ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The American Trucking Associations is asking a major newspaper to correct several factual errors in articles that skewed the trucking industry’s crash record and portrayed it to be against highway safety.

As a national summit on distracted driving gets under way this week, the New York Times’ coverage raised the ire of trucking representatives, who said a series called Driven to Distraction "presented misleading characterization" of the ATA’s views on the subject, "and included factual errors on truck crash data compiled by federal safety officials."

ATA says there were similar errors a week ago in a Times editorial — also pointed out here in todaystrucking.com’s Right Turn Blog.

According to the ATA, it has written a letter to the editor addressing the errors and mischaracterizations and the newspaper will reportedly run two corrections to the article’s representation of truck crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

In the article, the reporter states that NHTSA data shows the number of large-truck-involved crash deaths rose significantly from 1997 to 2007, when in fact the number decreased by 11 percent and is now the lowest rate on record.

The error occurred because the newspaper misinterpreted figures that NHTSA published in its "Traffic Safety Facts" for 1997 and 2007. The two figures were not comparable, says ATA. The 1997 figure was for trucks over 26,000 pounds gross vehicle weight while the 2007 figure was for trucks over 10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight, which inflated the 2007 number.

What’s more, the Times repeats — not for the first time — the same mistakes by special interest groups who use highway fatality stats to claim that large trucks "caused" deaths that occurred in those crashes, when actually NHTSA states only that those crashes "involved" large trucks.

In fact, a majority of highway deaths are caused by automobile drivers, not truck drivers. Numerous scientific studies, including one by the American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety, have found that approximately 75 percent of all fatal car-truck crashes are caused by the car driver.

ATA also notes that its official policy, which it sent to the paper, "encourages drivers and/or motor carriers to consider a range of policies and safeguards intended to reduce, minimize and or eliminate driver distractions that may be caused by the increased use of electronic technologies."