Basic physics tells us that when a passenger vehicle is involved in a collision with a large truck—a vehicle used in commerce with a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 10,000 pounds—the likelihood of a death or injury to an occupant in the passenger vehicle is increased compared to other collisions. An analysis of the available data shows that the passenger vehicle driver is the cause in more than half of the large truck versus passenger vehicle fatality collisions, with the percentage ranging from 56 percent to 75 percent. One study points out that while large trucks comprised only 8 percent of all of the vehicles involved in fatality crashes in the United States, collisions involving large trucks resulted in 12 percent of the total number of lives lost.

A second study identified the top five behaviors displayed by the collision-causing drivers of passenger vehicles when involved in fatality collisions with large trucks.