In September, a tractor-trailer traveling west on I-24 in Marion County ran off the road and overturned. The driver, 32-year-old Matthew Ross Burke, was not wearing his seatbelt and died in the crash. His wife was sleeping in the cab during the accident; she was transported to a nearby hospital and treated for minor injuries. As of this writing, it remained unclear whether the driver had fallen asleep or if the semi had mechanical failures.
Truck companies are responsible for performing basic and preventative maintenance on every truck in their fleet. When maintenance is neglected, trucks go from a convenient method of cargo transportation to deadly weapons on the road. The larger the operations, the more details to keep track of, and the more likely it is that basic preventative maintenance will fall by the wayside. Couple this with financial incentives for drivers to deliver cargo on time, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
The stats are pretty incredible
With the sheer volume of trucks that pass through our major metropolitan areas on a daily basis, errors of some kind are bound to occur. Forbes wrote about the growing industry earlier this year, citing these figures from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration:
- The number of large trucks registered in the US increased 3 percent in 2014 to nearly 11 million from the previous year.
- Trucks continue to be the main mode of transportation for freight in the US, responsible for moving 14,547 million tons worth of cargo in 2013- equivalent to 73% of all cargo weight moved that year.
- Of the 6 million vehicle crashes that occurred in the US in 2014, 476,000 involved large trucks and buses- a 22% increase from the previous year.
- The estimated cost of large truck and bus crashes, including death, injury and property damage, in 2014 rose about 7% to $112 billion.
Even as technology and regulation get better, increasing the amount of trucks on the road necessarily increases the amount of failures and accidents. The numbers don’t lie; almost 1 in 10 of the 6 million crashes in 2014 involved large trucks or buses. As long as we keep adding drivers and vehicles, those numbers can’t go down. True accidents are regrettable; it is when preventable errors cost lives that injustice occurs.
Don’t become a victim of big businesses. If you or your loved ones were injured in a commercial truck accident, contact the experienced Nashville commercial truck accident attorneys at the Rocky McElhaney Law Firm. We have the experienced to fight for your family and your rights. Don’t wait, call 615.246.5549, visit our offices in Nashville, Gallatin or Knoxville or contact us today for a free consultation.
