A tragedy occurred in Mississippi when a Tulane University student was struck and killed by two truck tires while she was sitting at a rest stop. USA Today reported that the student was getting ready to get back into her vehicle when two tires which had come loose from a tractor-trailer rolled across the Interstate striking the young [...]
Commercial trucks are the lifeblood of communities and states. They help provide food, building products, machinery, and many other types of goods. Some trucks even deliver other vehicles. They transport hazardous materials. They pick up your trash. While trucks do provide valuable services, there are dangers. Truck accidents are often more dangerous than car accidents because trucks are [...]
It doesn’t always matter how safe of a driver you might be; if the the drivers around you aren’t safe, then your chances of being in a crash increase. The most tragic accidents often involve trucks. These vehicles are long, wide, heavy and often haul hazardous materials. Their drivers have schedules to keep, and as a result, they [...]
Payne County Sheriff, R. B. Hauf, recently wrote an op-ed in News OK about the dangers of increasing the weight and/or length of commercial trucks. His concern, which he raised as the president of the Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association and a member of the National Sheriffs Association Traffic Safety Committee, was in response to current lobbying efforts regarding the [...]
The sheer size of big rig trucks gives them the potential to inflict devastating and even fatal injuries when they are involved in a collision. In 2016 alone, nearly 4,000 people in the U.S. died in large truck crashes. Some 17 percent of these fatalities were occupants of the truck itself, 16 percent were bicyclists, pedestrians, or motorcyclists, [...]
A train and truck collision on SW 29th St forced shutdowns of roads for days. The accident happened around 8:30 am on the morning of September 9th. The BNSF Railway train struck a truck. Fortunately, the driver of the truck was not severely injured, and the 60 passengers onboard the train were uninjured. No reason has been given [...]
In 2016, truck accidents in Oklahoma injured or took the lives of 1957 people, according to the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, Highway Safety Office. Of this number, 118 persons were killed in a crash involving a large truck, an 18 percent increase in fatalities from the previous year. But why? Driver errors is the main cause behind [...]
According to ATBS, a business and accounting firm for the trucking industry, there are three basic myths about truck rollovers that drivers, the industry, and the public should understand. Rollovers are largely caused by bad driving conditions. ATBS claims that: Under four percent of truck rollovers are caused by poor roads 56% of truck rollovers happen on straight [...]
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) requires that commercial drivers, as of December 2017, use Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) to track important data. The ELDs are similar to the black boxes used in airplanes, and help investigators understand how an Oklahoma truck accident happened. The devices replace written records and logs, which often weren’t accurate and sometimes [...]
Driver safety technology is evolving, and automakers and trucking companies are paying attention. By installing features like anti-lock brakes, lane drift warnings, blind spot detection, and other safety applications, cars and 18-wheelers should be getting safer. Unfortunately, fatalities continue to occur at an alarming rate on our nation's roads and highways. In Oklahoma and throughout the United States, [...]
