We don’t like Mondays

SAN DIEGO — Between 11 at night and nine in the morning, midweek, and anytime between January and June.

According to a new survey released by a company called DriveCam Inc. that’s the safest time to drive a long-haul truck.

Mid-day Mondays in the summer are probably the worst (so, umm, be careful this afternoon).

DriveCam produces driver-monitoring systems and extracts information from the systems they’ve sold; so the company has a database of over 18 million driving events from two billion driving miles.

Among the statistics they come up with?

When collisions and close calls happen most often. Not only that but DriveCam monitors drivers in other industries besides long-haul trucking. So they can compare OTR truckers to others, such as construction drivers, energy suppliers, waste, telco, and transit.

Here’s the, ahem, breakdown:

* Collisions and near collisions in the long-haul trucking industry are very low from January to June, somewhere between one and five percent. (Somehow we doubt Canadian conditions in February were taken into consideration).

* Beginning in July, however, the collision/near collision rate spikes (and actually peaks at 18 percent) remaining above 14 percent through November.

* The collision/near collision rate in the long haul trucking industry is, on average, over five percent higher than other industries from June to November.

* Collisions/near collisions peak on Tuesdays and Fridays in long haul trucking (21 percent and 20 percent) respectively.

* The long haul trucking collision/near collision rate is slightly lower than other industries on Wednesday and Thursday, as well as on Saturday and Sunday.

* Collisions/near collision rate in long-haul trucking remains below four percent from 11:00 p.m. until 9:00 a.m. (well, ya, no kidding).

* Beginning at 9:00 a.m., the collision rate in long haul trucking begins to climb with a small dip between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. before increasingly sharply.

* The long haul trucking collision/near collision rate peaks between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. at nine percent takes a sharp nosedive and then rises to 6.5 percent between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. before starting a decline below four percent.