Iteris Inc. announced that Prime Inc., a premier refrigerated, flatbed and tanker carrier, has achieved an 85 percent decrease rate in run-off-road and rollover accidents since deploying Iteris' Lane Departure Warning (LDW) system.

Prime, based in Springfield, Mo., began upgrading the safety of its national fleet of more than 2,700 leased and company-owned trucks with Iteris' LDW technology early last year. During that year, trucks not equipped with Iteris' LDW systems traveled 328 million miles and had a combined run-off-road and rollover accident rate of 0.19 per million or one every 5.3 million miles traveled.
At the end of 2006, Prime equipped 515 trucks with Iteris' LDW systems. These trucks traveled 33.3 million miles and experienced a run-off-road and rollover crash rate of 0.03 per million - or one in 33.3 million miles traveled. This represents a decrease of 85 percent, a significant number considering the substantial costs associated with heavy truck crashes.
In 2006, Prime's total cost for run-off-road and rollover accidents for trucks not equipped with LDW was more than $3 million. For the 515 trucks currently equipped with Iteris' LDW system, Prime estimates it will save approximately $551,000 on an annualized basis on these types of accidents. When compared to the cost of equipping these trucks with LDW, Prime will recognize a positive return on its investment in just over 11 months.
"The initial investment Prime has made to install Iteris' Lane Departure Warning systems in our fleet of trucks has really paid off," said Robert Low, founder and president of Prime, Inc. "In less than a year, we have seen a dramatic reduction in run-off-road and rollover accidents on the trucks we equipped with the technology which has saved the company a considerable amount of money. We're anxious to get all of our trucks equipped as soon as possible, so we can reduce our accident rate even further."
Prime becomes the third major fleet in the last year to report a significant reduction in LDW-related accidents since deploying Iteris' LDW technology in its trucks. The three fleets combined have reported over 256 million miles traveled with LDW and a combined LDW-related accident reduction of 82 percent.
Iteris has sold more than 30,000 LDW systems to the heavy-truck market worldwide, representing an estimated 3 billion miles traveled per year. In the U.S., there are currently 40 fleets specifying Iteris' LDW system with a combined fleet size of nearly 20,000 trucks and another 69 fleets with approximately 144,000 trucks conducting field tests.
For more information, visit www.iteris.com.