20 most dangerous counties for fatal crashes with big trucks

A truck crash March 14 in Pittsford, N.Y. Fortunately the truck driver, and three adults and an infant in a automobile, had only minor injuries. (AP)

We frequently get email from personal injury law firms which have mined National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash data for insights. Their motive is presumably to drum up business, but there’s also a PSA aspect, and these pitches can uncover some interesting facts. In today’s data dump from a Boston law firm, we learned that there’s a place within the oil fields of West Texas where considerably greater than half of all fatal vehicle crashes involve an enormous truck.

Reeves County, Texas, is just about in the midst of nowhere. The county’s biggest town is Pecos, population 13,000, smack in the midst of the Permian Basin oil patch. Reeves County can also be where I-10 and I-20 converge, meaning it is a nexus for cross-country semi-truck travel. And there is considerable business truck traffic involving the oil and gas industry. Pecos is planning to construct a bypass road across the town to divert that and hopefully reduce business truck accidents. Meanwhile, 56% of fatal crashes there involve an enormous truck.

In sheer numbers, there aren’t many fatal crashes in Reeves County, or anywhere else on this list — though any fatalities are too many. But as percentages, the numbers are shocking. Even the Georgia county in last place on this top 20 list sees greater than 1 / 4 of fatalities involving a truck.

Going straight to NHTSA provides a terrific deal more data, and puts a few of this in perspective: Nationally, 9.3% of fatal crashes involve a big truck, so clearly the counties on this list are serious outliers.

NHTSA defines a big truck as having a gross vehicle weight rating of over 10,000 kilos — that is a definition that will include not only semi trucks or other business trucks, but would even count some heavy-duty pickups. (Of crashes involving a truck of any size, 71% were these large trucks.) 

In 2021, the last yr for which data can be found, traffic crashes with large trucks killed 5,788 people. That is up 17% over 2020. Of those that lost their lives, 72% were occupants of other vehicles, a not-surprising but sobering fact of physics when heavy objects and light-weight objects share the road.

And infrequently not mentioned in these law-firm assessments are the numbers of those that weren’t killed. NHTSA says an estimated 154,993 people were injured in large-truck crashes.

The counties on this list are pretty rural: Texas, Latest Mexico, Oklahoma. You may imagine that long stretches of desolate highway, speed and a grueling schedule come into play there. Though NHTSA’s report doesn’t assign blame in these crashes.

It’s all a reminder to be extra cautious when on the market with the large rigs.

Here’s a national map from NHTSA that gives an even bigger picture, followed by the law firms’ list of 20 worst counties by percentage:

Large trucks as a percentage of vehicles in fatal crashes, 2021

Most dangerous counties for fatal accidents with big trucks