Truck Smashes Car Drivers Fault

Truck drivers are not directly to blame for most accidents in which they are involved. The fault is five times as often with the driver of the light vehicle in light vehicle-heavy truck smashes according to a study by Univ Michigan Transp Research Center (UMTRI). The findings come from a study conducted by Daniel Blower of the causes of 5,500 fatal truck-car smashes in 1994 and 1995. Nearly a quarter of them were head-ons in which the car was on the wrong side of the road. Light vehicle drivers were involved in six times the rate of sideswipes of trucks as the reverse, four times the rear-enders and twice as likely to turn into the path of a truck as the other way around.

Blower suggests the head-ons are caused by drunkenness among car drivers, fatigue and inability to cope with weather conditions, all of which are apparently less common among truck drivers. Rear-enders by car motorists hitting trucks seem to be more common than the trucks hitting cars because of poorer driving.

The researcher concludes that the truck safety problem needs to focus on far more than just trucks and truck drivers, which have become a popular whipping boy for politicians recently: “Even if all trucks were operated perfectly, only a minority of fatal crashes would be eliminated.”