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School bus travel is one of the safest forms of transportation on the road today. The passenger fatality rate in school buses is 0.2 fatalities per million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as compared to 1.5 per million VMT for passenger cars and 1.3 per million VMT for light trucks. Each year on average, nine school bus passengers are fatally injured in school bus crashes while sixteen school-age pedestrians are fatally injured by the school bus. Although much has been done to improve the safety of school buses over the years, more research may reflect new ways to better protect school bus passengers. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded in 1999 that current compartmentalization is incomplete in large school buses in that it does not protect passengers during lateral impacts. In order to better understand severe lateral impacts to school buses and the resulting passenger motion and injuries, the stiffness of the side of the school bus needed to be determined.

Data compiled for most accident reporting systems are typically the result of police accident investigations. Usually police officers have neither the time nor the experience to conduct in-depth accident investigations or collect the necessary data, when trucks are involved, that will allow examination of the relationships between trucks and the roadway environment. When accidents involve multiple deaths or numerous injuries, special police agencies or accident investigation teams may devote the resources necessary to examine truck-roadway environment relationships. This paper examines microscopic data, including specific accident investigations, to determine problem areas and to identify vehicle characteristics. Then macroscopic studies and nationwide accident statistics are analyzed to define the potential scope of vehicle-roadway environment-related problems, with emphasis on trucks.