Large Trucks make for Dangerous Texas Roads

10 Dec Large Trucks make for Dangerous Texas Roads

Texas is the nation’s current leader in the number of fatal crashes involving large trucks. After covering several vehicle accidents involving 18-wheelers in October, CBS 11 decided to conduct an investigation of the large truck accident reports of the past five years. By inputting the GPS coordinate information of the accidents into a mapping program they were able to identify the most dangerous sections of highway in the state. More than 100 fatal accidents were included in the study and the results found give a much clearer picture of the trouble spots of these dangerous Texas roads.

The study was able to locate several areas of concern. I-20 from Benbrook to Balch Springs has the notoriety of being the most dangerous stretch of highway, with 14 fatal accidents involving large trucks in the last five years. With four deaths, the highway intersection with the worst track record is I-35 and I-20. The area with the largest number of non-fatal large truck accidents is I-30 and Cockrell Hill, in Dallas County. Dallas County is also signalled out as having the highest overall number of fatalities at 75 in the five years studied. While this information could be very helpful in finding ways to improve accidents involving large trucks, there has been no mapping or similar analysis done by the Texas Department of Transportation, where CBS 11 obtained the statistics for their study. This is quite shocking, as a recent federal study showed that the decisions made by large truck drivers (tail-gating, excessive speed, etc.) account for 90 percent of crashes.