Why are concrete mixer trucks street killers

Statistics show that concrete mixer trucks cause 30 times of traffic accident deaths on average than other vehicles. This leads to misunderstandings of truck drivers who are believed to ignore traffic rules. Yet, investigation reveals that violation of driving rules accounts for only a part of the problem. The main causes include poor traffic environment, climatic conditions, overload and inappropriate driving. While the former two are mostly beyond control, we focus on the latter three here.

It’s reported that more than 80% of the accidents of concrete mixer trucks are caused by overload. Overloaded for a long period of time, a concrete mixer truck tends to have problems like failure in braking and tire explosion. In spite of definite banning on overload from the Traffic Ministry, many transportation companies takes great risk to overload their trucks in order to reduce cost. An important reason for this lies in imbalance between high oil prices and low freight rates. With popularity of building stationary and mobile batching plants, more and more concrete mixer trucks get into streets.

In addition to overload, unreasonable design of the cement mixer trucks and wrong operation of drivers account for the problem. The blind spot of a truck is so large that drivers usually fail to observe full traffic conditions. For example, a driver is confronted with a huge blind spot when turning at the front, rear, and right front wheels, and nearly 90% of urban road accidents occur during turning of trucks.

Last, freight is connected to the amount of delivered concrete. The larger the tank capacity, the more freight a company gets for one delivery. This leads to strong demand larger and larger concrete mixer truck capacity, from 6m3 concrete mixer trucks to 8m3, 12m3 and even 16m3 ones. Excessive weight of a truck increases the emergency braking distance, extends the turning radius, and heightens the center of gravity, widening blind spot areas and tendency of braking failures.