Explore Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) involved fatalities in North Carolina with our data visualization tool.
Interactively filter for crash severity, date, time, and location • Time of day / day of week heat grid
Locations of crashes (counties and points)
For help understanding the terms and concepts in the visualization, please see the FAQ below the visualization or email help@coverlab.org
FAQ
What is a CMV?
A CMV (Commercial Motor Vehicle) is any motorized vehicle whose main purpose is to conduct commercial operations. For this visualization, a CMV includes:
- Commercial Bus
- Single Unit Truck (2-Axle, 6-Tire)
- Single Unit Truck (3 Or More Axles)
- Tractor/Doubles
- Tractor/Semi-Trailer
- Truck/Trailer
- Unknown Heavy Truck
It may be important to know that “commercial vehicle” is defined differently depending on the state, federal, or independent agency definition.
What's an "LEL Region"?
An LEL (Law Enforcement Liaison) Region is a group of counties that are represented by certain law enforcement employees that report to GHSP (Governor’s Highway Safety Program) their progress, problems, and what they need to succeed. They are important as GHSP offers them resources, monetary and otherwise, to better the law enforcement community.
What does it mean by "Reporting Dept"?
The Reporting Department for the crash is the department that responded and reported the crash. For example, if the Raleigh Police Department reported a crash, then they are the Reporting Department for that crash.
What is a PDO crash?
PDO stands for Property Damage Only. No one was significantly hurt in the crash, only property such as vehicles, roadside objects, and other forms of property.
What are the letters and numbers in the pie chart?
The pie chart is representing the fatality breakdown on 5 road classifications used in fatal crash reporting. The road in which the crash occurred is put into the following categories:
- I = Interstate
- US = US Highway
- NC = NC Highway
- SR = Secondary Road
- LCL = Local Road
What does the blue-gray grid chart show?
That chart is a TODDOW (Time Of Day and Day Of Week) chart. It is showing the frequency of the crashes broken up by day and time.
For example, if a crash happened at 1:35pm on a Wednesday, then the block in the 12pm-4pm column and in the Wednesday row would go up by 1.
The darker the color, the more frequent that that time of day AND day of week has had such crashes.
What exactly is a "contributing circumstance"?
A contributing circumstance is a known factor that was identified a contributing to the crash, and is reported on the crash report. A contributing circumstance is not necessarily the cause of the crash. Contributing circumstances are indicators of possible crash causes. Usually there are several reasons why a crash happened and it is difficult to determine crash causation without a full investigation and reconstruction.
The contributing circumstances provided in the chart shown are specific to the driver. There are other contributing circumstances that are part of the crash report such as road conditions and non-motorist circumstances. The chart only shows driver-specific factors.