The Rise In Fatal Crashes Involving Large Trucks

According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, there were 4,050 large commercial trucks involved in motor vehicle accidents in 2015. Some of them occurred in Connecticut. This number represents an 8 percent increase from 2014.

The agency’s report shows that those large trucks, which are classified as weighing over 10,000 pounds, ended up being involved in 3,598 accidents that occurred that year. The involvement rate for every 100 million vehicle miles that were traveled by large trucks rose from 1.34 to 1.45.

In 2015, there were an estimated total of 415,000 police-reported crashes that involved large trucks. Fatalities occurred in 1percent of the crashes, and some form of injury occurred one-fifth of the crashes.

When examined with regard to the type of crash that occurred, the statistics show that one-vehicle crashes in which the vehicle in the crash was a truck and the crash involved a pedestrian, bicyclist or some other non-motorized vehicle accounted for 20 percent of the total number of fatal crashes. Nearly two-thirds of the crashes that resulted in fatalities and involved large trucks were two-vehicle crashes.

Additional statistics from the FMCSA’s 2015 report show that for all of the fatal accidents in which a large truck were a factor, 25 percent occurred on interstate highways and 60 percent took place on rural roads. The number of truck drivers involved in fatal crashes for that year was slightly less than 4,000. Drivers who were 25 years of age or younger numbered 206, while there were 211 drivers who were at least 66 years old.

People who have been injured in a trucking accident may want to meet with an attorney to consider their legal options. The attorney can review the police investigation report, witness testimony and other evidence such as the truck driver’s cellphone records and the trucking company’s maintenance logs in order to determine the party or parties that should shoulder the financial responsibility for the injured victim’s losses.