Editorial Policy

This page describes the standards applied to everything published here. It is written to be checkable: each rule below is something a reader can hold an article against.

Evidence

Articles are built from primary sources. In this subject that usually means federal regulations and rulemaking dockets, crash and inspection data published by transportation safety agencies, state department of transportation traffic counts and corridor plans, published engineering standards, manufacturer specification sheets, and archival material for historical pieces.

Primary sources are preferred for safety, regulatory and statistical claims. Contemporary secondary reporting can support a historical account when the original records are unavailable; the article identifies that limitation. Figures attributed only to an unnamed study are not used.

Every article lists its sources with titles and direct links, positioned below the body so the reader can go from a claim to the document behind it. Where a source is paywalled, offline, or available only as a scanned record, the citation says so rather than pointing at something the reader cannot open.

Facts, estimates, and opinion

These are three different things and the writing keeps them apart.

• Facts are statements traceable to a cited source. A regulation says what it says; a data table reports what it reports.
• Estimates are figures derived, rounded, modeled, or reasoned from other numbers. They are marked as estimates, and the article shows the inputs and the arithmetic so the reader can disagree with the method. Typical stopping distances, pavement wear comparisons, and cost-per-mile style numbers nearly always fall in this category, and they are given as ranges when a single number would imply false precision.
• Opinion is the publication's own judgment, such as an argument that a standard is out of date. It is used sparingly, kept visibly separate from the factual passages around it, and never presented as a finding.

Hedging language is not a substitute for any of this. If something is uncertain, the article says what is uncertain and why.

Dating the data

Every figure is tied to the year of the underlying data, not to the day the article was written. Regulatory explanations identify the provisions consulted and their retrieval date; readers should check the current official rule before relying on an explanation. Specifications should be tied to a model year or document revision. Undated or superseded material is not presented as current evidence.

When newer data is released, the article is updated and the change is noted. Anything reviewed and left unchanged keeps its original figures and its original reference year.

What this publication does not claim

• No professional, licensed, or expert review. Articles are not vetted by engineers, lawyers, safety officials, or commercial drivers, and nothing here should be read as if they had been.
• No first-hand testing, measurement, or inspection. There are no instrumented tests, no vehicle evaluations, no site visits standing behind the numbers.
• No advice. Explanatory material about braking, weight limits, or crash risk describes how things work in general; it is not operational, legal, medical, or compliance guidance for a specific vehicle, load, or situation.

Attribution is to The Truck Project Editorial Team rather than to named individuals, and the citation trail is the thing offered in place of credentials.

Images

Images are used to illustrate, not to evidence a claim. Alt text describes what is actually visible in the image. A photograph is never captioned or described in a way that implies it documents the specific vehicle, crash, road, or event under discussion unless the source establishes that it does.

Corrections

Errors get fixed, and the fix is visible. A correction note at the foot of the article states what was wrong and what it now says, and the page's updated date changes. Silent rewriting of a factual error is not acceptable practice here. The corrections page sets out what a report needs to include.

Advertising and sponsorship

This initial edition contains no advertisements, sponsored articles or affiliate links. Future paid placements must be distinguished from ordinary editorial material.

If that ever changes, the principle is straightforward: anything paid for or supplied by an outside party is labeled as such at the top of the page, names the party, and does not borrow the form of an ordinary article. Commercial arrangements do not get a say in editorial coverage, and a page's sources and framing are decided the same way whether or not money is involved anywhere on the site.

Scope and revision

This policy covers the whole site, including the trust pages themselves. It is a working document; when the practice changes, this page changes with it and the updated date reflects that. See also about, contact, and privacy.