IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v2y1995i2p107-117.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The 1982 Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA): Implications of relaxed truck weight and size limits for highway safety

Author

Listed:
  • McCarthy, Patrick S

Abstract

This paper examines the highway safety implications of the 1982 Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA) which, among its provisions, increased minimum truck lengths and maximum truck widths; required states to allow twin trailers; and barred states from reducing existing weight and size limits if these exceeded the limitations specified in the STAA. Evidence is presented that increases in an index of truck fleet size deteriorate highway safety, all else constant. A 1% increase in this index increases the system-wide fatality rate by 0.31%. Although the relationship between highway safety and size of trucking fleet has implications for policies aimed at achieving productivity gains through further increases in weight and size limits, the specific provisions embodied in the STAA had a small beneficial effect on this relationship. Relative to the pre-law environment, highway safety in the post-law environment was slightly less sensitive to changes in size of the trucking fleet.

Suggested Citation

  • McCarthy, Patrick S, 1995. "The 1982 Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA): Implications of relaxed truck weight and size limits for highway safety," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 107-117, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:2:y:1995:i:2:p:107-117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0967-070X(95)91990-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ying, John S, 1990. "The Inefficiency of Regulating a Competitive Industry: Productivity Gains in Trucking Following Reform," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 191-201, May.
    2. Crandall, Robert W & Graham, John D, 1989. "The Effect of Fuel Economy Standards on Automobile Safety," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 97-118, April.
    3. Blair, Roger D & Kaserman, David L & McClave, James T, 1986. "Motor Carrier Deregulation: The Florida Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(1), pages 159-164, February.
    4. Bailey, Elizabeth E, 1986. "Price and Productivity Change Following Deregulation: The U.S. Experience," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 96(381), pages 1-17, March.
    5. John D. Graham & Steven Garber, 1984. "Evaluating the effects of automobile safety regulation," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 3(2), pages 206-224.
    6. Stein, H.S. & Jones, I.S., 1988. "Crash involvement of large trucks by configuration: A case-control study," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 78(5), pages 491-498.
    7. Richard H. Spady & Ann F. Friedlaender, 1978. "Hedonic Cost Functions for the Regulated Trucking Industry," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(1), pages 159-179, Spring.
    8. Nancy L. Rose, 1985. "The Incidence of Regulatory Rents in the Motor Carrier Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(3), pages 299-318, Autumn.
    9. Garbacz, Christopher, 1985. "A note on Peltzman's theory of offsetting consumer behavior," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 183-187.
    10. McMullen, B Starr & Stanley, Linda R, 1988. "The Impact of Deregulation on the Production Structure of the Motor Carrier Industry," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 26(2), pages 299-316, April.
    11. Traynor, Thomas L & McCarthy, Patrick S, 1991. "Trucking Deregulation and Highway Safety: The Effect of the 1980 Motor Carrier Act," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 3(4), pages 339-348, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Behrens, Kristian & Carl Gaigne & Jacques-Francois Thisse, 2006. "Is the regulation of the transport sector always detrimental to consumers?," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-455, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    2. Behrens, Kristian & Gaigné, Carl & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2009. "Industry location and welfare when transport costs are endogenous," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 195-208, March.
    3. Kevin E. Henrickson & Wesley W. Wilson, 2008. "Compensation, Unionization, and Deregulation in the Motor Carrier Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(1), pages 153-177, February.
    4. Chalfant, James & Wallace, Nancy, 1991. "Testing the Translog Specification with the Fourier Cost Function," CUDARE Working Papers 198581, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    5. Georges Dionne & Robert Gagné, 1996. "Progrès technique et croissance de la productivité : estimations sur un panel incomplet de firmes ayant des qualités de production différentes," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 126(5), pages 63-76.
    6. Rich, Daniel P., 2004. "6. Productivity, Technical Change And Labor Relations In Transportation Industries," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 109-135, January.
    7. Wong, Lawrence, 2001. "Measuring technological change in the U.S. motor carrier industry," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 25-54, January.
    8. Peterson, Steven & Hoffer, George & Millner, Edward, 1995. "Are Drivers of Air-Bag-Equipped Cars More Aggressive? A Test of the Offsetting Behavior Hypothesis," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 251-264, October.
    9. Burks, Stephen V. & Guy, Frederick, 2012. "What Are Over-the-Road Truckers Paid For? Evidence from an Exogenous Regulatory Change on the Role of Social Comparisons and Work Organization in Wage Determination," IZA Discussion Papers 6375, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Wilson, Wesley W., 1985. "Interstate Commerce commission regulation of motor carriers operating in the state of WAshington: An historical perspective," Transportation Research Forum Proceedings 1980s 311745, Transportation Research Forum.
    11. Henry, Peter B., 2000. "Is Disinflation Good for Growth?," Research Papers 1657, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    12. Claessens,Constantijn A.*Djankov, Simeon, 1998. "Politicians and firms in seven central and eastern European countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1954, The World Bank.
    13. Jean Pinquet & Georges Dionne & Charles Vanasse & Mathieu Maurice, 2007. "Point-record incentives, asymmetric information and dynamic data," Working Papers hal-00243056, HAL.
    14. Tyndall, Justin, 2021. "Pedestrian deaths and large vehicles," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 26.
    15. Xiao, Junji & Ju, Heng, 2011. "The impacts of air-pollution motivated automobile consumption tax adjustments of China," MPRA Paper 27743, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Arora, Seema, 2000. "Green and Competitive? Evidence from the Stock Market," Research Papers 1650, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    17. Martín, Juan Carlos & Voltes-Dorta, Augusto, 2011. "The econometric estimation of airports' cost function," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 112-127, January.
    18. Greene, David L. & Greenwald, Judith M. & Ciez, Rebecca E., 2020. "U.S. fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards: What have they achieved and what have we learned?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    19. Ron Yang, 2022. "(Don’t) Take Me Home: Home Preference and the Effect of Self-Driving Trucks on Interstate Trade," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of Artificial Intelligence, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. SINGH K. Sanjay & RAGHAV Shalini, 2014. "A NOTE ON RELATIVE EFFICIENCY OF STATE TRANSPORT UNDERTAKINGS IN INDIA DURING 2000s," Studies in Business and Economics, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 9(2), pages 87-97, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:2:y:1995:i:2:p:107-117. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.