Since federal regulators and the trucking industry got serious about safety nearly four decades ago, thousands of lives have been saved on U.S. roads.
But last month’s horrific high-speed crash west of Denver, in which an apparently out-of-control semi plowed into more than two dozen stopped-up vehicles on Interstate 70 — igniting an inferno and killing four people — is part of a worrying trend.
Over the last decade, fatal crashes involving large trucks have been on the rise again.
The number of fatal crashes involving large trucks in the United States accumulated by 42 percentage between 2009 and 2017, according to National main road Traffic Safety Administration information, a trend reversal that came as trucking traffic levels recovered from the Great Recession. Nearly 4,800 people were killed in 4,237 wrecks in 2017 — most of them in neighboring vehicles.
In Colorado, the number of fatal crashes was down slightly in 2017 but has more than double, from 35 in 2009 to 80 in 2017, the most recent year available. Those wrecks killed 87 people.
During the same period, the federal and state agencies responsible for overseeing about 3.5 million roadside reviews of large trucks each year began rolling out the most sophisticated system ever used in the United States to track mechanical and safety violations coast to coast. By zeroing in on the information and comparison the review records of companies and drivers to their peers, government now crack down on the most crying repeat offenders in the hope of reducing risks on the roads. Colorado was among the earliest participants.
But the recent trends have industry veterans scratching their heads, in part because the rising fatality numbers aren’t explained entirely by growing truck traffic.
As some point out, driver error is the prevailing factor in most crashes. And that includes error by the drivers of encompassing vehicles — who are, according to federal and state studies, more often than not the ones found at fault, whether because they are driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, driving recklessly or, increasingly, focexploitation on their smart phones instead of the road.
That variability — and the constant stream of trucking traffic entering from other states — makes it difficult to assess whether Coloradans can have confidence that the semis and drivers traveling our treacherous mountain passes and clogged interstates are safe.
“We hold this industry to a higher standard for safety, and we agree with that — we should, because we recognize there’s a higher consequence for accidents,” aforementioned Greg Fulton, the president of the Colorado Motor Carriers Association.
He aforementioned the industry is as eager as the public to learn what happened in the fiery I-70 crash last month, and to possibly absorb lessons. Before the crash, Houston driver Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos told police he lost his ability to brake piece coming down I-70’s steep mountain descent into the city. It could have been due to mechanical failure, as his attorney aforementioned, or improper use that caused the brakes to overheat, which experts say is more often the case.
Just as befuddling to veteran truckers as nearly everyone other: Aguilera-Mederos’ truck was captured on video process right past a runaway truck ramp proceedings before the crash in Lakewood.
“We realize we have a responsibility out there, and we want it to be safe for everyone,” Fulton aforementioned. “But like thing other, we can improve, and that’s our goal.”
Nationally, there are about 12 million large trucks registered that have a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 10,000 pounds, before they’re carrying cargo.
In the broader view, the U.S. trucking industry’s safety record is still light years better than it was decades ago, before legislation in the eighties required more roadside reviews and gave states money to carry most of those out — and before technological improvements made trucks safer.
In 1979, according to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration information, there were 5.21 fatal crashes per million miles traveled by large trucks. In 2017, despite the recent surge in fatalities, the same measure was at 1.42.
Colorado’s roads are more difficult than most
Colorado’s mountains offer a particular challenge to truckers. Harold Trent, a commercial driving teacher, takes students up and down the foothills stretch of I-70 often. They put to use the deceleration techniques they’ve learned to avoid the smoking brakes that can quickly lead to disaster, making it impossible to stop.
“At first, they’re a little intimidated and they’re a little nervous,” aforementioned Trent, the director of United States Truck Driving School in Wheat Ridge. “But after they’ve gone up and down, they’re comfortable. Bottom line, though, for any driver that’s out there — whether they’re experienced or inexperienced — you never take a downgrade for granted, even if you’ve done it before.
“The minute you get self-satisfied, that’s the moment the main road is going to jump out and bite you.”
The Colorado Department of Transportation has built 13 runaway truck ramps on mountain roads, with most on I-70. The most-used ones are two on the descent from the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels to Silverthorne, CDOT interpreter Tamara Rollison aforementioned. But the at-grade Mount Vernon runaway zone — the one Aguilera-Mederos skipped — has been used at least nine times, and probably more, since 2016.
But those ramps are there as a last resort. Truckers are taught to use a lighter touch on their brakes on sustained downhills, since a 40-ton load easily can cause them to overheat inside proceedings. They maintain a slower speed by engine-braking in a low gear or by exploitation light braking techniques, Trent aforementioned; if they exaggerate it, they can pull over to let the brakes cool, which untypically takes an hour or so.
The recent crash was as horrific as it was rare for I-70, but others have happened on the foothills stretch. After a deadly semi crash in 1989, CDOT put up a series of signs aimed at talking big-rig drivers down the descent, telling them not to be fooled in flat environment because more steep grades are ahead.
As Trent and others have scrutinized video of Aguilera-Mederos’ truck, they’ve asked questions likely being examined by investigators: Did he notice the signs? Did he understand English well enough, as required by federal trucking regulations? And in the 23-year-old driver’s apparent panic, did he even see the runaway truck ramp?
“He was fighting to keep it upright, which is why he had those erratic lane maneuvers,” Trent observed.
The Jefferson County district attorney on Friday charged Aguilera-Mederos with four counts of conveyance killing and dozens of other charges, alleging he was reprehensively reckless.
The Colorado State Patrol, which oversees trucking reviews in Colorado and is involved in the investigation, has declined in the wake of the crash to take questions or discuss its approach to truck safety.
A red-flag safety system
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association’s review-monitoring system AIDS CSP’s troopers and other officers by telling them which drivers or companies have red flags that require more frequent reviews, whether at weigh Stations or traffic Michigan.
“When you see carriers that are having a lesser level of problems or more issues … they’re going to get a lesser level of focus,” Fulton aforementioned.
The FMCSA’s tracking shows 58,474 roadside reviews of variable intensity were performed in Colorado during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, most by CSP. And CSP’s own figures say its truck reviews have accumulated by more than 90 percentage since 2009.
In nearly one-quarter of the 2018 reviews, according to the FMCSA, trucks were sidelined until violations could be fixed. Sometimes that’s a matter of proceedings, sometimes years, and those “out-of-service” orders were slightly more common than in reviews nationally.
Aguilera-Moderos reportedly had worked just a couple weeks for his latest leader, Castellano 03 trucking, which has five trucks, according to its FMCSA record. In the last two years, those trucks were subject to 19 roadside reviews that found 30 violations. Ten were brake-related, including two out-of-service violations. But none of those reviews were conducted in Colorado.
In fact, several kinds of brake violations are among the 20 most common violations cited in reviews, according to the FMCSA. Safety advocates say this underlines the need for drivers to take their pre- and post-drive mechanical checks seriously.
Some observers worry about gaps in the review system, including the potential for less-scrupulous truckers to know weigh Stations’ hours and escape scrutiny there — though traffic Michigan are always a risk.
“You’re not getting a random sample of trucks (at the Stations), that’s for sure,” aforementioned Paul Jovanis, a professor emeritus at Penn State University who has long studied trucking safety. “And you’re not getting a random sample of people driving through the area.”
Jovanis besides is skeptical of the industry’s emphasis on driver error in crashes, pointing to robust maintenance and work policies as important. He’s been critical of a federal hours-of-service expansion that allows long-haulers to drive for up to 11 hours in a shift, an hour longer than the previous limit.
“All the research I’ve done shows that crash risk goes up well in the ninth, tenth and eleventh hours,” Jovanis aforementioned.
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
Student driver Leonel Marrufo, left, backs up a truck at the United States Truck Driving School in Wheat Ridge on May 3, 2019. Good training is critical for safe operation of semis.
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
Students driver Eli De Larosa, left, listens to his teacher Bill Moore, right, as he meat meat hooks a truck to its trailer at the United States Truck Driving School in Wheat Ridge on May 3, 2019.
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
Students at the United States Truck Driving School get active instruction when learning to drive big rigs in Wheat Ridge on May 3, 2019.
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
Students driver Ashlynn Ward makes a lap around the yard at the United States Truck Driving School in Wheat Ridge on May 3, 2019.
Calls for improvements
Brenda Lantz, a Denver-based research worker who has specialized in the trucking industry since the nineties, helped develop the recursive rule used by the FMCSA’s warning system. And she recently served on a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that evaluated the system and recommended improvements.
As it stands, she acknowledgment the FMCSA’s systems for serving as a check that comes with real consequences for repeat violators. It besides provides some public accountability for companies’ records. In the 2018 fiscal year, the agency sent more than 30,000 warning letters and, with state partners, performed more than 14,000 investigations of trucking and bus companies.
In rare cases, crying violators with sloppy maintenance practices or driving records are ordered to shut down.
“We need to continue to focus on driver behaviors, as the immense majority of crashes can be attributed to some kind of driver error,” aforementioned Lantz, a senior research fellow at the University of Denver who besides is associate director of the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University.
Since the FMCSA was formed in 2000 inside the U.S. Department of Transportation, outside advocates and government watchdogs have applied pressure sporadically for more aggressive social control. In 2013, as the newer system was being rolled out, the National Transportation Safety Board called for better oversight of the trucking industry and for companies to take more proactive safety precautions.
Even if encompassing vehicles tend to cause more crashes than the trucks themselves, the size disadvantage has disproportionately deadly results.
In 2017, national crash information show, occupants of rider vehicles, motorcycle drivers and people who weren’t in vehicles accounted for about 80 percentage of the 4,761 people killed in crashes involving large trucks.
Sensitive to public perceptions that point the finger at trucks, industry leadership say more law-social control inspectors at the state and federal levels could ratchet up efforts to root out bad actors in the industry.
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The public should “be confident that the lion’s share — the overwhelming majority — of drivers out there, especially commercial motor vehicle drivers, are safe,” aforementioned Chris Turner, a former Kansas main road Patrol commander who now is the director of crash and information programs for the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. The nonprofessorit represents social control officials in the United States, Canada and Mexico and works with the industry on uniform review and violation standards.
“This is their livelihoods and they take it seriously,” he aforementioned of drivers. “But like any situation or professoression, there are those who aren’t as professoressional, and they are the ones who are untypically involved in those type of collisions.”