Trucks make up ~4% of vehicles on the road, 6-7% of vehicle miles driven in the US, and 10% of vehicles involved in fatal accidents. The deaths in those accidents are almost always the occupants of the other vehicle. So it's not at all clear that we are being too restrictive on safety limits here.
Trucks weigh a lot. The penalty for fucking around them is stiff. No surprise their involvement leads to more deaths.
My understanding is that class 6/7/8 trucks only cause a tiny fraction of the crashes they're involved in. That's why they get so pissy when people who work in offices tell them they're the ones who have to suffer more regulation in the name of safety.
Citing states like % of fatal accidents doesn't mean much unless you know the accident has anything to do with something we regulate. No amount of sleep is going to stop someone from texting and driving nor will it change the physics of what happens when a 4k sedan rear ends 80k of truck.
Their argument was not that we can't regulate accidents away, but that it doesn't matter if truck drivers ignore regulations because they aren't having enough accidents to worry about. That's not true.
