NHTSA report looks at likelihood of fatal truck crashes by state
June 11, 2015On behalf of Terence Gross of Gross & Schuster, P.A. posted in Truck Accidents on Friday, March 14, 2014.
According to a recent report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, North Dakota is the state where drivers are most likely to be involved in a fatal truck accident. The report took crash data from 2012, measuring the number of fatal truck accidents against the entire vehicle population.
While North Dakota came out on top in the report, the state of Texas had the greatest overall number of fatal truck accidents. Nationwide, the number of fatal truck crashes in 2012 was 3,802. That was a 4 percent increase from 2011.
One common reason for truck accidents is driver fatigue. Although federal law has put regulations in place to ensure that truckers have adequate rest and are safe to drive on the road, those regulations are not always followed. The most recent effort to address the issue was with updated hours-of-service rules, which govern behind-the-wheel time and required rest periods. These rules were not welcome within the trucking industry when they were implemented, and there has been some pushback. Still, when a trucker or a company fails to abide by its legal duties and causes an accident as a result, they need to be held responsible.
Truck accidents can obviously be very serious for those involved. Because of the sheer size of semi-trucks, the potential for serious injury or death from such accidents is increased. It is important for those who have been harmed in such an accident to know how to hold a trucker accountable for his or her negligence.
Source: Cars.com, “Where Are You Most Likely to Die in a Truck Crash?,” March 3, 2014.
