Glossary
Crash records & preventability
The federal crash record lists crashes meeting a reporting threshold: a fatality, an injury transported for medical treatment, or a vehicle towed from the scene. Crucially, a crash is recorded regardless of fault. A truck rear-ended at a red light appears in the carrier's record the same way as a crash its driver caused.
Preventability determinations
Through the Crash Preventability Determination Program, FMCSA reviews certain defined crash types on request (submitted with evidence through DataQs) and can determine a crash was not preventable, which removes it from the carrier's safety-measurement calculations. The crash itself remains part of the public record. Most crashes are never submitted for review, so the public file is best read as an exposure record, not a fault ledger.
How to read crash data in context
Raw counts mislead in both directions: big fleets accumulate crashes by driving more miles, and a small carrier's two crashes can be a worse rate than a large carrier's twenty. fleetfax normalizes crash counts to fleet size against a national baseline, splits the record by severity (fatal, injury, tow-away) and by time, and flags an elevated crash rate or fatal crash history descriptively, always with the underlying records and the no-fault caveat attached.
Related terms
CSA & the BASICs
FMCSA's safety scoring system: seven behavior categories. Official percentiles are hidden from the public for all seven; the raw data behind five of them is public.
DataQs
FMCSA's system for requesting review of federal data: carriers and drivers can challenge inspection violations, crash records, and other entries they believe are wrong. Successful challenges correct the public record retroactively.
Power units
The self-propelled vehicles a carrier reports operating: trucks and truck tractors, not trailers. The fleet-size figure on the federal record, self-reported on the MCS-150.
fleetfax reads public FMCSA data and is not affiliated with FMCSA or the U.S. Department of Transportation. This page explains terminology; it is not legal advice.