Project: #264 Do Vehicle Safety Inspection Programs Lead to Lower Fatality Rates? Progress Report - Reporting Period Ending: March 30, 2020 Principal Investigator: H. Scott Matthews Status: Active Start Date: Oct. 1, 2018 End Date: June 30, 2020 Research Type: Applied Grant Type: Research Grant Program: FAST Act - Mobility National (2016 - 2022) Grant Cycle: 2018 Traffic21 Progress Report (Last Updated: April 6, 2020, 2:45 p.m.) % Project Completed to Date: 95 % Grant Award Expended: 60 % Match Expended & Document: 100 USDOT Requirements Accomplishments Major Goals The goals of the project are to perform statistical analysis of the benefits of safety inspection programs for passenger vehicles from reducing fatalities on roadways. For programs to be effective, they should show statistically significant reductions in fatality rates (e.g., fatalities per million vehicle miles traveled). We are thus working on statistical models using publicly available data on fatalities, VMT, and existence of safety inspection programs for all 50 states over a 20+ year period. Accomplishments to date The project was finally begun in earnest about a year ago after delays in getting agreement from the partners on how to focus the project (and to develop the required cost share). The partners include various companies involved in the automobile safety inspection industry in the US (and the world) who are all interested in the outcomes of the study which are expected to document how the existence of safety inspection programs leads to lower fatality rates in states with programs compared to those that do not. This money was collected under the auspices of the North American subgroup of an industry group called CITA which is a global consortium of companies interested in vehicle inspection programs. They have provided cash gifts of approximately $50k to help support the project. We discussed the need for this study and solicited contributions from project partners at the biennial CITA conference in Seoul, Korea in April 2019. Opportunities for Training: CMU (EPP) PhD student Prithvi Acharya is the main students researcher involved in the project. He has been working to develop a study design that can be used for the project. CEE MS student Hui Yang has also been helping with data acquisition and processing. Result Dissemination: We were scheduled to report preliminary results at the March 30th annual meeting of the CITA North American research group. However due to the COIV-19 pandemic, this meeting has been postponed and no virtual substitute has been scheduled or held yet. We have prepared an interim version of a report, and a presentation and are awaiting when we can present it to the CITA NA partners. We actively desire their input and feedback on this due to their industry expertise to help us finalize the report. After this, we will be preparing a report for the UTC and also preparing a paper for journal submission. Planned activities in next period: In the next period, we plan to complete the study as originally conceived, with the various suggestions and inputs as provided by the project partners. The work will be done in the summer of 2020. Impacts We anticipate significant safety impacts to the transportation system based on the results of this project. Various states have eliminated, or are considering the elimination of, their safety inspection and maintenance (I/M) programs. One of the key reasons that these programs are being eliminated is that a statistical study has not been done to demonstrate the effectiveness of the programs in terms of safety benefits. We will produce a report as well as a journal paper that can be used by proponents of safety inspections to support them. We expect that this credible study can act as a means of preserving these critical programs at state legislatures, and perhaps to restart recently ended programs. There have been no technology transfer activities in the project to date. Other We are in the process of creating a repository for the data and models used in this project. All work will be made open access or publicly available, since the main data inputs are the DOT's publicly available FARS database. Outcomes New Partners Various companies and industry associations have agreed to contribute funds to support this study via the global inspection industry association named CITA. We also found collaborators (via our presentation at the HKSTS 2019 Conference) at Imperial College in London who are experts in transportation statistical analyses and will likely pursue jointly authored publications on this work. Their insights have been very valuable in this research. Issues No major issues, other than the slightly long delay in working with the project partners to get the project going and to ensure that the goals and methods of the study will be relevant and useful to them in terms of supporting inspection and maintenance programs around the world. Also, more recently, the slight delay in receiving feedback from CITA as a result of the COVID pandemic (which we will finalize shortly).