A report from California news outlet KESQ suggests that “truck drivers are responsible for more wrecks on Coachella Valley roads than their numbers would suggest.”
The May 10 report entitled “I-Team: Big rigs are responsible for more collisions on local roads than their numbers would suggest” points to several local crashes involving trucks during the month of April.
The report goes on to argue that trucks account for 16% to 25% of all traffic on I-10 in the Coachella Valley, but that truck drivers “were responsible for 41 percent of the collisions on the freeway.”
The report also features a ride-along with California Highway Patrol officer David Torres, who suggests that newer truck drivers and speeding are a factor in the crashes.
An often-cited American Trucking Associations (ATA) report released in 2012 found that the majority of crashes on U.S. roadways were caused by car drivers, not truck drivers. According to the report, “car drivers were assigned factors in 81% of crashes versus 27% of truck drivers.”
Check out the video report below.