Truck vs passenger car accidents always end in a disaster in which the people in the car are the losers. The crashes are disasters, which almost always cause catastrophic death and destruction.

There was a time I remember when truck drivers were called the “knights of the road”? They had a reputation for safety and for helping those stranded on lonely roadways. In those days, the truck drivers served a romantic notion of the open road while on their long journeys; carrying the freight of America from East, West, North and South. I still remember driving by trucks and reaching out the window to give the motion of pulling down on an imaginary cord, just to hear the trucker respond with that wonderful air-horn.

Then trains began increasing competition with trucking companies for freight transfer. The piggyback system ate into the profits of the long haul truckers. Why pay a driver benefits with gas and insurance when you could simply drive your trailer to a train, load it on and deliver by having a tractor meet it at the destination for delivery. Competition quickly became, and still is, the name of the game and public safety has increasingly become its casualty.

Why does there seem to be an increase in trucking crashes?

The obvious two factors are increasing competition and the fact that there are more truck drivers on the road and this results in the human risks to increase proportionally.

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I used to feel safe when I would see a commercial truck traveling next to me on the road. After reading some statistics comparing airline pilots to truck drivers, I am not so sure I feel that way now.

In your mind imagine a truck tractor with two trailers attached to it, sitting next to an airliner. Not a great deal of difference between the two in size. Granted the 747, for example, weighs over a whopping 735,000 pounds at take off; compared to a meager weight of around 150,000 pounds for a tractor trailer.

On the other hand, the traffic in the air has not yet gotten as congested as the roadways and 747’s do not regularly drive amongst 4000 pound passenger vehicles.

So, I was shocked when I saw the comparison between airline pilots and truck drivers when it comes to suitability:

Number of Pilots: 590,000

Number of Truck Drivers: 10,000,000

Number of commercial planes: 222,000

Number of commercial trucks: 8,000,000

Pilot age limits: 65

Trucker age limits: None

Airline Industry prohibition re: narcotics: yes

Trucking Industry prohibition re: narcotics: No

Flying hours limitations: 30/week; 100/month; 1000/year

Driving hours limitations: 77/week; 88/8 days; 330/month; 4000/year

Flying hours tracked?: yes — electronic tracking

Driving hours tracked?: yes — driver kept log

Federal Regulatory budget for airlines: $14,600,000,000

Federal Regulatory budget for trucks: $500,000,000

Sobering numbers as we drive our little 4000 pound vehicles next to those 80,000 to 140,000 pound trucks, at 70+ miles per hour; after the trucker has been driving — -how many hours?

If we add to the mix of driving distractions for truckers the following: texting, using laptops, cell phones, eating, and fatigue; we have a recipe for potential trouble. Truck operational problems further aggravate the situation: braking malfunctions and tire over wear, for example. Finally, road conditions: vehicles driven by other distracted drivers; ice, rain, Florida “black ice”; and escalating vehicle population. Taking these factors into consideration, together with the above statistics, best illustrates how dangerous it really is on our roadways.

So, don’t text; don’t speed, don’t drive after drinking; and BE CAREFUL out there!

A Single vehicle automobile accident is not always what it appears to be on the surface. Typically, when an automobile crash happens involving a single car, even the police attribute it to driver error, environmental causes, or similar combination of contributing factors.

Not always as simple as it seems on the surface. In-depth investigation of single vehicle, including tractor trailer, accidents can often disclose more interesting information.

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We have all been there. When you begin to pass a tractor trailer on the highway, you speed up just a little bit in an effort to get quickly clear or you slow down and simply refuse to take the chance. If passing, you are all the while holding your breath and engaging in an internal monologue that involves begging the particular truck not to drift into your lane.  Or that when seeing such a truck up ahead, I have unsettling visions similar to that portrayed in this video:

If I am alone in this regard, then I have just outed myself as an anxious, neurotic, pessimist.  However, when I see a story like this one reported on WLTX in Columbia, SC, I am reminded that accidents like these do not always happen to the “other guy” because one of us is always going to be that “other guy”. They are a tragic reality on the asphalt arteries dominated by tractor trailers whose bodies are unwieldy, loads can be dangerous and drivers are sometimes fatigued.  Such a combination poses a constant threat to other vehicles and often yields devastating consequences.

On October 5, 2005, a University of Washington professor was killed when an overloaded logging truck lost its load.  This preventable death was one of over 5,000 attributable to tractor trailers in that year alone, not to mention over 100,000 injuries attributable to same.

Federal laws regulating commercial vehicles exist.  For example, there are length and width limitations, all commercial vehicles are required to pass annual safety inspections, and all owners and operators are subject to fitness tests, to name a few.
Compartmental regulations are all well and good, but the one thing that is beyond regulation is the final product.  For example, one knows the makeup and ingredients of a single shot of Patron gold tequila, and likewise any other individual liquors; such can be measured, quantified, inspected.  But when that tequila is mixed with other known quantities of vodka, gin, rum and triple sec, the result is a drastically different mixture whose effect on the imbiber is far more potent and dangerous than that of a single shot of any of the above-named.  The combination and the effect cannot be measured, anticipated, quantified, regulated.  And like the morning-after effects of Long Island Iced Tea, the loaded to maximum capacity, maximum length, maximum width commercial vehicle, that sets out on the road in the early pre-dawn hours, with an operator who has not slept in 48 hours is a potentially lethal, unable to be regulated until it is to late menace to our highways with every RPM.

As it currently stands, the maximum weight of a commercial vehicle is 80,000 pounds.  At an average highway speed of 60 mph (I am, at 70 plus mph on the interstate, routinely passed), it neither takes an expert in physics to understand the damage this could, and does, cause, nor to envision how difficult it would be for an operator (even a well-rested, fresh operator) to stay in control of such a beast.  However, knowing this is the case, there are efforts underway to convince federal lawmakers to increase the maximum weight to 97,000 pounds. Can you imagine any scenario in which a nearly 50 ton vehicle going 70 plus mph would not be a juggernaut of destruction?

When will senseless and preventable deaths at the hands of overloaded tractor trailers dwindle … when companies put public safety before private gain.

This is a problem, but there are solutions!  Visit such websites as www.roadsafeamerica.org or stopbigtrucks.org to learn more.