First Advisor

Jason C. Anderson

Date of Award

Spring 2024

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.) in Civil & Environmental Engineering

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Language

English

Subjects

Trucking -- Accidents -- Oregon -- Statistics, Hours of labor -- Law and legislation -- United States, Trucking -- Deregulation -- United States, COVID-19 Pandemic (2020- ), Trucking -- Safety regulations -- United States

DOI

10.15760/CCEMP.63

Abstract

At the start of the pandemic the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued declaration No. 2020-002 which included a long list of goods given temporary emergency relief (deregulation) from national statutes 49 CFR Parts 390-399 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations that oversee trucking. In particular, this granted emergency relief from Title 49 CFR § 395.3: maximum driving time for motor carriers or their drivers, regarded as hours-of-service (HOS), and subsequently further expanded to include short-haul trips, adverse driving conditions, break requirements, and sleeper berths. Regulations which play a crucial role in establishing the safe operation and management of motor carriers, their drivers, and the public.

The consequences for these suspensions of regulations from a safety standpoint are not fully understood. The research presented here endeavors to provide insight into these motor carrier regulation relaxations from a safety perspective by assessing crash proportions and modeling injury severity. Oregon crash data from 2019 through 2021 (before, during, and after COVID) was used for analysis. Proportions tests indicate statistically significant differences between time periods for various crash-related factors, while the injury severity models suggest contributing injury severity factors were also different among time periods.

Rights

©2024

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

A research project report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42201

Available for download on Wednesday, December 10, 2025

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