If you spend a lot of time on the road or drive for a living, you’ll no doubt have felt frustrated at how long it can take you to get where you need to be. There’s often congestion caused by construction work, the sheer volume of traffic and road closures following traffic collisions.
Driving past accidents, it might feel like more often than not it involves a large commercial vehicle such as a truck. It’s a worrying sight to see and can leave you feeling intimidated by the thought of sharing the road with such large vehicles. Do you need to be concerned?
In 2020, 4,998 large trucks were involved in fatal accidents
This was in fact a decrease from the year before of 5%, but there’s still a pattern of a gradual increase over the years.
The number of fatal accidents caused by trucks did decrease slightly from the year before and injuries sustained in large truck crashes also decreased by 8% in 2020 to 147,000. While this is good news, unfortunately for other road users most of the injuries sustained were by travelers in other vehicles (68%).
While the decrease is a positive sign and hopefully indicative of what’s to come in the future, it’s still essential to be vigilant and concentrate while driving behind or next to these vehicles. There is still an obvious risk that they pose to smaller vehicles and the most important thing you can do is to give them as much space as possible.
Being involved in a collision with a commercial vehicle, such as a truck, can be really frightening. It has the potential to cause a lot of damage to your vehicle as well as putting you at risk of injury. If you find yourself in a collision where the truck was at fault, you’re entitled to seek compensation for the damages and loss you’ve suffered as a result.