[lrem]

Society might care about cost _including externalities_. A truck running on discarded frying oil might offer a lower price and there’s no way to account for the resulting health outcomes. Exceeding capacity lowers unit price and usually doesn’t lead to an accident. Many industries around the world have shown that without functioning enforcement of reasonable rules you immediately get the tragedy of the commons.

[cs702]

I agree. The OP claims that small fleets are cutting costs to extremes that are bad for society, but the OP provides no evidence of it. By evidence, I mean data. Do you have data on this?

[Sabinus]

From the article: "Despite billions spent on safety technology, fatal truck-involved crashes are up ≈40% since 2014—almost entirely because of untrained, overworked, and inexperienced drivers now operating 80,000-pound rigs."

[edmundsauto]

Miles driven are up ~20%, and there was an accounting change in 2016, and the NHTSA says <2020 shouldn't be compared to after.

Directionally this still looks accurate, and give thousands of truck driver deaths per year, its significant.

[estearum]

Isn't road safety in general getting way way better? So that'd make the truck situation even worse.

[edmundsauto]

From a quick analysis, non-trucker fatalities per mile was about even or slightly increased from 2014-2023. I would conclude it’s not worse than it appears in the trucking situation.