What is the most dangerous thing a truck driver can do?

When it comes to assessing risk, we should ask ourselves, "What is the most dangerous thing a semi-truck driver can do?"

For many, such answers as "speeding", "driving while too tired", or "making reckless lane changes" come to mind. For sure, these are extremely dangerous, especially when we consider that too many trucking companies push their drivers to "make time" or turn a blind eye to excessive and dangerous overtime driving.

But according to a new study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, sending text messages while driving was the most risky thing a driver can do. According to the report the dangers posed by drivers who send texts or emails while driving "far surpasses" other risk factors. The study shows that drivers took their eyes off the road for five seconds or more while texting.

Five seconds? For a truck driving at full speed, that could easily be more than a tenth of a mile!

After reading this study, it is easy to conclude that texting while driving is likely the cause of thousands of preventable semi-truck accidents each year.

So why aren't the trucking companies taking serious steps to stop this? After all this practice is illegal in most states.

Most commercial truck drivers on the road must report their activities to the home office. The parent corporation usually keeps track of mileage driven, average speed, road conditions, braking frequency, when a driver takes a break, weight of the load and many other specifics to each trip. Sophisticated computers can track a whole host of driving activity, so why not texting?

Why can't they monitor texting? Why can't they disable texting while the driver is in a moving cab? Are they training drivers and making them aware of the dangers of texting while driving?

Is there a single trucking company out there that makes texting while driving a firing offense? Have any drivers been fired for this?

Even worse, are trucking companies sending emails and text messages to their drivers while they are driving? (We had a case where it was clear that the parent company was calling and sending emails to their drivers at all hours of the day.)

It's time for the trucking corporations in America to demand that their drivers stop this extremely dangerous activity now.

Hopefully this study will give impetus to stricter regulations and that trucking corporations everywhere will heed the warning signs...before anyone else dies.