From The New York Times:
The American trucking industry, which moves nearly three-quarters of the nation’s goods, has devolved into a dangerous, dysfunctional system that threatens every driver on the road, whether you’re in an 18-wheeler or the family S.U.V. In 2023, 5,472 people died in crashes involving large trucks — a level of loss that would be unthinkable if it occurred in our skies.
The discrepancy in how we value human life based on the mode of transport is staggering. When the Boeing 737 Max crisis claimed 346 lives across two crashes, it triggered a global grounding of aircraft and brought the company to its knees. This was a necessary, indignant response to a failure of safety oversight. We reach that same death toll on our interstates every 24 days.