WHY DOES MICHIGAN HAVE SO MANY TRUCK ACCIDENTS?

The numbers of truck accidents causing injury and death in Michigan far surpass the national averages.  In fact, Michigan has the fifth highest number of truck injury accidents and truck accident fatalities.  There are approximately 85 truck accidents for every 100 miles that a truck travels in Michigan, putting Michigan squarely in the top five most dangerous states in for trucking accidents.   Michigan averages over 110 fatal truck accidents a year, (a fatal truck accident crash is defined as one where a wrongful death has occurred).  In addition, Michigan has one of the highest non-fatal truck accident rates in the country, where no one is killed in the accident but where a personal injury is reported.   There are over 5,000 truck accidents causing serious personal injury each year in Michigan. 

The question is why? 

Why are the numbers of truck accidents in Michigan so high, and why so much higher here than in the rest of the country?  

The first reason why Michigan has so many more injuries and deaths due to truck accidents compared to other states is that Michigan has more trucks on its roads, and more major roads and highways through its state.  With its industrial economic base, and the large numbers of factories and suppliers, companies are dependent upon trucks.  Trucks are a common sight for anyone who has been to Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Flint, Sterling Heights, Lansing, Ann Arbor, or Dearborn.   Driving along the major highways through Michigan, including I-69, I-75, I-94 and I-96, especially at night or in the early morning hours, and one usually sees long convoys of trucks. 

With so many highways, interstates and intrastate roads running through Michigan, including the major interstate highways of I-69, I-75, I-94 and I-96, it is perhaps no surprise that the number of truck fatality and personal injury accidents are evenly split between large cities in Michigan and its more rural areas.  Latest crash statistics indicate the number of truck accidents occurring in large Michigan cities like Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint, Warren, Ann Arbor, Livonia and Sterling Heights was 51% of the reported truck fatality and truck personal injury accidents.  The number of truck accidents in rural areas surrounding these and other Michigan cities was 49%.  A brief analysis of the road system through which the overwhelming majority of trucks drive on Michigan roads shows why the number of truck accidents occurring in cities and rural areas is so evenly split.   I-75:  Interstate 75 is the major central north-south highway in the U.S. and also runs through Michigan from Monroe up to Sault Ste. Marie, MI at the Canadian border.  Michigan has 400 miles of I-75, running through important cities like Detroit, Flint and Saginaw.  In Detroit, it connects with I-96 and I-94.  I-69:  Interstate 69 extends from Indianapolis, IN to the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron, MI and runs over 203 miles through Michigan.  It extends through major cities like Lansing and Flint, as well as Port Huron.  I-94: Interstate 94 connects Michigan with the mountain states, beginning in Montana and ending in Port Huron, Michigan.  275 miles of I-94 runs throughout Michigan.  Depending on the major city it is running through, I-94 is known as the Willow Run Freeway, the Edsel Ford Freeway and the Detroit Industrial Freeway.  It passes through Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Marshall, Ann Arbor, Jackson, Ypsilanti, Dearborn and of course, Detroit.  I-96: Interstate-96 is an Intrastate highway that runs only within the State of Michigan.  All of its 192 miles are contained within Michigan, beginning in Muskegon and ending at the junction with I-75 near Detroit, where in Wayne County, Oakland County and Macomb County, Michigan it is also known as the Jeffries Freeway.  Major cities it passes through include Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Detroit.

Ask any personal injury lawyer in Michigan experienced in handling truck accidents, however, and you will learn there is another reason why trucks cause so many more preventable wrongful deaths and personal injury accidents in Michigan.   The law and public policy in Michigan regarding bad truck drivers and bad trucking companies is one of the worst in the United States.  A Michigan attorney cannot sue a trucking company for punitive damages under Michigan law when they knowingly hire unfit and unsafe drivers with many safety violations and truck accidents because Michigan does not have punitive damages as a cause of action.  That means there is no economic disincentive for these truck companies in Michigan to hire unsafe drivers.  It also means that some of the worst truck drivers in the country, the ones who cannot get jobs in states with tougher laws, now come to Michigan to drive trucks and cause more accidents, injuries, and deaths on Michigan roads.  Usually, a lawyer defending one of these trucking companies will seek to admit negligence for the action, and Michigan personal injury lawyers are usually prevented from introducing evidence of the truck driver’s long history of other truck injury accidents and truck safety violations.

Not surprisingly, weather plays a significant role as well, but perhaps not as much as most people would think.  There were no contributing weather conditions in over 80% of the reported truck accidents that occur in Michigan.  Although that suggests that weather does play at least some role in almost 20% of the truck accidents reported in Michigan, most of these still fall into the preventable accident injury category.  For example, many Michigan lawyers and police truck accident investigators will tell you that where weather plays a contributing role in causing a truck accident, the truck driver normally failed to comply with CDL guidelines, such as reducing his speed by 2/3 of the posted speed limit on hazardous roads, or failing to comply with the federal and state regulations regarding braking, hours of service causing driver fatigue and impaired judgment, or weight.

Many trucks are also driving on Michigan roads with serious safety violations.  In fact, recent federal statistics show nearly one in four (23.7%) of these trucks have serious safety violations that would put these trucks immediately out of service because of these safety violations.   

It is not just dangerous trucks that cause accidents.  Unfit drivers who ignore the important safety and licensing requirements are a major cause of preventable truck injury accidents as well.  From 1992 to 2002, the number of trucks involved in fatal truck accidents increased 10%.  Much of this was due to drug and alcohol use, driver fatigue, and hours of service violations.  In a seminal study, the National Transportation Safety Board performed blood screenings on 168 fatally injured truck drivers and of these 33% had detectable blood concentrations of illegal narcotic drugs or alcohol.  The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is so concerned with fatigued drivers running their trucks off the road and failing to keep within their lanes of travel that new hours of service laws were introduced in April of 2003 to try to curb the crisis of fatigued truck drivers.  Most Michigan personal injury lawyers familiar with truck accidents will say these problems have not improved.  In fact, the lack of enforcement has caused the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to propose, on January 11, 2007, new standards mandating that EOBRs (electronic on-board recorders) be installed in all trucks to ensure compliance with hours of service regulations.

Not all truck companies and truck drivers break the rules.  But the ones that do are causing thousands of preventable injuries and deaths each year and we are all forced to share the roads with these giant trucks.  Trucking companies that do not follow Michigan and Federal truck regulations and who choose to hire unsafe drivers are causing tremendous carnage, destruction and death.  Every 16 minutes, a person is killed or sustains personal injury in accidents with semi-trucks, 18-wheelers, and tractor-trailers.  In crashes between large trucks and passenger vehicles, the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety reports that 98% of the fatalities unsurprisingly occur to the people in the passenger vehicles.  The truck drivers who cause these devastating accidents are usually left unscathed, and due to the lack of punitive damages and bad faith laws available for Michigan personal injury lawyers, many are left to get behind the wheel of a big-rig again and cause more devastation.