• 17
  • February
    2012

A FedEx truck with hazardous cargo rolled over on I-75 near the Georgia-Tennessee border earlier this week. The truck accident resulted in a chemical spill of formaldehyde when the truck's cargo of small bottles of sanitizing liquid broke open in the crash. The interstate roadway was closed for a period of time while crews cleaned up the spill.

The truck driver reported hitting a bump in the road before hitting an interstate guardrail and turning over the rear bed of the double-trailer truck, causing the formaldehyde spill. The Georgia trucking accident may have caused at least two additional motor vehicle accidents; one person was sent to the hospital with minor injuries.

A double-trailer truck is a clear example of trucks getting bigger and getting heavier as they travel the Georgia roadways. Congress is even considering an increase of 17,000 pounds to the maximum weight a truck can carry, which would bring the total legal cargo weight up to 97,000 pounds.

But, opponents of the increase warn that bigger trucks just mean bigger accidents. According to Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety (AHAS), an 80,000 pound truck takes nearly the full length of a football field, approximately 355 feet, to come to a stop. An addtional 25,000 pounds would increase the necessary stopping distance for a semi-truck by 25 percent.

It's no surprise that consumer vehicles don't stand much of a chance when they're involved in a truck accident. AHAS reports that 97 percent of fatalities in truck-car crashes were the driver or passengers in the car, rather than the semi-truck.

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Semi wrecks, spilling chemicals on Ga.interstate," February 16, 2012