Commercial truck parking and other safety issues.

Pigman, Jerry G.; Winchester, Graham; Swallom, Nathaniel · 2015 · ROSA P / University of Kentucky Transportation Center

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Summary

This study addresses the safety risks associated with commercial truck parking shortages in Kentucky, where trucks are involved in approximately 10% of all fatal accidents on interstates and parkways. The research was motivated by legislative priorities such as SAFETEA-LU and Jason’s Law, which highlight the need for adequate parking to prevent driver fatigue and illegal shoulder parking. The primary objective was to quantify parking demand, identify locations with documented safety issues, and propose countermeasures to mitigate these risks. The methodology combined a literature review with empirical data analysis. Researchers analyzed crash data from the Kentucky CRASH database for the period 2010–2013, filtering for incidents involving commercial vehicles (gross vehicle weight rating ≥10,001 pounds) linked to fatigue or shoulder usage. From an initial pool of 848 matching crashes, detailed review identified 239 crashes specifically related to parking issues. Additionally, observational surveys were conducted during the summer of 2014 to assess parking facility usage. These surveys focused on Kentucky’s primary north-south interstates (I-65 and I-75) and sampled other routes (I-24, I-64, and I-71). Data were collected during both daytime and nighttime periods to capture temporal usage patterns, with nighttime surveys emphasizing the after-midnight period when demand for overnight parking is highest. The findings revealed significant disparities in parking availability and usage. Of 4,715 spaces surveyed during the day, 45% were in use, whereas 87% of 7,844 spaces were occupied during nighttime observations. Usage rates varied by route, ranging from a low of 32% on I-24 during the day to a high of 93% on I-71 at night. Crash analysis indicated that two-thirds of the identified parking-related crashes occurred on I-64, I-65, I-71, and I-75. The study established a direct correlation between crash clusters and the proximity and usage rates of parking facilities; sites with usage rates of 90% or higher were identified as candidates for expansion or new facility development. Furthermore, the literature review highlighted that increased spacing between rest areas correlates with higher rates of fatigue-related crashes. The study concludes that addressing truck parking demand is critical for highway safety. Recommendations include utilizing both public and private parking areas to increase capacity, deploying Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to provide real-time information on available spaces, and combining GPS tracking with electronic communication to guide drivers to the nearest open facilities. The authors also advise monitoring parking usage rates to inform future infrastructure needs, ensuring that facilities can accommodate the growing volume of truck traffic and reduce the incidence of fatigue-related and shoulder-related crashes.

Key finding

Nighttime commercial truck parking usage reached 87 percent across surveyed Kentucky interstate facilities, and 239 crashes related to parking safety were identified between 2010 and 2013.

Methodology

dataset

Sample size: 239

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

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• truck driver fatigue