Safety features in passenger cars have been getting steadily better over the years, and inventions such as airbags have saved countless lives. However, there's only so much an airbag or a seatbelt can do when a car collides with a much larger and heavier vehicle. That is why trucking accidents are so dangerous. A collision that might have led to minor injuries if it were between two cars can easily lead to catastrophic or fatal injuries if one of the vehicles involved is a tractor-trailer truck or a large bus.
According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 4,889 large trucks and buses were involved in accidents in 2017, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That number represented a 9% increase over the year before. The number of these crashes that was fatal rose by 8%.
