Mexico Leads Globally in Truck Crashes: Samsara

Mexico is facing a worsening road-safety crisis in freight transport. According to Samsara’s Global Fleet Safety Report, the country leads all regions in crash frequency, up 60% versus the global benchmark, and has the world’s highest rate of mobile-phone distraction at 238%. Federal highway data from the 2024 IMT Statistical Yearbook underscores the severity of the issue: heavy cargo vehicles remain among the most dangerous road users, contributing substantially to 13,771 collisions, 1,812 on-site fatalities, 6,800 injuries, and more than MX$2,467 million (US$135.56 million) in damages.

Together, these datasets reveal a structural safety gap: Mexico’s logistics operations continue to expand rapidly, driven by rising nearshoring and cross-border trade, yet the adoption of real-time, AI-supported safety technologies is still limited, leaving transport operators vulnerable and exposing national road networks to escalating risks, argues Samsara.

High-Severity Collisions Concentrated Along Major Freight Corridors

The IMT’s Risk Profile of Freight Vehicles reveals that cargo vehicles were involved in more than 35% of all fatal crashes on federal highways in 2024, despite representing a much smaller percentage of circulating vehicles. Rollovers emerged as one of the most common and deadly collision modalities for heavy trucks, accounting for a substantial share of single-vehicle fatalities, while head-on collisions and lane-departure crashes collectively represented over 40% of deadly incidents involving cargo units across states such as Chihuahua, Sonora, Guanajuato, and Nuevo Leon. 

The economic consequences are also notable: states like Veracruz, Puebla, Nuevo Leon, Jalisco, and Tamaulipas together accumulated over MX$700 million (US$38.49 million) in damages linked specifically to heavy-truck crashes, and corridors such as MEX-45, MEX-57, MEX-85, and MEX-180 continue to appear as recurrent hotspots for high-severity incidents and operational disruptions. 

Across the federal network, more than 80% of crashes involving cargo vehicles are attributed to human errors, including distraction, fatigue, improper overtaking, and loss of control. In states with heavy freight intensity, such as Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas, the share of human-factor-related crashes rises above 85%, and in some corridors above 90%. 

This mirrors Samsara’s findings, where Mexico shows extreme overrepresentation in distraction patterns: drivers in Mexico are 2.3 times more likely to use a mobile phone compared to the global baseline, and distraction events occur at a rate 84% higher than observed in the United States. Samsara also shows that while speeding levels in Mexico are 25% lower than in other regions, collision rates remain significantly higher, suggesting that environmental risk, driver workload, and systemic operational pressures matter more than speed alone.

AI Safety Technologies Show Proven Results in Reducing Crashes

Samsara argues that AI-powered safety systems have a transformational potential to reverse these trends. Fleets that adopted real-time bidirectional AI dashcams saw a 48% drop in harsh driving events, a 4% reduction in speeding, and an 84% reduction in mobile-phone usage within the first six months, says the company. Over a 30-month period, these improvements intensified, with harsh events falling by 69%, speeding dropping by 23%, and distraction declining by 96%. Most critically, crash rates declined by 37% in the first half-year and by up to 73% over 30 months, according to Samsara’s multiregional dataset. 

These reductions directly counter the most prevalent risk factors identified by the IMT, including lane departure, rollovers due to loss of control, and distraction-induced head-on crashes, and highlight how technology can quickly shift the risk curve even in Mexico’s most challenging operating environments.

Environmental Strain, Fatigue, and Infrastructure Gaps Amplify Risk

Explanations for Mexico’s disproportionate risk appear in both data sets. The IMT notes that federal corridors often combine challenging roadway geometry, aging infrastructure, cargo theft zones, long distances without rest facilities, and high nighttime operations, conditions that raise fatigue and stress indicators among commercial drivers. Samsara’s behavioral telemetry shows higher frequencies of fatigue-linked events and prolonged distraction episodes in Mexico, which correlate strongly with crash likelihood. 

Cargo vehicles involved in fatal crashes in Mexico show a measurable pattern of severe impact dynamics: when heavy trucks are involved, multi-vehicle collisions occur 2.4 times more often, and fatal outcomes are statistically more likely due to the mass differential in collisions with smaller vehicles. Combined with IMT’s finding that 28% of collisions involving heavy vehicles result in significant injuries or fatalities, the human and economic costs become even more evident.

The IMT identifies gaps in the reliability of state-reported collision data and proposes new methodological classifications to improve consistency, acknowledging that evidence-based policymaking depends on accurate time-series data. Yet even within these limitations, the available numbers consistently show that cargo vehicles, especially double articulated units, which appear across multiple state profiles, have some of the highest severity indices in the national road network. In states like Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Veracruz, Puebla, and Nuevo Leon, collisions involving cargo vehicles represent between 30% and 45% of all fatalities on federal roads, according to IMT figures.