Georgia drivers like you often feel dwarfed next to 18-wheelers. The concerns you may feel are not without reason, too. When it comes to crashes between passenger vehicles and trucks, passenger vehicles will always suffer the brunt of damage.
For this reason, it is important to examine the dangerous trends in the trucking community. This includes trucker fatigue, which can create a hazardous environment for everyone on the road.
Tie between trucker fatigue and fatalities
The Sleep Foundation examines how drowsy driving impacts truckers. They cite a congressionally mandated study that followed 80 truckers from Canada and the United States. The study traced the average amount of hours they slept and their performance behind the wheel. The National Transport Safety Board also reported that over half of the deaths of truck drivers could tie back to driver fatigue. But for every trucker fatality, another three or four other people die.
The impact of a truck’s size
This is due in part to the sheer size and weight of a trucker’s vehicle. The average semi-truck weighs around 35,000 pounds compared to the average van weight of 4,374 pounds. Semi-trucks are often 72 feet long too, which means they take up a huge amount of road when they crash.
Fatigue is often not criticized harshly enough in the industry, leading to an acceptance of drowsy driving behaviors. In fact, some truckers report feeling pressured to drive drowsy to meet unrealistic deadlines.
Adequate sleep is the only way to combat fatigued driving. “Wakefulness tricks” do not work. If you suffered an injury due to a crash with a drowsy driver, you can seek compensation.
