Over the past decade, the fatality rate related to motor-vehicle accidents has shown a fairly steady decline. While traffic safety has improved in recent years, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says that thousands continue to die in traffic accidents each year. The agency says that fatalities in rural areas of the country decreased 31 percent from 2002 to 2011, while urban traffic fatalities dropped 21 percent during the same time frame. In 2011, 17,762 people died in rural traffic crashes and 14,464 perished in accidents in urban areas.

Federal officials say that head-on accidents seem to be more deadly than other types of crashes. Many rural roads involve two lane highways or other more narrow roads than those found in urban areas. The National Transportation Safety Board says that head-on, or wrong-way crashes, result in a fatality about 22 percent of the time, while less than 1 percent of all other types of motor-vehicle wreck result in a fatality.

A head-on crash in Ralls County claimed the life of a Troy, Missouri, resident Monday evening on Missouri 19. Authorities say that the man had been driving north on the highway when he crossed over the center line and drove into the path of a southbound Peterbilt. The head-on collision caused both vehicles to burst into flames. The Troy man who had been driving the sport utility vehicle did not survive the wreck.

Authorities say that a 26-year-old St. Clair, Missouri, resident was driving the tractor trailer involved in the wreck. He escaped injury.

The accident was reported around 6:00 Monday evening.

Investigators sought to discover as much information about the fatal accident as possible from the scene. Authorities closed down Missouri 19 for several hours to allow an accident reconstruction team and investigators to work at the scene of the fatal crash.

Source: WHIG, “UPDATE: Troy driver killed in head-on crash in Ralls County,” Aug. 20, 2013