According to Cullman Today, Interstate 65 was recently shut down because an 18-wheeler rolled over in a fiery crash. One Kentucky businessman commented to the news that the accident had left him stuck on the highway for so long to try to get to a meeting that he should have just gotten a hotel room. The operator of the truck was fortunately able to get out of the vehicle, which had flipped onto its side, before the flames engulfed the truck.
Tragically, many truck accidents in Louisville and throughout Kentucky do much more than just close down an interstate and inconvenience drivers. Rollover crashes, in particular, can be deadly. Truck drivers need to be aware of the fact their vehicles are more likely to roll over and must take precautions to prevent this type of crash from occurring.
Trucks are also prone to two other especially dangerous types of accidents: underride accidents and jackknife crashes. It is the responsibility of every truck driver to be aware of the elevated risk of these types of dangerous collisions and to take steps to try to prevent crashes from happening.
Three Dangerous Types of Truck Accidents
Underride accidents are one of the deadliest type of truck crash. An underride accident occurs in any situation where another car actually goes underneath a truck. There should be side and rear guards on trucks so other vehicles cannot slide underneath, but these guards don’t always get the job done. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety indicates that there are more than 5,000 injuries and 423 fatalities annually in underride accidents. A large-scale study of the causes of 1,000 truck crashes found that underride had occurred in 78 percent of all collisions. In this study, there were 28 fatal truck accidents, 23 of which involved significant underride.
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