Warning! Safety Violations Ahead: Motor Carrier Companies Keep Unsafe Trucks on U.S. Roads

Part I

More than 9 million trucks travel U.S. roads each year, and many of them are in serious violation of federal safety standards. These violations include such practices as overloading trucks, allowing unqualified or un trained drivers behind the wheel, failing to maintain tires and brakes, and salary systems that encourage truck drivers to exceed speed limits and maximum driving hours.

While the issue of truck safety largely goes unnoticed, the effects of these violations are deadly. Though tricks make up less than 4% of all passenger vehicles on U.S. roads they are involved in 12% of all motor vehicle fatalities. More than 4,000 people die every year in collisions with trucks and over 80,000 more are seriously injured. More people die in collisions with trucks than in collisions with planes, trains, ships and interstate buses combined. Truck accidents occur for a variety of reasons, but many are preventable, and often are a direct result of trucking companies violation safety standards to cut corners and maximize profits.

In an original analysis of data not previously available to the public, the American Association for Justice found commuters are sharing roads with trucks that have incurred thousands of safety violations, such as defective brakes, bald tires, loads that dangerously exceeded weight limits, and drivers with little or no training or drug and alcohol dependence.