Tractor-Trailer and Eighteen-Wheeler Crashes: Can Stability Controls reduce Them?

Probably the most important recent vehicle safety technology is so-called vehicle stability control. This mechanism essentially uses computerized braking controls at each wheel to assist drivers in keeping control of their vehicles in emergency situations. In essence the computer detects loss of steering control and adjusts braking at each wheel to help regain control.

This technology has been widely praised and is regarded by car insurance comapnies as the most important modern safety feature after the airbag and seatbelt.

So why on earth wouldn't our largest vehicles, the ones with the most destructive capacity have a technology designed to keep them in control?

Some of the answer is cost, some is historic resistance to change and some is just ignorance. The bottom-line is that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration wanted to look at this scientifically and the University of Michigan obliged. http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/NRD/Multimedia/PDFs/Crash%20Avoidance/2009/811205.pdf

The findings are not suprising. The technology would reduce the incidence of tractor trailer crashes, reduce wrongful death and serious injury and ultimately save the industry money. Your move commercial trucking industry.