With a
fatality rate of 22.1 per 100,000 workers, trucking is our nation’s eighth most
dangerous job.
Drivers
face tremendous pressure to get the freight delivered on time, maximizing the
potential for dangerous truck accidents.
Despite rules requiring rest stops, many drivers are greatly
fatigued. Forty-eight percent of
truckers report falling asleep at the wheel at least once in the previous 12
months, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
According
to Henry Jasnay Vice President of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, rest
stops of 30 minutes are required after eight hours of driving but are
insufficient to rest drivers, who often feel just as tired as before their
30-minute break.
Many truckers
falsify log books to show enforcement officers that they’ve complied with the
rules.
A
new danger is that heavy rigs travel on narrow, rural two-laners to supply
fracking sites. These roads were never
engineered to handle large trucks
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