Collision Course: Big Rig Safety

Bob Dove is lucky to be alive. Last January, an 80-thousand pound tractor-trailer truck swerved to avoid a weaving car and tore through the median barrier into oncoming traffic. One man died instantly, nine were injured. Bob was the most critical. Six months later, he is still in the hospital and learning how to walk again.

Hundreds of Californians die every year and thousands more are injured in big rig related accidents. Right now California is the nation’s leader in truck related fatalities and it’s also home to the country’s most dangerous trucking corridor — Interstate 710 in southern California.

Truckers aren’t the only ones to blame where operator error is concerned. Motorists are responsible for half the truck crashes in the state. Maggie Peterson has been driving big rigs more than half her life and has logged more than a million and a half accident and ticket free miles. She drives southern California’s freeways five days a week. Her greatest fear is someone will make a mistake in front of her truck and she won’t react in time.

Officer Stuart Hertel works in the CHP’s Commercial Enforcement Division. He SAYS the 710 is a dangerous road because of the high volume of truck traffic mixed with cars. The 710 is the main artery out of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles — the country’s number one trade corridor. More than half of the 34-thousand daily truck trips in and out of the port use the 710. Container traffic is expected to double in the next 7 years, then double again by 2025.

Caltrans Director Jeff Morales says his agency is aggressively trying to improve major truck corridors. One of those improvements was a mostly underground train line that opened in April and was designed to transport shipping containers out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long beach. Studies done for the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority say traffic, noise, and emissions will be significantly reduced by the new rail line.

Traffic safety engineer and former Caltrans engineer, Harry Krueper, predicts another problem: NAFTA. When NAFTA goes into FULL effect July of this year, it won’t just bring in more trucks, it may bring in more dangerous trucks as Mexico currently lacks the strict training, licensing or inspection programs operative in California. That growth means more trucks on the road but it’s unlikely they’ll be more highway patrol officers to watch them, due to the state budget deficit.

Caltrans says studies are underway to come up with solutions regarding trucks from across the border and that about one billion dollars worth of improvements are planned in the next decade. Krueper says the agency is already behind the eight ball and was remiss in failing to begin looking at solutions earlier.

An earlier version of this story first aired June 27, 2002.