Heavy trucks. They supply most of our goods yet pose a constant threat. Truckers and their employers must resolve the deadly dilemma, best described by a few of Colorado’s well-known tragedies.

April 25, 2019. Cuban Immigrant Rogel Aguilera-Mederos loses brakes in the eastbound lanes of I-70, passing a runaway truck ramp before heading into Lakewood. The truck smashes into a traffic jam, destroys 28 vehicles and kills four people. A judge sentences the driver to 110 years; Gov. Jared Polis reduces it to 10.

June 13, 2022. Jesus Puebla drives a truck northbound on Interstate 25 in Weld County, has braking problems and slams into the back of a car. The crash kills Aaron Godinez, Hailie Everts, their 3-month-old daughter, Tessleigh, and injures someone in another car. A judge last week sentenced Puebla to 11 years in prison on multiple counts of vehicular homicide.

June 11, 2024. Ignacio Cruz-Mendoza — an immigrant who entered the country illegally 17 times — loses control of a semi, rolls it and drops a load of pipe on five other vehicles. The crash injures three and kills one. The driver, lacking a valid U.S. or commercial driver’s license, faces multiple charges and authorities determined the truck’s brakes did not work.

These are merely a few high-profile crashes. About 8.4% of all Colorado fatal crashes involve heavy trucks, and we seldom hear about them.

The National Safety Council reports a 49% increase in truck-crash fatalities in the past decade. The agency finds the involvement rate for each 100-million truck miles traveled rose 22% in the last 10 years.

We need trucks like we need aircraft. Trucking provides more than 110,000 Colorado jobs, paying annual wages of $52,000 for a total nearing $6 billion. Nearly 14,000 trucking companies headquarter in Colorado. Tucks move more than 128,512 tons of goods each day in our state. About 80% of Colorado communities depend 100% on trucking to supply essential goods.

Large aircraft, unlike large trucks, almost never crash. While federal data show between 4,000 and 5,000 fatal truck crashes each year, annual fatal airline crashes are typically zero and have never topped 0.03 accidents for each 100,000 departures in a single year this century.

Americans have such high safety expectations of flight that a non-fatal incident — the Jan. 5 loss of a door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight departing Seattle — justifiably captivates the public’s attention, which demands accountability, and jeopardizes Boeing’s survival.

We saw no proportional outrage — nothing close — when the public learned that corporate negligence played a major role in the deadly Lakewood crash. We saw no comparative response when the public learned how lax immigration enforcement played a key role in the crash caused by Cruz-Mendoza (he shouldn’t have been here), or the Jesus Puebla crash involving negligence by employer and employee.

Because society must have trucks, this should not be resolved with excessive regulations that would reduce competition, cause small-business failures and raise consumer prices. Yet, trucking executives large and small should know they invite such onerous control by the federal and state governments if they don’t embark on self-imposed reforms. They must begin soon and show dramatic results.

It is commonsense that all transportation employers should check the legal working status of employees. They should ensure each truck has good brakes and that each driver has proper training and licensure. Take no deadly shortcuts.

Trucking companies and their drivers must put safety first, or face taking lives and losing their jobs, liberties, companies and everything else. Ask those who didn’t, and they’ll surely wish they had.

Gazette editorial board