A car traveling at 65 mph can stop more than 50 yards before a truck traveling at the same speed could come to a complete stop. The stopping distance of a vehicle is a critical factor in car crashes. A longer stopping distance reduces a driver s ability to avoid a crash and increases the impact intensity. This results in more serious injuries and fatalities. While a truck s stopping distance is still significantly longer than that of a car, the lower speed limit for trucks effectively reduces the gap.
Crashes involving large trucks create major problems on our highways.
Not only do they cause massive traffic tie-ups in congested areas, they put other road users at great risk. Trucks were involved in 23.5 percent of all rural Ohio interstate crashes from 1997 to 1999. Thirty-two percent of those crashes were speed related. A higher speed limit for trucks would certainly increase this number of highway crashes and fatalities in Ohio. Ohio s neighboring states, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Kentucky, experienced an increase in their fatal truck crashes after they raised their truck speed limit.