Many truck or 18 wheeler accidents occur due to the bad judgment of the truck driver.

However, many of those truck driver errors are due to trucking company policies or carelessness that increases the risk a wreck will occur, such as:

  • Failing to run a criminal and a driving background check on its truck drivers (many truck drivers have a criminal background record and have been involved in many wrecks);
  • Hiring inexperienced drivers and failing to adequately train them (many truck drivers are just drivers who are in training and have very little experience and have not been trained properly by the company);
  • Driver fatigue and sleep deprivation due to over work and over scheduling, which result in non-alert driving;
  • Driving more than the number of hours allowed by the Federal Department of Transportation (it is common in the trucking industry for drivers to illegally drive over the allowable hours and then falsify their logbooks and record lower driving times than actually driven – a complete check of the logbook and drop off times needs to be analyzed);
  • Overloaded trucks or unsecured loads (trucks with too much weight on them or loads that tend to shift can make maneuvering a truck impossible);
  • Poorly maintained trucks (to increase profit, many trucking companies intentionally skip required truck maintenance);
  • Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol (you would be unpleasantly surprised at how many truck drivers drive with alcohol and/or drugs in their system);

Information in the LTBCF report is compiled by FMCSA’s Analysis Division from four major sources:

  • The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), a census of fatal crashes involving motor vehicles traveling on public trafficways.
  • NHTSA’s General Estimates System (GES), a probability-based sample of fatal, injury, and property-damage-only crashes.
  • FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) Crash File.
  • The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA’s) Highway Statistics.

– See more at: https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/data-and-statistics/large-truck-and-bus-crash-facts#sthash.XM8zemtW.dpuf