If you are one of the many Colorado residents looking ahead to road travel over the holidays, you might have reservations about being on the highways with a large number of semi trucks or other commercial vehicles. Accidents involving tractor trailers can be highly dangerous. Just how big of a problem are these crashes?
Records from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, more than 3,600 people died in large truck collisions in the United States. This represents a 16 percent increase in truck fatalities over five years prior. Of those who died, 68 percent were drivers or passengers in other cars, pickup trucks, minivans or SUVs. Fifteen percent of people killed were on motorcycles, bicycles or foot and 16 percent were drivers or passengers in the large trucks themselves.
The IIHS indicates that on average truck accident fatalities account for 10 percent of all highway deaths in the nation and, as seen in the 2014 numbers, people in passenger vehicles comprise the bulk of those killed in these crashes.
Many things can contribute to the severity of collisions involving commercial vehicles including fatigue among drivers. The federal government does stipulate a maximum number of hours that truckers are allowed to drive each day but this may not always be heeded as truckers and trucking companies can face pressures to meet deadlines. The weight of these vehicles and time needed for them to come to complete stops also may be factors in these wrecks. If you would like to learn more about semi truck safety and accident risks, please feel free to visit the trucking collision compensation page of our Colorado personal injury website.
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