Increase in Accidents Wrecks Truckers’ Good Image

“One Killed, Six Injured as Big Rigs Crash in Bunches on I-5,” the newspaper headline declared.

A radio traffic reporter advised: “All northbound lanes of the Long Beach Freeway will be closed until noon because of an overturned tanker.”

Shots of mangled trucks and spilled cargo ranging from tomatoes to toxic waste are nightly fixtures on TV newscasts.

It is no secret that truck accidents are becoming more common in California.

Last year, 609 people died in truck-related mishaps--more than 12% of the state’s traffic deaths and far in excess of the ratio of trucks to cars on the road.

No Way to Measure Related Stress

There is no way to measure the stress suffered by freeway commuters as they sit in miles-long traffic jams inching their way toward an angry boss or a cold dinner.

“This is alarming when you consider that these (truckers) are people who are making money driving down a highway,” said Capt. Dick Noonan, head of the commercial section of the California Highway Patrol in Sacramento. “It is a serious problem.”

And the situation is getting worse.

The California Public Utilities Commission, which like federal authorities deregulated the trucking industry over the past several years, is even considering reimposing some rules in an effort to protect the public’s safety.

“We have to turn this around before it becomes absolutely devastating,” said Vic Weisser, head of the transportation section of the state PUC.

With the exception of a slight dip in 1982, accident rates rose steadily between 1981 and 1984. As a percentage of all accidents, truck-involved wrecks increased from 6.1% to 6.9% of the total. Truck-at-fault wrecks rose from 2.7% to 3.4% of the total.

Heavily populated areas suffer the most from truck accidents.

More than four-fifths of the 33,676 truck-related accidents last year occurred in 16 of California’s 58 counties. Los Angeles County alone accounted for 29%, followed by Orange County with 7.5% and Alameda County with 7.3%.

The issue is of importance not only because of the threat to lives and property but because of the state’s heavy reliance on trucking.

About 640,000 commercial trucks, or nearly 13% of the 5 million in the nation, are either based in California or regularly travel through the state.

Each year, they haul 99% of the food and 98% of the manufactured goods in the state. Nearly 70% of California’s cities and towns have no rail service and are dependent on trucks for everything their residents eat, wear and use.

Loss of Good Reputation

Long gone are the days when the public perceived truckers as the best and most courteous drivers--knights of the road, they were called.

Increasingly, the public perception--deserved or not--is of giant rigs speeding, tailgating and carelessly cutting in front of cars.

Officials say only a tiny percentage of truckers are to blame. But the entire industry is getting a black eye.

“Every time the public sees a truck accident on the 6 o’clock news, it just reinforces the perception that all truckers are the same,” Noonan said.

Accident statistics support the image of truckers as bullies of the road rather than knights of the road.

There are 19 million vehicles in California that each year log an estimated 196 billion miles--enough to make about 1,053 round trips to the sun or 410,287 round trips to the moon.

Commercial trucks account for only 3.4% of the vehicles and 3.7% of the miles. But last year they were involved in 33,676 accidents, or 6.9% of the statewide total of 491,449 from all causes.

Truckers were found to be at fault half of the time--up from 43.6% in 1980, authorities say.

When truckers were to blame, the California Highway Patrol said in a special report compiled for Gov. George Deukmejian in February, speeding was cited as the reason 23% of the time, with unsafe lane changes and improper turns each adding another 16%.

“The very largest vehicles are certainly overrepresented in fatal accidents,” said Keith Gilbert, highway engineering manager for the Los Angeles-based Automobile Club of Southern California.

When a truck is involved in a wreck, the chances of someone being hurt or killed go up dramatically.

“With all that mass being shoved around, it’s just much more dangerous,” Gilbert said, pointing out the odds are heavily against cars in these David-and-Goliath collisions.

Accounts for 609 Deaths

In 1984, truck-related accidents accounted for 609 of the 4,999 people killed on California roads, and 14,753 of the 309,352 injured.

Those rates are even more dramatic, said CHP spokesman Kent Milton, when considering that nearly one-third of all fatal accidents in the state involve single cars running off roads for reasons ranging from drunkenness to sleepiness to taking a curve too fast.

In addition to the trucks themselves, carelessly loaded cargo is becoming an increasing hazard for motorists and a seemingly endless headache for cleanup crews.

“If you can conceive of it, it’s been spilled out there on a freeway,” said Bob Ruess of the California Department of Transportation.

Spilled loads, as well as truck collisions, occur most frequently in the populous metropolitan Los Angeles area, which Caltrans defines as all of Los Angeles County and portions of Orange and San Bernardino counties.

It is crisscrossed by about 700 miles of superhighway that let 4.3 million people in 2.5 million vehicles make 8.3 million trips on an average weekday, according to Caltrans figures.

The biggest demand on the freeways comes during morning and evening rush hours as commuters try to get to their offices and return home.

Wrecks at Busiest Times

Murphy’s Law--if something can go wrong, it will--seems to have some bearing on the timing of major accidents and spills. The worst frequently seem to occur at the busiest times, virtually turning sections of freeways into giant parking lots.

In its report to Deukmejian, the CHP worked out a special computation of the frequency of major traffic tie-ups in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties and estimated the total amount of time lost by all motorists caught in the snarl.

The region has about one major truck-related accident every three days, forcing motorists to sit in snarled traffic for more than 200,000 hours a year, the CHP found.

That is the equivalent of about 23 years, or long enough for the average newborn to go through childhood and adolescence, graduate from college and begin a career.