The 20 most harmful counties for deadly accidents with giant vans

On March 14, a truck accident occurred in Pittsford, NY, thankfully the truck driver and three adults and an toddler within the automobile suffered solely minor accidents. (AP)

We frequently obtain emails from private damage regulation corporations which have mined Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration crash information for insights. Their motive might be to extend enterprise, however there's additionally a PSA facet to it, and these pitches can uncover some attention-grabbing information. In at present's information dump from a Boston regulation agency, we discovered that there's one place within the oil fields of West Texas the place greater than half of all deadly automobile crashes contain a giant truck.

Reeves County, Texas, is true within the center. The county's largest metropolis is Pecos, inhabitants 13,000, positioned in the course of the Permian Basin oil patch. Reeves County can be the place I-10 and I-20 meet, which means it’s an nexus for cross-country semi-truck journey. And there’s appreciable business truck visitors related to the oil and fuel business. Pecos is planning to construct a bypass street across the metropolis to reroute it and hopefully cut back business truck accidents. In the meantime, 56% of deadly crashes there contain a big truck.

In complete numbers, there aren’t many deadly accidents in Reeves County, or anyplace else on this listing – though all of the deaths are very excessive. However the figures in share phrases are surprising. Even the Georgia county ranked final on this high 20 listing has seen greater than 1 / 4 of all truck deaths.

Going straight to NHTSA turns up a variety of information, and places a few of it into perspective: Nationally, 9.3% of deadly crashes contain a big truck, so clearly the counties on this listing are critical outliers.

NHTSA defines a big truck as having a gross automobile weight ranking of greater than 10,000 kilos – a definition that would come with not solely semi vans or different business vans, but additionally some heavy-duty pickups. (71% of accidents involving vans of any measurement had been these giant vans.)

In 2021, the final yr for which information is on the market, 5,788 folks died in visitors accidents involving giant vans. That is 17% greater than in 2020. Of those that misplaced their lives, 72% had been in different automobiles, a not stunning however sobering truth of physics when heavy objects and light-weight objects share the street.

And these law-firm estimates usually don’t point out the quantity of people that weren’t killed. NHTSA says an estimated 154,993 folks had been injured in giant truck crashes.

The counties on this listing are pretty rural: Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma. You’ll be able to think about that lengthy stretches of desolate freeway, pace and grueling schedules apply there. Nevertheless, the NHTSA report doesn’t assign fault in these crashes.

All of this can be a reminder to be additional cautious when out with massive rigs.

Right here's a nationwide map from NHTSA that gives an even bigger image, adopted by a listing of the 20 worst counties by share of regulation corporations:

Massive vans as share of automobiles in deadly crashes, 2021

Probably the most harmful counties for deadly crashes involving giant vans