NHTSA Study Shows Safest and Most Dangerous States for Truckers
The National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) has tracked 4,842 lethal truck crashes in 2022. A trucking services company called Simplex Group has compared the numbers of large truck crashes in each state to the total number of traffic incidents that resulted in at least one casualty to find which state is the safest for drivers and which is the least. Here are the results.
Methodology
What determines whether a state is safe or dangerous for truckers? Simplex Group has decided that their metric for the ranking would be the percentage of all traffic fatalities for a year in the state that involved a big rig. This means that each state is inherently adjusted for population and geographic size.
Rankings
Here are the top five and bottom five states for truck safety, comparing truck traffic casualties with total traffic casualties:
- Michigan (74/1567, 4.72%)
- Vermont (4/80, 5%)
- Hawaii (6/114, 5.26%)
- Delaware (9/162, 5.56%)
- Massachusetts (28/488, 5.74%)
- North Dakota (18/136, 13.24%)
- Iowa (67/467, 14.35%)
- Nebraska (53/333, 15.92%)
- Idaho (49/300, 16.33%)
- Wyoming (33/174, 18.97%)
From these numbers we can deduce that there is a correlation between safety and high population: with Wyoming being the least populous state in the nation, drivers seem to be more likely to drive without fear on its roads. Similar logic applies to the other four of the top five most dangerous truck driving states, as they are all located in the Midwest.
Conclusion
So what does this data mean for you? Does it mean you should avoid driving through the Midwest at all costs because it more than triples your chances of getting involved with a lethal accident? Not quite, as the Midwest is large and expansive and often requires deliveries itself. Instead, what you should gleam from this data is that states having fewer people may trick you into thinking that it is okay to drive faster in them: do not fall for this trap and instead drive with the same caution in Wyoming that you would for Michigan.
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