On the open road, truck accidents are a worst-case scenario. With a tractor trailer weighing up to 80,000 pounds barreling down on a smaller passenger car, there is often a greater likelihood of injury, physical impairment or even death when compared to a two-car collision. While we don’t have the most recent statistics for 2021, we can point to the more than 5,000 large trucks involved in fatal crashes in 2019; non-fatal injury crashes were up to 120,000 during the same year, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

How these crash statistics play out in real life is evidenced in the common carrier section of our website, where we report on the fatalities and serious injuries that have taken place in the past 24 months (through early 2022), delineated by corporate truck carrier. The numbers are staggering: nearly all intrastate and interstate carriers have been involved in sustained injury crashes, with the largest conglomerates and trucking corporations incurring the highest numbers. So what are the root causes for truck accidents? 

Maintenance issues

As miles accumulate, wear and tear on the truck starts to show. While some of the largest carriers have in-house maintenance departments, others do not, outsourcing mechanical work or deferring action for months or even years. Preemptive maintenance is an essential part of trucking safety; however, taking the truck off the road to perform this maintenance costs the trucking companies money (and short-term profit). For this reason, some trucking companies forgo necessary maintenance on their fleet until it is too late.

Deferring service work is against the law. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has strict rules for truck maintenance, including routine inspections before each shift as well as the extent of the carriers’ responsibility for maintenance and inspections. A more comprehensive outline of all the parts that require routine or annual maintenance are outlined in 49 CFR Part 396. As a cursory synopsis, the trucking company is responsible for making sure every vehicle is safe to operate. With proper inspection and maintenance, tire blowouts, break failures, U-joint failures, overheating and other common issues are almost always preventable.

  • Issues with the braking system. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in 49 CFR Part 393 Subpart C – Brakes states that commercial motor vehicles must have brakes adequate to stop and hold the vehicle or combination of vehicles, as well as service, parking and emergency brake systems. In layman’s terms, this means that a truck’s braking system must meet specific brake performance standards, including braking force as a percentage of gross vehicle weight; specific deceleration in feet per second based on type of truck; and application and braking distance in feet from initial speed at 20 mph. Unfortunately, not all truck carriers rigorously apply these rules. According to the July 2007 Large Truck Crash Causation Study by the FMCSA, nearly 29% of truck crashes are attributable to faulty brakes.
  • Inadequate maintenance of tires. In 2020 alone, tires accounted for more than 2000 out-of-service violations; this includes nearly 20% of all trucks parked during a three-day enforcement event, and second only to brakes as a leading failure cause, per the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance International Roadcheck. Trucking companies must routinely check tires for signs of wear and keep them inflated to proper pressure; nearly 90% of tire failures are attributed to underinflation. “Driving on underinflated tires generates higher internal running temperatures, and that will lead to tire blowouts,” says Jon Intagliata, Bendix product group director for Trailer Controls in a September 2021 interview with the Commercial Carrier Journal. A blowout can have significant consequences; a truck driver may lose control and swerve into traffic, or truck tire debris may put others at risk.
  • Issues with hitches or fifth-wheel coupling components. Most drivers are familiar with ball hitches on pickups. Semi-trucks require stronger, more complex hitches to pull a trailer, typically defined as “fifth-wheel couplings”. In many cases, drivers simply back up the truck cab to the coupling and the locking mechanism is aligned and secured via pin. But the hitch can become defective with lack of maintenance. Hitches bear the weight of a trailer and grind against the trailer pin when in motion. Over time, they may break down due to friction or a lack of lubrication. Hitches are only meant to bear a certain amount of weight; if the truck is overloaded regularly, its hitch may break down at a faster rate. Or if the locking mechanism of the hitch is loose, it can cause the trailer to become disconnected when the truck is in motion. 

To assure proper and safe kingpin/fifth wheel coupling, kingpin inspection and maintenance should be conducted every three months or 30,000 miles. Certified technicians should be reviewing the coupling systems at these intervals to ensure working condition, and conduct the appropriate repair or replacement; otherwise, the truck carrier may be liable for maintenance failures that are prime causes for truck accidents. 

A quick review of the FMCSA Safety Measurement System shows the extent of deferred maintenance in the general trucking public. Some of the biggest carriers have a substantial two-year history (through January 2022) of maintenance violations that range from broken lights to brake failures: XPO Logistics (1,872 violations); JB Hunt Transport (5,818 violations); Swift Transportation (5,831 violations); and Old Dominion (1,057 violations). 

Cargo-loading issues

Trucks are designed to carry tens of thousands of pounds of goods, but not all loads are equally safe. According to Federal data, every year about 10,000 truck accidents occur as the result of cargo shift or cargo securement; put another way, one in every fourteen trucking accidents involves a cargo-loading violation. Improperly loaded cargo makes the vehicle less responsive to steering and braking maneuvers, which can cause the driver to lose control. Shifting cargo can cause a truck to roll, jackknife or even swerve into oncoming traffic. For this reason, the FMCSA has specific regulations for cargo securement on truck loads:

Cargo must be firmly immobilized or secured on or within a vehicle by structures of adequate strength, dunnage (loose materials used to support and protect cargo) or dunnage bags (inflatable bags intended to fill space between articles of cargo or between cargo and the wall of the vehicle), shoring bars, tiedowns or a combination of these.

The FMCSA has additional cargo-securement requirements with regard to the type of cargo, including logs, metal coils, pipes and heavy equipment. But agency stipulations with regard to securement, working load limits, blocking and bracing are applicable to all commodities being transported. When trucking companies fail to meet these regulations, they put their drivers in danger — as well as anyone sharing the road with them. 

Trucking companies must ensure that every load, for every trip, is fully secured; truck dispatchers must understand the specifications and capabilities of each vehicle, including weight and balance characteristics, legal load limits, and cargo securement requirements. Trucking companies are responsible for establishing procedures that address payload characteristics during loading and unloading, and ensuring that drivers are fully trained to transport their cargo safely.

Training issues

High turnover is a problem that has plagued the trucking industry for years. Low pay, irregular hours, and poor working conditions arose from the 1980s era of deregulation. In the name of fostering competition, the Carter Administration introduced the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, which cleared the way for an influx of new trucking companies and conglomerates that diminished pay and increased demands on truckers. This created an opening for big-box retailers, like Walmart and Amazon, to harness increasingly cheap freight and international trade to stock enormous stores with a vast profusion of wares. The largest trucking carriers — Swift Transport, Old Dominion and others — also profited, as they bested most competition on the market. 

While many trucking companies became household names and reliable winners on the U.S. stock exchange, the trucker was left behind. “Along the way, truck driving was downgraded from a middle-class profession to one best avoided,” explains Steve Viscelli, a labor expert at the University of Pennsylvania in a February 2022 The New York Times article entitled, “The Real Reason America Doesn’t Have Enough Truckers”.

Today, the issue persists: becoming a truck driver remains an unattractive proposition for many. Turnover for truck drivers in fleets with more than $30 million of annual revenue was 92% at the end of 2020. In other words, more than nine out of every ten drivers will no longer be working for the same trucking company within a year. Instead of focusing on retaining these drivers (through better pay, less hectic schedules, benefits, health care), truck carriers continue to churn and burn through employees. 

What is the consequence of these carriers’ actions?

  • Fledgling drivers with minimal experience on the road. 
  • Few (if any) training programs, as carriers require only minimum standards: a medical exam, a written exam and a brief driving test, typically administered by the same school that drivers paid to train them.
  • No at-the-wheel training hour requirements
  • Few (if any) safety courses

The February 7, 2022 TIME Magazine article, “There’s a Problem With How We Train Truckers” offered a perfect encapsulation of this situation: “to drive a 40,000-pound truck, there’s no minimum behind-the-wheel driving time required, nor proof of ability to navigate through mountains, snow, or rain.”

The situation may become even more dangerous, as the “Safe Driver Apprentice Pilot Program” introduced by the U.S. government and supported by the American Trucking Associations, proposes lowering the minimum age for truck drivers from 21 to just eighteen years old. Road-safety advocacy groups expressed concern about this pilot program, pointing to a studies that show a staggering increase in injury crashes in this age group. For more information about this pilot program and our view on the safety implications, please visit our blog on the subject.

Tight deadlines that lead to speeding

Truck drivers are often held to tight delivery deadlines. Regardless of potential delays (roadwork, traffic diversions, etc.), dangerous weather or even equipment failure, the carrier expects the trucker to deliver on schedule. A 2014 study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) showed that, of the 1,265 long-haul truck drivers interviewed, nearly 75% believed that their delivery schedules were too tight; 24% often continued driving despite fatigue, bad weather, or heavy traffic because they needed to deliver or pick up a load at a given time; 4.5% often drove 10 miles per hours or more over the speed limit;. 4.5% of trucks admitted to “often” driving 10 miles per hour over the speed limit to meet their employers’ deadlines. Speeding was the proximate result. Nearly 23% of all truck crashes are a result of speeding, according to FMCSA.

In all but the most extreme of instances, however, trucking companies are slow to discipline their drivers who are habitual speeders; doing so affects their profits, as it further constricts available labor and requires the administration of a retraining and monitoring program. To reduce the number of speeding truck drivers on our roads, truck carriers must improve their drivers’ working conditions, properly vet and train their staff, and reward safe driving.

Substance use

Truck companies and carriers are legally mandated to drug test drivers as: 1) a pre-employment requirement; 2) mandated after certain types of accidents; 3) a condition of random drug testing of its the driving fleet members throughout the year (§382.305); 4) required after reasonable suspicion of drug use (§382.307); 5) a condition to return to duty after testing positive, refusing, or otherwise violating the prohibitions of 49 CFR Part 382 Subpart B; and 6) as a follow-up as prescribed by the substance abuse professional (§382.311 and §40.307).

Yet, approximately 50% of truck drivers have admitted to drinking on the job, and nearly one in three truck drivers has used amphetamines while working, according to the American Addiction Centers. Another one in five has driven professionally while under the influence of marijuana; 3% have admitted to driving while under the influence of cocaine. These statistics suggest that truck carriers need to do a much better job at following drug testing protocols as mandated by the FMCSA. Vetting potential drivers, random regular drug testing and offering education/health care services for substance abuse would help eliminate this endemic problem; trucking companies must ensure that the members of their trucking fleet follow the rules of the road – sober – every time. 

Distracted driving

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 10% of fatal crashes and 15% of crashes resulting in injury in 2015 were due to distracted driving (answering phone calls, texting, eating, drinking, tuning the radio). Instances of distracted driving increase during long-distance travel, likely due to monotony. The NHTSA study made a number of recommendations for drivers, trucking companies and fleet safety managers to help halt distracted driving: 

  • Fleet safety managers must engage and educate their drivers, and discuss the importance of being attentive and not engaging in distracting tasks or behaviors. Even routine types of behaviors (e.g., reaching for an object, putting on sunglasses, or adjusting the instrument panel) can distract and may lead to a safety-critical event. 
  • Trucking companies must develop policies to minimize or eliminate the use of in-vehicle devices while driving. Fleet safety managers should be cognizant of devices that drivers may bring in the truck cab and use while driving. 
  • Fleet safety managers must educate drivers on the danger of interacting with dispatching devices while driving. Similar to manually dialing a cell phone, if drivers must interact with a dispatching device, the NHTSA recommends that drivers do so only when the truck is stopped. Similarly, fleet safety managers must properly train drivers not to text while driving.
  • Trucking companies must train their drivers not to read, write, or look at maps while driving. Seemingly quick tasks were found to significantly draw visual attention away from the forward roadway, among the frequent causes for truck accidents. 

Truck carriers must do right by their drivers

Trucks are the lifeblood of our commerce system; they transport more than 70% of all goods in the United States, with a net value of over $10 trillion. Nonetheless, we need carriers to care more about their drivers than the almighty dollar. As advocates for safer trucking, we support seek to eliminate the causes for truck accidents: limit driving hours, loosen delivery schedules, provide proper driver training, enforce annual follow-up training, conduct regular drug testing, and ensure the safety of the truckers under their employ. 

These measures should be in addition to the standards set forth by the FMCSA and other safety advocacy groups, including improving fleet policies, proper truck maintenance and regular servicing. Every truck pulled from the road for maintenance may equate to a temporary loss in revenue, but most multi-million dollar carriers can easily afford to schedule regular maintenance that will help ensure the safety of the vehicle itself, and by extension, all those that travel the highways. 

If you have been involved in a truck crash, we may be able to help.

If you have been injured in a trucking accident, you probably have lots of questions and concerns. First, take care of your medical needs and health; then contact someone who can help answer those questions, and help navigate through the truck carrier and insurance system. The team at the Law Offices of Peter M. Anderson and Colorado Truck Accidents may be able to help. Feel free to call us anytime at 303-444-1505.