vehicles. Pickup truck registrations increased from 27.7 million in 1987 (Bureau of the Census, 1995) to almost 36.2 million in 1997 (Bureau of the Census, 1999). Much of this increase can be attributed to the trend towards increased use of pickup trucks for personal transportation: by 1992, 73% of pickup trucks were primarily used for personal transportation (Bureau of the Census, 1995).

Pickup trucks had the highest death rate (158 per million registrations) of any class of four-wheeled passenger vehicles 1–3 years old in 1998 (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), 1999). Pickup trucks had higher death rates than cars for single vehicle crashes, but because of their mass, they had lower death rates for multiple vehicle crashes (Evans, 1994; Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), 1999).

Several occupant safety concerns are raised with the use of pickup trucks. Pickups and other light trucks have only recently been required to meet most Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards applied to passenger cars (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 1999a). Furthermore, the cargo area of the truck is sometimes used for transporting passengers (Agran et al., 1996; Anderson et al., 2000). These cargo areas are not designed to meet occupant safety standards applicable to passenger locations. About half of the states place some type of restriction on the transport of passengers in the cargo area (Christoffel et al., 2000). In addition, restraint use in the cab of the pickup truck has been reported to be lower than in other passenger vehicles (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 1999b). Drivers of pickup trucks had 60% restraint use compared to 72% for drivers of passenger cars. Restraint use for pickup truck passengers was 54% compared to 68% for passengers of automobiles (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 1999b). A number of states exempt pickup trucks from their mandatory seat belt use laws (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 1998).

We previously compared pickup-truck driver-owners to automobile driver-owners in a single California county (Anderson et al., 1999). We found that more pickup truck owners were male, age 30–39 years and married. Pickup truck drivers reported lower restraint use, more traffic citations and more risky driving behaviors, such as following too closely or not using turn signals all of the time. Differences in behaviors and attitudes were largely a function of age and gender.

The purpose of this analysis is to characterize pickup truck use in a national sample, including demographic factors, conditions of vehicle use and seat belt use, in order to guide interventions to prevent injuries to pickup truck occupants.

Section snippets

Methods

We used data from the 1995 National Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) to characterize the use of pickup trucks. This survey of travel by the civilian, non-institutionalized population of the US, age 5 and over, is conducted by the US Department of Transportation. It uses a stratified cluster sampling method to collect data on households, vehicles owned by members of the households, persons within those households, personal trips made on a designated travel day, personal trips of 121 km (75

Results

Table 1 shows the number of observations included in the 1995 NPTS for households, drivers on the travel day and trips. Of the 409 025 person–trips reported in the interviews, 348 910 trips (85%) were in passenger vehicles, 46 247 (11%) were by other means of transportation and for 13 868 (3%), the means of transportation was not reported. To avoid including trips more than once in the analysis, we used only the 247 708 trips reported for the driver of a passenger vehicle. The weighted

Discussion

Previous data on pickup truck use and drivers have focused on regional or local data (Anderson et al., 1999). This is the first analysis of a nationally represented sample of US households to examine pickup truck ownership and use in detail. Our analysis of data from the National Personal Transportation Survey allowed us to characterize households, drivers, trips and seat belt use involving pickup trucks in comparison to other passenger vehicles. The goal of this analysis was to provide

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Grant Number P49/CCR 91269-02 from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Latarsha Lytle provided valuable assistance with the data analysis.

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