With a typical weight of about 80,000 pounds, a full-sized commercial truck can flatten a vehicle in case of an impact. The nagging size and weight disparity between commercial trucks and other vehicles is why commercial car truck accidents tend to have a twist of serious injury or even death. Trailers also tend to have fairly high speeds while on the highways, thus, colliding with something is bound to cause extreme injuries. Here is some more detail about truck accidents learn more.

Establish a Program to Prevent Accidents

In order to enhance traffic safety performance and reduce the chances of road crashes involving motor vehicles, OSHA has developed a 9-step program that includes the following elements. These recommendations are applicable to all the drivers in the company.

  1. Senior Management Commitment and Employee Involvement: Senior management can lead, make policies, and provide funds passage of a safety culture. Emphasizing participation and involvement throughout the organization helps in engaging and encourages fleet safety efforts.
  2. Written Policies and Procedures: Simple, thorough, and legally enforceable traffic safety rules and policies should be developed and disseminated to all staff members. Provide rewards for compliance with the rules and give attention to the risks associated with noncompliance.
  3. Driver Agreements: This driver gives consent to the signing of this resolution means understanding and accepting the organization’s traffic safety policies, procedures, and requirements on the level of driver profiling, maintenance of vehicles, and record-keeping of traffic offenses.
  1. Motor Vehicle Record Checks: MVR should be periodically checked to determine if the driver maintains a clean driving record. State specifically how many infractions a driver/employee can have and still retain driving privileges and provide remedial training as appropriate.

Legal Cocktail of a Truck Driver and Trucking Companies

  1. Distracted Driving: Various studies have indicated that even slight distractions while driving, such as talking on a phone, using an in-cab device, or eating, increase the chances of getting into a rear-end collision. The reaction-distracted focus of a truck driver is significantly diminished while engaging in any of the activities mentioned above.
  2. Speed and Distance Considerations: Stopping distances for large trucks are greater than those of light vehicles. When the driver of a truck impressively accelerates while at the same narrowing, space to avoid causing a rear-end collision, the impossible space existent in such scenarios causes much deserving and unavoidable and premature collision to occur.
  3. Driver Fatigue: Most drivers operate for extended periods and may breach hours of service statutes leading to exhaustion and increased response times.
  1. Failure to Maintain Safe Distance: Lorries and trucks are significantly larger and heavier than conventional automobiles and according to compensating driving techniques require more space as well as time when following another vehicle in flattish terrains. Not abiding by this rule is very likely to result in rear-end crashes.

Conclusion 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statistics show that ten always out of truck accidents cause injuries. They also have a higher death rate, since such accidents have 2% of the cases leading to death as opposed to car accidents which is at 0.4%. Truck crash tolls in the state of Indiana are each year a staggering 151 deaths. 

Remarkably, 72% clip of these fatalities were among the other vehicles involved in large truck crashes and not the large truck occupants themselves. This statistic points to a greater risk posed to occupants of smaller vehicles that are involved in large truck crashes pointing to the need for better safety measures and education of all road users.

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