Life on the road is not easy. In addition to long hours and navigating regulatory red tape, truck drivers face another problem: a high fatality rate.
Many blue-collar jobs can be inherently dangerous. Construction, roofing and law enforcement all have their obvious risks. All of those jobs are among the most dangerous, according to the Department of Labor’s Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.
However, none of those jobs is as dangerous as that of a truck driver. Not even close.
In 2024, nearly 800 truck drivers lost their lives in a work-related incident. That is a 3% decrease from 2023 and the lowest since 2020, when 766 truckers were killed on the job. Not counting 2020, when the pandemic altered statistics, the last time fewer truck drivers died while working was in 2016 (786 fatalities).
In a distant second are construction laborers, who saw 334 work-related fatalities in 2024. Most of those deaths were slips and falls. In third are farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers at 175 deaths, most of which were transportation incidents.
The vast majority of truck driver occupational deaths were transportation-related. Nearly 10% were “contact incidents,” which include contact with objects and equipment, such as being struck by a propelled, falling or suspended object. It also includes contact with an animal.
Across all occupations, transportation incidents continue to be the most frequent type of fatal event, which explains why more truck drivers die on the job.
Nearly 40% of all occupational deaths in 2024 were transportation-related.
More than half of transportation-related work fatalities were roadway incidents involving a vehicle. Pedestrian strikes increased by 19%.
Although truck drivers experienced the most work-related fatalities in 2024, the fatality rate (per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers) of 25.7 is lower than that of many other occupations. Logging workers lead that category at 110.4, followed by fishing/hunting workers (88.8) and roofers (48.7).
Zooming out by industry, construction saw the most worker deaths, followed by transportation/warehousing and agricultural, forestry, fishing and hunting. By fatality rate, more agriculture workers were killed, with mining/quarrying/oil/gas extraction workers experiencing the second-most deaths.
Accounting for all occupations, just over 5,000 workers were killed on the job in 2024, down 4% from the previous year. The overall decline was attributed to a large drop in drug or alcohol overdoses.
Overall, occupational fatalities dropped in most categories. The fatal work injury rate for all workers was 3.3 in 2024, the second straight year the rate declined. LL
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