Jersey Shore Personal Injury and Employment Specialists

Aggressive truck drivers among the highway’s worst dangers

On Behalf of | Dec 11, 2015 | Truck Accidents |

When it comes to truck crashes, the topics of drowsy or distracted driving are often the most talked about. However, some truck drivers may be more dangerous than those who drive while fatigued, according to a study by DriveCam’s Driving Insights Series. With the busy highways that crisscross New Jersey, this subject is a serious one for those in the state.

In the study, Insurance Journal stated that aggressive truckers had almost three times as much risk of getting into a crash than drowsy truck drivers. Truckers who had been in one or more accidents were far more likely to have been in an aggressive driving collision than one caused by drowsiness or poor judgment.

Encountering an aggressive driver is frightening enough, but when the driver is behind the wheel of a fast-moving, 80-ton vehicle, the experience can be terrifying, especially when it results in an accident. The driving behaviors most often displayed by aggressive truckers include tailgating, speeding, unsafe passing and accelerating too fast – all of these are actions that can be devastating on the highway.

In 2014, there were 13 fatalities attributed to large truck accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. If the statistics from the above study are any indication, at least some of these tragedies were caused by aggressive and dangerous truck drivers. There might be many reasons a truck driver might drive aggressively – he or she might be in a hurry to make it to the next stop, another driver might have made him or her angry or this may just be a normal driving habit. However, truck drivers who cause deadly accidents are just as liable as anyone else.