Orlando, Fla. —  The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), the trucking industry’s not-for-profit research organization, has recently released the topics for the 2018 industry research.

The Board approved priorities do cover a wide array of critical industry issues including the impact that urban planning and “smart city” design have on truck operations, inconsistencies in CDL testing, and continuing research on the impact of autonomous technologies on the trucking industry .

2018 ATRI Top Research Priorities

• Urban Planning and Smart City Design for Trucks – examining how and where truck freight delivery can be effectively incorporated into urban planning and smart city design approaches. Urban freight is expected to increase 40% by 2050, going hand-in-hand with the slew of retail stores closing due to e-commerce growth. Urban planning is essential to a smoother infrastructure for everyone on the road, and everyone receiving deliveries. While trucks were only 7% of urban travel in 2015, they accounted for 18% of the congestion, according to the 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard. That doesn’t include other delivery vehicles, like vans or those delivering in personal cars.
• Assessing the Consistency and Accuracy of CMV Crash Data – will identify ways to improve commercial motor vehicle crash data collection, quality review, data management and data submission at the local and state levels.
• Role and Impact of Government Regulations on Autonomous Vehicles – research will assess the positive and negative impact of regulations being promulgated at the state-level for identification of model legislation on how autonomous technologies and vehicles should be deployed.
• Inconsistencies in CDL Testing – will review the range of requirements for CDL testing across states and identify best practices to develop an effective set of testing requirements.
• Autonomous Impacts on the Truck Driver – a detailed analysis of how autonomous truck technologies will change the operational environment and driving requirements for commercial drivers. For drivers, the potential of job-changing impacts from greater deployment of autonomous technologies is creating concern. ATRI’s autonomous technologies research documented potential impacts on a number of industry issues, including what truck drivers might expect from increased deployment of driver-assistive technologies. While ATRI’s study highlights that drivers will have a critical role in the trucking industry, this issue nonetheless generates some level of uncertainty among drivers.
• Best Practices for Cannabis Intoxication Testing – exploring best practices in the U.S. and abroad, the research will benchmark recommended maximum intoxication levels and identify recommendations for driver sobriety testing. The prevalence of both cannabis as well as alcohol use and the high morbidity associated with motor vehicle crashes has lead to a plethora of research on the link between the two. The detrimental effects of cannabis use vary in a dose-related fashion, and are more pronounced with highly automatic driving functions than with more complex tasks that require conscious control, whereas with alcohol produces an opposite pattern of impairment. 

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) and its Federation partners in the State Trucking Associations (STA) continually seek opportunities to identify and prioritize the industry’s most pressing concerns. For the past 13 years, the industry has relied on the American Transportation Research Institute’s (ATRI’s) annual industry survey to better understand trucking’s most critical issues as well as to identify preferred strategies to address them.