I have blogged numerous times since 2007 about the horrible safety levels of our nation’s trucking fleet as documented in the annual Roadcheck Safety Inspections. In Roadcheck, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) teams with state inspectors and they check more trucks on the road than normal. They announce the inspection dates months in advance so all the smart truck drivers who are driving illegally take vacation days and the numbers look better than the reality.

Out of the millions of trucks on our highways, less than 100,000 are inspected over the three day inspection period. Overall, less than 2% of the commercial trucks on our roads are inspected annually. In 2012 the Roadcheck inspections found 22.4 percent of vehicles, and 3.9 percent of drivers, out of service (OOS)! That is more than one in every five trucks taken off the road for safety violations so severe the driver was not allowed to proceed!

I find it interesting that, unlike past years, the percentage of drug and alcohol violations by drivers were not revealed in the CVSA press release. In 2008 I blogged on the Roadcheck results (HERE)which showed there were 92,500 commercial drivers driving IMPAIRED on our roads every day!

I have blogged repeatedly about the need for seatbelts on school buses. IT IS PAST TIME TO HAVE SEATBELTS INSTALLED ON EVERY BUS!

Another tragic school bus crash involving middle school children shows why this is a critical – but overlooked –  safety feature. I blogged previously about another school bus crash in Kentucky HERE. I have blogged on the topic previously HERE and HERE. If we require these same students to be in car and booster seats, and will ticket a car driver for allowing a child to be out of the seat, how can we say seatbelts are not needed on a school bus? The CNN report is copied below for your consideration:

(CNN) — Dozens of schoolchildren in Louisville, Kentucky, were taken to hospitals after the bus they were riding in collided with a car and rolled on its side, officials said.

 Fifty people were taken to four hospitals after Friday morning’s collision between a school bus and a Ford Mustang, said Jody Duncan, spokeswoman for the local emergency management agency.

Of the 47 middle school students taken to the hospital, about half received injuries that were not life-threatening, and the rest were taken as a precaution, Duncan said. All three people in the Mustang were also taken to the hospital.

Individuals were taken to Kosair Children’s, Southwest Hospital, Jewish Hospital Medical Center East, and Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital, Duncan said.

The Jefferson County Public Schools bus had been picking up students who attend Frost Middle School.

Rain was falling when the Mustang, occupied by three high school students, and the bus collided at an intersection, Duncan said.

 

Morgan Adams is selected as a Mid-South Super Lawyer for 2012.

Super Lawyers (a Thomson Reuters publication) is a listing of outstanding lawyers in the Mid-South including lawyers from Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Super Lawyers has an extensive election process that involves peer nominations, evaluations and third-party research. Each candidate is evaluated on 12 points that include lawyer-peer recognition within the legal community, professional achievement and legal excellence.

Super Lawyers is limited to the top 5 percent of the lawyers in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. I am proud that I have been selected as Mid-South SuperLawyer for multiple years.

This honor is important to me because it’s a recognition of my commitment to protecting truck and bus accident victims in Tennessee, the mid-south, and across the United States.

To be a successful lawyer you have to really care about people, like people, and want to help them. You have to be committed to protecting people when they are being harmed. Further it is not enough to care about just your clients, you have to give back to the legal community and teach other lawyers what you do so that everyone is protected and everyone is made safer. That is why I write for legal text books and teach as many as 15 national legal seminars a year to other lawyers. Here is to a safer year for both your family and mine.

One of the frequent consequences of a truck wreck, when there are survivors, is a brain injury. As a result I have been very active in learning all I can about this frequently invisible, and incredibly devastating, injury. One of my friends, Randy Rozek in Wisconsin, recently brought an article to my attention and I wanted to make sure you had a chance to see it. Understanding the mechanisms of brain injury is a critical aspect of being a good trucking lawyer. Randy posted this on his legal blog, and I thank him for bringing it to my attention: 

 

magnetic-resonance-spectroscopyA new study published in the highly-regarded Journal of Neurotrauma establishes organic brain changes, even in cases of a single mild traumatic brain injury. The study entitled “The Use of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy in the Subacute Evaluation of Athletes Recovering from Single and Multiple Mild Traumatic Brain Injury” used advanced imaging to analyze changes in the brain following TBIs. Magnetic Resonance Spectoscopy (MRS) is an advanced imaging technique considered a compliment to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). While MRI forms anatomic images from the signal of hydrogen protons, MRS uses the same information to establish the concentration of brain metabolites, such as N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), choline (Cho), and creatine (Cr). MRS can be beneficial in the diagnosis of certain brain disorders and creatine deficiency disorders.

The new study looked at the concentration of certain brain metabolites in specific areas of the brain following single and multiple brain injuries. The primary focus of the study was the genu and splenium areas within the corpus collosum. 20 normal volunteers and 28 mild brain injured student athletes recovering from mild TBI were selected for the study. The TBI group was categorized based upon the number of mild TBI’s and time since injury. The results of the imaging study were astounding.

Decreased concentrations of N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), choline (Cho), and creatine (Cr) were seen in the genu of the corpus collosum, but not in the splenium of the corpus collosum, regardless of the number of TBI’s suffered by the individual. Interestingly, individuals recovering from their first mild TBI showed the most significant changes in NAA/Cho and NAA/Cr ratios. Since all individuals were still experiencing symptoms of mild TBI, the amount of time since the TBI to the date the imaging was performed was not a significant factor determining the ratio of brain metabolites. The authors did note a correlation between number of TBI’s and the length of symptomatology, confirming the multiple concussion effect.

The American Bar Association recently published a new text book on handling trucking cases. As a Truck accident attorney I am proud to say I was asked to contribute a chapter to the book. The text, in its third edition,  is titled "Truck Accident Litigation." The text book can be purchased HERE. My chapter was on issues involving negligence per se, that is to say negligence as a matter of law, for trucking company’s that violate the FMCSR. The cover of the text book is shown below: 

Truck Accident Litigation, 3rd Edition

The June 2012 Roadcheck results are out and they showed that more than 1 in every 5 trucks inspected were placed out of service (OOS). That means the trucks were taken off the road as unsafe, even though this was a pre-announced inspection.

The trucking industry knew about Roadcheck for months, as did I, and I have blogged multiple times on the subject. Since the inspection is announced months in advance the real numbers of unsafe trucks are much higher.

Some of the inspection results are scary, but not surprising. For example 15% of the OOS violations were for false log books. False log books are used so that drivers can drive more hours than legally allowed. False logs also result in fatigue related crashes, one of the largest causes of highway deaths in America. Some studies have shown almost one in three fatal crashes has a fatigue component.

I have blogged about Roadcheck for years and the known dangers it exposes in the trucking industry. When one out of five trucks is unsafe on an announced inspection, the trucking industry as a whole can be said to ignore safety on a daily basis.

Why aren’t government officials more upset about this horrible fact? Why do they accept it year after year? Makes you think long and hard about the revolving door between the DOT, FMCSA, and the trucking industry doesn’t it? 

Source: Transportation Topics, August 20, 2012, P3

 I am happy to announce that, after five years, I finally graduated from the Trial Lawyer’s College (TLC). I am now the 4th person to have both been certified an AAJ Diplomate as well as graduate from the TLC. I am proud that I am the first truck accident lawyer to do so. This is good news for my truck accident clients as the intense continuing education required of these programs has made me a much better lawyer. 

Andrew Cochran discusses how tort reform threatens your constitutional rights.

I encourage everyone to spend 15 minutes and listen to what he says. For those who don’t know Andrew he’s a lifelong conservative Republican, Reagan appointee and editor of the 7th Amendment Advocate.

Listen to Podcast

 

Last week, at the American Association for Justice’s national convention in Chicago, I received the AAJ Trucking Litigation Group’s first ever "Lifetime Achievement Award." I was surprised to say the least!

The award means a lot to me and the fact that the effort I make on behalf of my clients as a truck accident attorney were recognized nationally, by other attorneys who also handle trucking cases, just blew me away.

My pledge to you all is that I will continue to work hard to make trucks safer, and to decrease the horrific carnage associated with these massive collisions when they occur. When these collisions do occur as a result of an unsafe truck driver or unsafe trucking company I also pledge to hold their feet to the fire for as long as it takes to find full justice for the surviving family members. 

To all my colleagues across the country that had a hand in this award, either directly or in your tireless search for justice for our clients, THANK YOU!

 On July 11, 2012, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Deputy Administrator Bill Bronrott testified about the Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program before the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Small Business. Deputy Bronrott’s written testimony discusses CSA’s safety benefits and its impact on small businesses, and is posted on FMCSA’s Website. Some of the key points of the testimony are listed below:

  • Independent analysis indicates the CSA Safety Measurement System (SMS) is a significant improvement over prior systems to effectively meet FMCSA’s Congressional mandate to investigate high-risk carriers.
  • The CSA SMS is effectively monitoring the motor carrier industry. The 200,000 carriers with sufficient data to be scored in the SMS are involved in 93% of the crashes reported to FMCSA.
  • The CSA SMS is not biased against small business. While carriers with 5 or less power units make up over 85% of the industry, 93% of these small carriers do not score poorly in any area of the SMS.
  • Analysis of the CSA interventions model demonstrated an overall 35% increase in the number of carriers reached per Safety Investigator. CSA uses Onsite Focused Investigations and warning letters, which are effective in improving compliance and less intrusive and time-consuming for motor carriers.
  • From CSA rollout in December 2010 until the end of 2011, violations per roadside inspection declined by 8% and driver violations per inspection declined by 12%. This the most significant improvement in violation rates in the last 10 years.

The Agency is committed to continuous improvement of the CSA program. In fact, five proposed enhancements to SMS are currently being previewed by motor carriers based on specific industry and enforcement personnel feedback since SMS rollout in December 2010. These proposed enhancements are outlined in the Federal Docket Management System and were the topic of a recent public webinar series held by the Agency. Overall, 670 participants listened in, many of whom have expressed positive feedback. The presentation is now available to everyone on the CSA Website.

The CSA program has already shown many safety benefits and FMCSA will continue finding ways to make our roads safer.