Articles Posted in Truck Accidents

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The U.S. Department of Transportation is looking to relax current federal regulations that govern the amount of time commercial truck drivers can be on the road without taking a rest break.  This could lead to an increase of fatigued truck drivers on the nation’s highways which, in turn, could result in more deadly trucking accidents.

Current regulations limit the drive time of long-haul commercial truck drivers to 11 hours of a 14-hour on-duty day.  A driver must then take 10 consecutive hours off before the clock can start again, and if they are going to be driving for more than 8 hours, they must take a rest break of a minimum of 30 minutes before they can drive again.  Essentially a driver cannot exceed 70 hours of driving in eight days. This is known as the 70-hour rule.

Even with such drive time regulations for commercial truck drivers, serious accidents involving fatigued truck drivers are all too common.  In 2017, there were 4,657 fatal truck crashes, a 10% increase from the prior year.  A study by the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) found that a significant percent of fatal accidents involving truck drivers was caused by fatigue.  In fact, sleep deprivation and fatigue has been noted to be one of the most frequent causes of fatal large truck accidents.   The NTSB has recognized that truck driver fatigue is a “pervasive problem” and has declared reducing fatigue-related accidents as one of its “most wanted” safety improvements of 2019-2020.

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The North Georgia area, including metro Atlanta, has no shortage of highways running through its landscape.  And whenever there are highways, there are usually multiple tractor trailers travelling on them at any given time.  Most of us, while driving a motor vehicle, have had to share the roads with a massive tractor trailer, which can lead to a harrowing and dangerous experience.  And we’ve all seen the devastating results an accident with a tractor trailer can have on passenger vehicle and its occupants.

Now, trucking groups are lobbying lawmakers in the nation’s capital to allow for even larger and heavier trucks on our highways. The push for allowing twin 33-foot trailers, or Double 33’s, continues.  If this passes, this means that trailers as long as an 8-story building could be sharing the roads with passenger cars, cyclists and pedestrians.  That undoubtedly is a dangerous idea, and one that should be strongly opposed by trucking safety advocates.

One of the truck lobbying groups, Americans for Modern Transportation, argue that larger trucks that can carry heavier freights are absolutely necessary because of the increased demand posed by companies like Amazon. A growing demand for online deliveries has made it necessary to revise old rules, and increase the weight limits on trucks operating on our highways. Unfortunately, the focus of these groups are more economic savings rather than road safety.

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Truck drivers have a significantly higher risk of developing diabetes.  This can make operating such a massive vehicle even more dangerous for not only the driver, but for other drivers on the road as well.   In Georgia and the Atlanta area, where the interstates are usually packed with tractor-trailers, truck drivers driving with unmanaged diabetes can increase the risks of accidents with other drivers.

According to recent studies, truck drivers have a risk of developing diabetes that is as much as 50 percent higher than the general population.  This is due in part to the long hours truck drivers are required to log, inconsistent eating schedules, lack of regular exercise and oftentimes unhealthy food choices.

Management of diabetes symptoms can be very difficult when you are a trucker. For one thing, diabetes is a difficult disease to live with, and there is no complete cure for the condition. The only way to ensure that you continue to live a happy and healthy life with diabetes is to manage the symptoms consistently.   However, truck drivers typically drive long hours without a break. Working such long hours can mean that a truck driver is less likely to take his medication on time every day. Failure to take medications on time can cause a catastrophic increase in sugar levels, making driving an extremely hazardous activity. In addition, the food options that are typically available to a truck driver often include greasy foods or foods that are high in sugar making management of symptoms even harder.

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More truck accidents can be prevented every year if tractor trailers come with sophisticated technologies, including roll stability control, electronic stability control, and electronic logging devices. That’s because truck driver fatigue and truck defects contribute to many truck accidents each year.

Researchers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently partnered with other experts to investigate the causal factors impacting accident risk for commercial trucks.  Large trucks that had been involved in injury or fatal accidents during the 2010-2012 were compared with other trucks that had not been involved in accidents. A total of 197 such pairs were compared, and researchers found that more than one-third of the accidents that were investigated as part of the study had resulted in fatalities. At least 17% involved serious injuries.

The researchers found that three quarter of the accidents involved tractor trailers with vehicle defects that were only identified during post-accident inspections. In fact, trucks with violations like malfunctioning brake lights, malfunctioning brakes, damaged sidewalls, and damaged headlights or taillights that were serious enough to put the trucks out of service, had their risk of being involved in an accident quadruple, compared to trucks that did not have such violations.

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Medical conditions, such as cardiac disease, increase the risk of truckers suffering an emergency at the wheel, and raise their risks of being involved in an accident.

That information comes from a new study, which focused on more than 49,000 commercial truck drivers. The researchers found that 34% of truck drivers suffered from at least one chronic medical condition, including diabetes, heart disease, or lower back pain. All of these conditions are typically linked to poor driving performance, and could significantly increase the risk of being involved in an accident.

Researchers found that many truck drivers were likely to suffer from more than one such condition. Truck drivers, who suffered three or more medical conditions, were 2 to 4 times more likely to be involved in a truck accident, compared to healthier truck drivers. The general accident rate in the study was 29 per 100 million miles traveled. Among drivers who suffered from three or more flagged medical problems, the rate was a staggering 93 per million miles traveled.

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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently released new rules for truck driver training that do not call for a minimum number of real-world driving hours. Now, a coalition of highway safety advocates is calling on the agency to require such minimum real-world driving experience.

The coalition, which includes the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and others have petitioned the FMCSA, calling on the it to include a requirement mandating that new truck drivers have a minimum number of hours of driving behind the wheel before they are allowed to drive independently.

FMCSA recently issued final rules governing the hiring of entry-level truck drivers, and says that it did not include real-world driving training in this rule because it did not make financial sense. According to the Agency, it does not have enough evidence to link such real-world driving to greater safety outcomes, and does not believe that the safety benefits of requiring such real-world training are clear enough for it to mandate expensive training.

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A jury of 12 deliberated for 12 hours before returning to the courtroom with a favorable verdict for the plaintiffs, a husband and wife from Flowery Branch, Georgia who were the unfortunate victims of a horrendous truck accident. After almost three years and countless hours of preparation, the Parks received an award in the amount of $3.2 million – but only after allegedly faulty brakes on the Defendant driver’s truck forever changed their lives. During the summer of 2011, the Parks were traversing I-85 when they noticed a HERO truck partially blocking the roadway. Ever-cautious, they stopped for the truck, as did another driver in front of them. However, a third vehicle, a truck owned by Atlanta Dealer Trades, failed to stop when the driver, Jessie Arnold, unsuccessfully applied the brakes. He proceeded to plow into the Parks’ car from behind, “pushing their car 60 feet ahead and into another vehicle,” according to the Daily Report.

The truck then proceeded to strike the car that had been in front of the Parks’ car as well as the HERO vehicle, before finally coming to a rest on the highway. The truck had been recently purchased from another company, JCF Autotransport, Inc., and Atlanta Dealer Trades accordingly sought to have some degree of fault apportioned to that second company due to their alleged failure to maintain the truck’s brakes. The Plaintiffs, however, dropped the second company as a defendant after their investigative efforts turned up no evidence of faulty brakes and the DeKalb County Court subsequently declined to allow the company to be included on the verdict form. Defendants plan to file an appeal and challenge both the Parks’ claims for damages and the apportionment issue.

In total, the Parks accrued $200,000 and $154,173 in medical bills, respectively, with the need for additional medical services anticipated in the future. Damages requested included those amounts as well as attorney’s fees, and estimated lost wages for six months (in the amount of $5,000 per month). All claims for punitive damages were dropped once it became clear that the jury was struggling to justify such a move. Once they were taken off of the table, the jury rendered the remainder of its verdict with relative ease.
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It was almost three years ago that Kevin Boyer of North Dakota was driving his three children home in the family van when they were suddenly struck by a tractor-trailer with a double-trailer rig. Two of his children perished in the crash, leaving both Boyer and the third child, a three-year-old son, critically injured. One son was ejected from the vehicle and into the snow, while Boyer’s daughter was discovered partially ejected through a rear window. Boyer and his surviving child were taken to the hospital, where they eventually recovered, but the effects were long-lasting and included the demise of Boyer’s marriage. Although Boyer and his wife began divorce proceedings only weeks after the devastating truck accident, they finally came together in 2012 to file a civil lawsuit against the truck driver.

A local publication, The Grand Forks Herald, reports that Plaintiffs allege the driver “violated federal regulations by driving too many hours without rest and using a prescription painkiller that causes drowsiness.” The driver, Steve Nelson, has not disputed those claims and, in fact, served a one year sentence after pleading guilty in 2011 during a related criminal case which encompassed two counts of negligent homicide and one count of reckless driving, with all but 60 days of his sentence being suspended. The remaining 60 days were spent on house arrest and an additional 100 hours were spent doing community service.
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Even the most skilled motorists occasionally experience a modicum of nervousness when passing big rigs – also known as the behemoths of the road. The sheer size of trucks, tractor-trailers, 18 wheelers and semi-trucks has inspired the common belief that a truck accident with one of those vehicles necessarily results in a proportionally larger number of fatalities and/or debilitating injuries when compared to car accidents. Factor in truck driver negligence, couple that with unsafe driving conditions or other unexpected, outside influences (such as distractions, fatigue or defects in loads or vehicles), and any capable truck driver attorney would immediately tell you you’ve concocted a recipe for disaster.

Truck driver negligence, which is one of the leading causes of trucking accidents, is typically be attributed to the feeling of invincibility engendered by the insulation a cavernous truck cab seemingly provides against the world. That particular feeling, as one tractor-trailer driver in Gwinnett County, Atlanta recently discovered, is a mere illusion. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that over the weekend, Gwinnett police arrested 35-year-old truck driver Raymond L. Hatt Jr., 35, of Manton, Georgia for his purported role in a fatal truck accident.

According to police officials, Hafiz M. Ilyas, 40, of Marietta, was traveling southbound on I-85 in the far right lane when Hatt’s 18 wheeler cut off his vehicle. In attempt to avoid hitting the truck’s trailer, Ilyas swerved his green Toyota Camry onto the shoulder of the highway before losing control and striking Hatt’s truck as his Camry reentered the roadway. His car became trapped under the trailer and caught fire. Ilyas, unfortunately, perished at the scene. Hatt was subsequently charged with making an unsafe lane change, failing to signal and second-degree vehicular homicide.
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The American Trucking Associations have finally put enough pressure on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), compelling it to “make available a study of the links between Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA) violations and crash risk used to develop its methodology for assigning carriers’ CSA scores,” says The Trucker. In a recent statement, FMCSA indicated that it would soon make the Violation Severity Assessment Study Report, which was published in 2007, publicly available through the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program docket found at www.fmcsa.dot.gov. The Associations allege that they have been requesting the results of the study in writing since 2010. The research, the motor carrier publication The Trucker reports, examined the use of police reports to determine accountability when it comes to trucking accidents. The various associations came together in a demand for the study in the hopes that it would allow them to “evaluate CSA and other substantial proposals to improve it.”

For many Atlanta truck accident attorneys the FMCSA’s delay in granting the requests of the Associations comes as a surprise, especially since the agency purports that its primary goal is to strengthen commercial vehicle and driver safety. Created in 2000, the agency was designed to regulate trucking practices in the United States.CSA is a comprehensive program administered by the FMCSA under the authority of the Department of Transportation. The CSA program is meant to improve motor carrier and bus safety by reducing crashes, injuries, and fatalities by providing evaluations of the safety performance of carriers and drivers and identifying behavior patterns that may result in unsafe operations.
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