Goods movement benefits the North Carolina economy by providing firms
and consumers with needed materials. The freight sector has long monitored key
performance indicators (KPIs) focused around delay and efficiency. This project
focused on how monitoring of road safety KPIs could benefit goods movement in
North Carolina. We recommend that North Carolina Department of Transportation
(NCDOT) Office of Logistics + Freight (OLF) consider systematic monitoring of
commercial vehicle-involved crashes across the state by focusing on overall
crashes, fatalities, and severe injuries. We suggest that monitoring efforts
leverage existing work based on the police crash reports. For example, the
Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Resource Lab (COVERLAB) at North Carolina State
University currently geocodes and presents information on commercial vehicle
crashes. We recommend OLF consider augmenting currently available indicators
with information on the number of commercial vehicle crashes involving
vulnerable road users, i.e. pedestrians and cyclists, as this is an emerging
area of concern in road safety. Additionally, we recommend that OLF track
publicly available indicators on an annual basis using the database that we
have provided in this report.
