HOW TO AVOID TRUCK ACCIDENTS IN FLORIDA: THE MOST COMMON CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS

When a multi-ton truck, filled with various goods, loses its steering ability or has a breakdown right on the move in Florida, you can unwittingly witness a truck wreck – and it’s quite a horrifying spectacle. We all know what are the approximate results of accidents with “passenger cars”: the cars are blown apart and turned into scrap metal, and their passengers can be scattered several dozens of meters away from the scene of the collision. And after all, the weight and value of an average truck is several times greater, which means that the results (truck crashed or overturned) are more devastating, given that the average speed of a truck today is almost equal to the average speed of passenger cars.

A bit of statistics

The results of accidents involving trucks can be quite eerie, so it can’t help but rejoice that they account for only about ten percent of all accidents, and this statistic is seen not only in the USA, but also in many other states.

The assessment of truck accidents in 2014 is still subject to its own special study. As for last year, about 2.5 thousand people were killed and about 15,000 were injured in them for the whole of 2013. The most dangerous area in terms of truck accidents is considered New York City, which accounted for approximately 1,500 truck accidents last year.

It is important to remember that many truck accidents that did not result in serious results are not officially counted, because the owners of the vehicles enter into verbal agreements to compensate each other for the damage. 

The main causes of accidents involving trucks in Florida

Trucks don’t get into accidents by accident. Every situation has its own reason. It is possible to identify the most common reasons for truck accidents on Russian roads. Specialists distinguish the following from them:

  • Motorists’ blunders – illness, drowsy lethargy, carelessness, the usual inability to properly operate a huge truck, a state of alcoholic intoxication;
  • Equipment malfunctions – lack of proper maintenance, poor wear and tear resistance of various units and simply unfortunate coincidences cause failure of the steering wheel, brakes and other important truck systems;
  • Florida track conditions – speed and icy/broken track are a bad duo, and this, too, often leads to Florida accidents;
  • the goods being transported – if they are horribly secured or the truck is simply not suitable for transporting them.

Drivers of cars are more to blame

A recent report by experts from the specialized organization AAA Foundation, which was prepared specifically for the European Commission, indicated several main causes of accidents. To the surprise of many people, only 25 percent of accidents were caused by truck drivers. Car owners were found guilty in 60 percent of cases. Other factors that were included in the report were faulty vehicle condition (just over 5 percent), unsuitable weather conditions (4.4 percent) and dismal road surface quality (5 percent). For all of these cases, you will have to hire a Florida truck accident lawyer .

More than 70 percent of accidents involving cars and heavy trucks were the fault of car owners. This conclusion was made by the experts of the Association of the United States Truck Drivers in their own report, which is based on the information of the federal agencies. The experts also found out the different reasons why the truck and car owners get into an accident.

Thus, fatigue at the wheel is considered to be a very common phenomenon. At the same time, it occurs more often in car owners who have collided exactly with a truck and not another passenger car. In this situation, fatigue is the cause of accidents for 87 percent of car owners, while for truck owners the figure is 13 percent.

In addition, unfamiliarity with the highway causes accidents among 19 percent of truck drivers and 10 percent of light truck owners.

Both European and U.S. experts have concluded that about 70 to 75 percent of accidents are caused by motorists. The studies mainly studied rather severe accidents with fatalities where car owners were found to be at fault, while in accidents between cars and trucks the percentage of culpability of car owners of these two types of vehicles approached a ratio of 50 to 50.

Conclusion

It is difficult to assess the applicability of this information to Florida, because its highways and the driving habits of truck drivers are somewhat different from the norms in America and Europe. Although many experts believe that the data are quite comparable. Heavy trucks often cause serious traffic jams that stretch for miles and miles in Florida. This is caused by overly worn tires, which prevent a multi-ton truck from having the necessary traction, especially in the Russian weather conditions.

However, everyone agrees on one thing. To avoid a variety of accidents (two trucks collided – often the most terrible of them) is possible if timely and qualitative technical maintenance of the vehicle, write off clearly worn out vehicles, and at the same time to think not only about themselves but also about the other representatives of road traffic, sitting behind the wheel of a huge and powerful car.