Floridians who spend any amount of time on the road realize that large trucks are an inescapable part of the landscape. With that, it is a constant danger that there will be a collision with a large truck. In many cases, a truck accident will be a multi-vehicle accident with serious injuries and fatalities. A study examined safety problems that truckers who drive long distances and their companies face.
As recently as 2012, there were more than 1.75 million people who drove large trucks for a living. The vast majority were long-haul drivers. A survey by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health conducted this survey in 2010. They did so by speaking to drivers at 32 truck stops in the U.S. The research centered around accidents, close calls, moving violations, injuries suffered doing their jobs, their work environment, safety factors, training they received, how satisfied they were with their jobs and behaviors they exhibited while driving.
The study showed that around 2.6 percent of long-haul drivers reported having been in a minimum of one accident in 2010. Thirty-five percent stated that they were in at least one accident while doing their jobs as a long-haul driver. Twenty-four percent said they had a minimum of one close call in the previous week. Seventeen percent had at least one citation for a moving violation. Also, 4.7 percent said they were injured in a non-crash and it involved days away from work in the prior year.
In addition, 68 percent stated that they had non-crash injuries that involved days away from work and they did not report them. Seventy-three percent believed that their schedules to make their deliveries were unrealistically tight. More importantly, the following statistics are cause for concern — 37 percent admitted to a failure to comply with rules for hours-of-service and 38 percent said their entry-level training was not sufficient. Finally, 15 percent believed that safety was not a priority for their management.
A lack of adherence to safety rules and companies exhibiting disinterest of employees following the rules to get the loads to the destinations faster can combine with other factors to place severe dangers on the truckers and, especially, other people on the road. When there is a truck accident and there were serious injuries or deaths, the trucking log and other pieces of evidence need to be studied in depth to pursue legal compensation.
Source: sunnewsreport.com, “NIOSH Study Reveals Safety Issues in Long-haul Trucking Industry,” Colin Fluxman, Jan. 5, 2016
