edit: of course, you'll have the prepper, the boat enthusiast, the car or truck modder, the american wild lover, and a bunch of other people carrying sketchy home made gas tanks everywhere around you in the land of freedom.
edit: of course, you'll have the prepper, the boat enthusiast, the car or truck modder, the american wild lover, and a bunch of other people carrying sketchy home made gas tanks everywhere around you in the land of freedom.
(Also, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about every single accident leading to fire. Fender-benders and low-speed collisions do happen.)
-These trucks have no HAZMAT signs to alert first responders to the dangers within.
-There is no separation between driver and cargo, so things like smoking or even electrical sparks could ignite the gasoline.
-These bladders don't appear to be commercially engineered or fit for this purpose. They could easily leak.
-The trucks pictured are running well over their rated payload capacity and are 10+ years old. 500 gallons of gasoline weighs 3125 lbs and even the large Excursion shown is only rated for 1500-2000 including driver and legitimate fuel.
-The drivers are incentivized to run away from police at the scene of an accident and their insurance won't cover criminal activity. If a commercial fuel truck catches fire and someone gets injured due to burns, they'd have to pay.
-The drivers aren't properly trained for handling hazardous materials. They could do things like stall on railroad tracks and kill hundreds of people.
To me, the risk seems much higher than a hobbyist with a custom hot rod or a legitimate tanker truck.
Steel tanker trucks must be able to withstand more of an impact without issue than a plastic bladder in a van, no?
Normal trucks are not stupid, it's just that past a certain size, only steel can hold the static force of the liquid. There are contradictory factors, you want the cargo to be held firmly in place when you brake, but you want the tank to be accepting a lot of deformation before breaking. I'm not sure, but a secondary concern might be contamination, I'm not sure you can switch liquids in a plastic tank, while you can clean a steel tank.