PEABODY ? After a series of deadly accidents on a stretch of U.S. 50, the Kansas Highway Patrol plans to increase the number of random inspections of tractor-trailers in the area.

Since May 10, nine people have died in collisions involving semitrailers along the highway, about three miles east of this town of 1,500. Seven people died last week in two accidents on the highway.

Lt. Brad Runyan said the inspections, conducted by the patrol’s Motor Carrier Safety Program, will check log books, the condition of truck drivers and their rigs, including brakes and headlights. Extra troopers will also patrol the area.

A six-car accident claimed the lives of five people Tuesday, a day after a similar collision left two dead at the same location. In both instances, the patrol said, a tractor-trailer collided with a passenger vehicle that had stopped or slowed near where the two-lane highway is restricted to one lane by construction.

The patrol is still investigating the accidents, Runyan said, but preliminary evidence suggests the truck drivers, in both cases, may have been sleepy at the time of the collisions.

Another accident May 10 in the same area under similar circumstances killed two people.

Construction at the site of the accidents isn’t scheduled to resume until Wednesday. A spokesman for the Kansas Department of Transportation, Steve Swartz, said parts of the project are to last nine months.

Workers in the area of the accidents are drilling through the roadway and injecting a sealant that’s designed to keep moisture from reaching the dirt beneath the road.