A transportation safety analytics company has named five sections of highway in North America as the riskiest road segments for truck drivers and of those five, three are in Pennsylvania and two are in the Lehigh Valley.
A half-mile road section near the Route 309/I-78 split in Upper Saucon Township and a half-mile stretch of I-78 in the area of West Emmaus Avenue have made the list of roadways where Lytx, of San Diego, Calif., has tracked the most incidents of risky behavior by truck drivers employed by its clients.
Ryan Brandos, a Lytx data analyst, was quick to point out that the survey wasn’t looking at accidents or actual traffic citations, just the volume of behavior that can often lead to accidents or violations.
For example, the company tracks such things as aggressive driving, not wearing a seatbelt, following too closely, drowsy driving and aggressive driving.
Those are things he said drivers should always be aware of, but knowing where bad driving habits happen more often is a key piece of data.
“The number one thing we would say to our clients is to make sure your drivers know this is a high risk area so stay alert,” Brandos said. “Or, if you have the ability, drive around it or go another way.”
To rank the risky road segments, Lytx divided the nation’s roads into half-mile square segments that its customers pass through every day.
Different risky behaviors are given different point values based on how likely they are to lead to a collision and those were organized geographically using the blocks they created.
He said road issues such as high traffic, construction and high merge areas can all contribute to risky behaviors.
The third Pennsylvania road segment was along I-81 near Crooked Hill Road in Susquehanna Township, which is just east of the Harrisburg Area Community College.
The other two road segments were in Tennessee:
Tennessee Interstate 40, near Green Hill Road, east of Knoxville
Tennessee Interstate 24, near Belvoir Avenue in Chattanooga.
According to Lytx, these five road segments are 172 times more risky on average than the rest of the company’s trucking-industry footprint, based its risk score system.
The data is based on observed risk behaviors of Lytx client data, specifically 116,000 event recorders in over-the-road trucking vehicles.
The statistics were gathered between January and September.
