Colorado Department of Transportation/Handout via Reuters
Colorado is one of the more hazardous states for truck drivers.
- Truck drivers have one of the country's most hazardous jobs.
- In some states, driving an 80,000-pound vehicle can be even more risky.
- Here's where truck drivers are statistically most likely to get into a fatal accident.
Of all fatalities on the road, only 2.4% nationwide are truck drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
But in some states, that number is much higher.
At 8.8%, North Dakota has the highest truck-driver fatality rate in the country. That's partially due to the state's oil boom. North Dakota is the worst state overall for workplace fatalities, and the majority of those deaths were "transportation incidents."
Other states' fatality rates are connected more to their inclement weather, as is the case in Oklahoma and Colorado.
We used NHTSA data to find the states with the highest truck-driver fatality rates, and spoke to eight truckers to find out why driving there is so dangerous.
Here's what they had to say: