Return to News Index

3 killed in N.J. pileup
With more trucks on the road, the risk of accidents increases

The three victims in yesterday's New Jersey Turnpike crash were among the 5,000 Americans killed each year in traffic accidents that involve heavy trucks.

Earlier this week, truck crashes closed part of the Schuylkill Expressway in Philadelphia on two separate days – with one of the accidents involving a truck driver who was given $2,350 in fines and whose rig was impounded.

Such incidents feed the angst of many automobile drivers on highways that often seem packed with tractor-trailers.

"I feel small and vulnerable," Jerry DeLucas, of Queens, N.Y., said yesterday at the Neshaminy rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

"And scared," his wife added.

Federal statistics show that the rate at which truck drivers become involved in fatal accidents has been falling steadily for years. The number of fatalities today for every 100 million miles traveled by truckers is a little more than one-third of what it was at its worst, in 1977.

"The numbers speak to declining crash rates," Bill MacLeod, spokesman for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, said yesterday.

The problem is that, like cars, there are so many more trucks on the road each year- and they are traveling so many more miles.

Drivers put 215 billion miles under the wheels in 2002, the last full year for which some statistics are available. That was nearly three times the mileage three decades earlier.

More miles, inevitably, result in more accidents.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that 457,000 large trucks were involved in accidents in 2003. The number involved in fatal accidents – 4,669 – was 8 percent higher than 10 years earlier.

"One out of nine traffic fatalities in 2003 resulted from a collision involving a large truck," a report by the traffic safety administration said last October.

Seventy-eight percent of those killed were in cars or other vehicles smaller than the trucks. Truck occupants accounted for only 15 percent of fatalities.

In crashes between cars and trucks, the cars usually come out the loser.

That is "basically a matter of physics," said Gary Hoffman, deputy secretary of highway administration for Pennsylvania. He noted that states permit trucks to have a gross weight of 80,000 pounds. A Toyota Camry weighs about 3,100 pounds.

State officials joined federal officials yesterday in saying that better inspection procedures for trucks and better education for truckers had helped reduce the rate of truck crashes, if not the total number.

Hoffman said that "about 75 percent of the fatal accidents involving trucks have a cause attributable to the auto driver."

On Nov. 21, 2002, three truck crashes on different interstate highways in New Jersey left three people dead and spurred creation of a highway safety task force.

The New Jersey Department of Transportation worked to address the causes of many of the crashes on smaller state roads.

An examination of trucking safety in the state is ongoing, Transportation Department spokesman Marc La Vorgna said.

In one of the Philadelphia incidents this week – a crash around 5:55 a.m. Wednesday near Girard Avenue – a truck driver was said by police to have fallen asleep in a rig going 65 m.p.h. in a 50 m.p.h. zone.

William McQueen, 48, of Highpoint, N.C., was cited for careless driving, overturning a commercial vehicle, and operating with an unsecured cargo load.

At the Neshaminy rest stop on the turnpike yesterday, a trucker said it is not always easy for drivers to pull over and rest. He said he got a ticket Thursday in Virginia for parking on the shoulder.

Sometimes in frustration, a trucker will keep driving, said Andrew Rogers, 34, who works for Arnold Transportation of Camp Hill, Pa.

In nine years on the road, Rogers said, he has had two accidents, neither of which were his fault. No one was hurt in either.

He said he does not worry about bad driving by others.

"I wave and grin and think, 'They're the ones whose blood pressure is going up,' " he said. Contact staff writer Tom Infield at 610-313-8205 or tinfield@phillynews.com. Inquirer staff writer Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. contributed to this article.