TWIN FALLS — When loaded trucks weighing 80,000 pounds crash on the interstate, it’s never good.

Six of these crashes have resulted in four deaths this month in south-central Idaho.

Talking about truck crashes doesn’t come easy for Brian Layton of Twin Falls. He’s seen both sides of the incidents, as a first responder and as a full-time trucker.

“The first thought is that it’s tragic,” Layton said, “and I hope nobody got seriously injured or they walked away clean.”

But walking away uninjured from a crash doesn’t always happen, and the Magic Valley has seen an extension of the “100 Deadliest Days,” a term referring to an increase in fatal motor vehicle crashes on America’s roadways from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

In the Twin Falls area, fatal crashes involving semitractor-trailers occurred on Sept. 1, Sept. 9, Sept. 15 and Sept. 23 on Interstate 84, while injury crashes occurred Sept. 13 and 14.

One occurred when a truck ran into the rear of another semi, and another trucker died when his semi veered into a guardrail, overturned, and came to rest in a canal west of Burley. The third was a head-on collision when a truck entered the wrong lane of traffic. The fourth and most recent fatality, on Saturday, involved a truck crashing through barricades in a construction zone and striking a worker doing maintenance on the interstate.

The percentage of truck-involved fatal crashes this month is running high, compared with a few years ago. Six of nine crashes in September involved large trucks.

In 2021, 12.5% of fatal crashes in Idaho involved a large truck, according to statistics compiled by lawyer John Fitch, who analyzed data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

That ranked Idaho ninth nationally.

Those numbers don’t surprise Layton, an instructor at Commercial Driver School in Twin Falls.

“A lot of it is somebody rushing,” he said. “Whether it be the truck driver rushing or the car driver, someone was in a hurry. That is what leads to a lot of accidents.”

Ken Wiesmore, commercial vehicle specialist for District 4 Idaho State Police, agrees with Layton but adds other factors.

“It’s a combination of distracted driving, aggressive driving, fatigue, and also equipment issues,” Wiesmore told the Times-News.“I’m not saying by any means that truck drivers are perfect, but in general, truck drivers are more safe drivers on the road because of the consequences we have if we screw up.”

What caused some of the crashes this month isn’t specifically being released as the ISP continues its investigations, he said.

“We don’t want to pick on commercial drivers,” Nathan Jerke, spokesperson for the Idaho Transportation Department, said, “but with the size of their vehicles they need to exercise an extra share of caution.”

But don’t be so quick to point to truck drivers as the person responsible for the cause of all the crashes, he said. Motorists not paying attention to trucks’ special needs can also play a role.

“Unfortunately smaller vehicles might be causing some of those as they whip around in and out and around those trucks,” Jerke said, “so it goes both ways.”

And then there is the matter of construction zones, the sites of several of the crashes. The head-on crash at 2 a.m. was near the end of a construction zone at milepost 200 near a crossover, where traffic is directed over the interstate median. The truck crashed through a barricade and entered the wrong lane of traffic, Jerke said. The driver died while two people in the other semitractor-trailer were taken to the hospital.

Layton, from his own experience, said it’s likely that the truck driver got confused at the hundreds of orange cones laid out on the roadway, with disastrous results.

In Saturday’s incident involving the death of the construction worker, Jerke said it is possible that the westbound driver had difficulty seeing clearly because the sun was in his eyes.