GAO examines US Army and Marine Corps tactical vehicle accident causes

“Serious accidents” involving the US Army and Marine Corps (USMC) tactical vehicles are not on a steady rise but service leaders need to take several steps to mitigate future incidents, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

On 14 July GAO released a document outlining nine steps the services need to take to help mitigate injury and deaths from military tank and truck accidents.

“The army and marine corps provide training for drivers of tactical vehicles that can include formal instruction, unit licensing, and follow-on training, but their respective programmes to build driver skills and experience had gaps,” the office wrote. “GAO found that factors, such as vehicle type and unit priorities, affected the amount of training that vehicle drivers received.”

According to GAO data from 2010 to 2019, the services reported 3,753 tactical vehicle accidents from non-combat scenarios that killed 123 service members. Of the total number of accidents, 342 accidents were Class A and B accidents, which result in the most serious injuries and financial cost. The service reported the greatest number of accidents with these two classes of vehicles in 2010, and the number of incidents fluctuated up and down over the remainder of the decade. Many of these non-combat-related events occur during training exercises and include vehicle-to-vehicle collisions, vehicle-to-pedestrian collisions, and vehicle rollovers.

“Driver inattentiveness, lapses in supervision, and lack of training were among the most common causes of these accidents,” GAO wrote. It noted that both services have taken steps to improve their respective driver training programmes, but have not established well-defined processes for performance criteria and measurable standards to train drivers.