Truckers move more than 75 percent of goods and products in the U.S. Major highways are now crowded with giant semis and as a result the number of truck crashes has risen.
According to the Care Research and Development Laboratory, in 2004, 169 people died in accidents involving trucks on Alabama highways. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reports that for the same year, 248 people died in accidents involving large trucks in Georgia.
Dennis Longshore is a graduate of trucking school at Southern Union College. He says as a student, the most important thing he learned was safety. "We got to be offensive and defensive drivers," he says.
Safety is on the minds of many drivers who share the roads with a growing number of semis. They sometimes pack a load of 80,000 pounds. It's a weight that no one would want to collide with. "It can do a lot of damage if you hit somebody, the driver of the truck usually don't get hurt, but who gets hurt is usually in small cars," says driving instructor Barry Crenshaw.
