NTSB recently stated that commercial motor vehicle companies should obtain a CDL drivers’ 10 year driver history. Currently trucking companies are only required to obtain a 3 year history, many drivers re-enter the industry with a clean record, after horrific wrecks, with only a short period of time out of the business so that prior problems "drop off" their three year record.

The NTSB recommended that the following should take place:

3. Revise 49 Code of Federal Regulations 391.23 to require that motor carriers obtain a 10-year driving history for all prospective commercial vehicle drivers.

4. Revise 49 Code of Federal Regulations 384.225 to require that states retain on the Commercial Driver’s License Information System driver record all convictions, disqualifications, and other licensing actions for violations during the prior 10 years.

This is a good idea and I hope that it is adopted.

 

I have blogged repeatedly about the need for seat-belts on buses. After a recent crash in NJ, the NTSB prepared an animation of the crash with and without seat-belts for occupants. With seat-belts everyone walks away. Without… well look here for yourself.

One of the conclusions of the NTSB report? 

16. Equipping new motorcoaches with passenger lap/shoulder belts, even in the case of accidents such as this one, would likely mitigate serious and fatal injuries for some passengers during a rollover event and subsequent impact events.

The full NTSB synopsis report of the bus wreck can be found here. It is almost like they read my 2007 blog here. It is incredibly frustrating to see this belated response from NTSB, years late for those involved in this tragic wreck. Still, I am happy that attention is finally being paid to this critical area of safety.

 

The American Transportation Association (ATA) was recently quoted as telling the FMCSA that it needed to be "more responsive" to the trucking industry. Isn’t enough that there is a revolving door between the FMCSA and the Trucking industry? Trucking officials haul off to DC for a few years, ensure legislation is passed favorable to the industry and try to kill legislation and regulations that safety organizations pray for, and then head back to the trucking industry for higher pay and accolades. I cant imagine the frustration of dedicated public servants who are actively trying to balance industry needs and public safety. They work so hard to be fair only to be told they are insensitive to industry needs.

For those out there in the FMCSA that are putting public safety over perceived industry needs let me state, as a member of the public who isn’t driving an 80,000 pound truck, THANK YOU!

BUSES NEED SEAT BELTS. How can anyone truly argue that a lap belt on a bus isn’t a required safety feature? They are cheap, inexpensive to install, and prevent injuries and death. Again and again I see bus crashes where seat belts are not installed and passengers are needlessly injured and killed.

Recently a Kentucky school bus crashed, turning over in the process. There was a reported brain injury, broken bones, and other injuries. Merely having a lap belt would have more than likely prevented the vast majority of these injuries. I have blogged about the need for sea belts previously, most recently here, here, and here.

Recently, the federal government closed down several bus companies as unsafe. In fact the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued shutdown orders in just ONE DAY last month that declared 26 bus related companies, in six states, hazardous to the safety of the public. The shut down bus companies were based out of Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

The Kentucky crash involved a bus operated by New Image Travel of Evansville, Ind., for WorldStrides. It appears the legal name of the bus company is: SOUTHWESTERN ILLINOIS BUS COMPANY, LLC II with its DOT #1302646.

The truck industry "Roadcheck" is in process. That means from June 5-7 there will be more roadside inspectors looking at trucks – to ensure they are safe and legal – than at any other time of the year. Correspondingly, as those inspectors take a day off after the big push, the following three days have some of the fewest truck inspectors on the road. This makes June 8-10 some of the most dangerous days to be on a road in the US as dangerous truck drivers get back on the roadways and try to make up for lost time.

I have previously blogged about how ridiculous it is to announce a high period of inspections over a three day period (because all the drivers that know they are unsafe and running illegally take a vacation for those three days) but the trucking industry keeps doing it. The trucking industry then brags about the fact that almost 1 in every 5 trucks is unsafe (based on prior years inspection results), like this is an acceptable number AFTER you tell all the trucking companies and drivers you will be holding the inspection!

The Roadcheck inspection is widely published every year, months in advance, and you have to be a complete idiot not to know when these inspections take place. Anyone truly interested in safety  would ensure these inspections were unannounced. Drivers might think twice about getting on the road with an unsafe truck.

I will look forward to seeing how Roadcheck turns out this year. I will hope for some improvement, I am not holding my breath… and I am not getting on a highway June 8-10.

To find prior posts on this please search the term "Roadcheck" on my blog.

 I was pleased to see that Transportation Topics, a leading trucking industry publication, published my letter to the Editor in its April 23, 2012 edition on page 9. My letter on why plaintiff lawyer’s are having to pursue brokers for full restitution for their clients is as follows:

 

Broker Liability

This is in reference to the story “TIA Pushes Broad Offensive to Lower Brokers’ Liability” (4-2, p. 4).

The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 set minimum insurance limits for carriers at $750,000. Those limits have not been raised in 32 years. If you go to any present-value calculator on the Internet and use a 4% inflation rate, you will find that the present value of $750,000 after 32 years, is about $213,000 in today’s dollars. To put it another way, you would need $2.6 million in today’s dollars to equal $750,000 in 1980.

Many carriers are still only carrying $750,000 in coverage, and when a truly catastrophic wreck occurs, $750,000 is clearly inadequate.

Lawyers facing an inadequate recovery for their clients then look at other parties to make up the difference. Brokers easily could decrease their exposure to liability simply by making sure the carriers they use have adequate insurance.

 

I have been fortunate to work with many great lawyers around the country on Truck Accident, Spinal Cord and Brain Injury cases. One such lawyer is Pete Everett of Fairfax, Virginia. Pete Everett, a great trucking lawyer who has a breathtaking knowledge of traumatic brain injuries, sent me the following information on a new sleep apnea study in the Australian trucking industry. 

Sleep apnea is a huge issue in the US trucking industry, and is willfully, knowingly, and glaringly ignored by most trucking companies. As a result it is a problem I have posted on frequently (Dangers of Truck Drivers with Sleep Apnea,  Sleep Apnea increase Risk of Accident Two to Seven Hundred Percent; 25% of Truck Drivers Should Not be Driving Due to Fatigue; and Fatigued Drivers 2.5 Times More Likely to be in a Collision amongst others). The new study shows what we have known in the US for decades. TRUCK DRIVERS WITH UNTREATED SLEEP APNEA KILL INNOCENT VICTIMS ON OUR ROADS. The actual report states: 

TruckingInfo.com; Wednesday, April 4, 2012

 

41% of Australian Truck Drivers Have Sleep Apnea, Study Says

 

A new sleep study found that 41% of Australian truck drivers have obstructive sleep apnea.

 

The study, published in the journal "Sleep," found that although only 4.4% of drivers reported a previous diagnosis of sleep apnea, an at-home diagnostic test found that 41% of the 517 drivers who participated likely had sleep apnea.

The study also found that 36% of drivers were overweight, 50% obese an 49% were cigarette smokers.

 

"Sleep apnea remains a significant and unrecognized problem in CMV drivers, who we found to have multiple health risks," the study says. "Objective testing for this sleep disorder needs to be considered, as symptom reports and self-identification appear insufficient to accurately identify those at risk."

 

Although the study focused only on Australian drivers, NPR reported that as much as 30% of American drivers are believed to have sleep apnea, a condition that causes a person to stop breathing for short periods of time during sleep, which results in daytime drowsiness.

A trucking company’s driver manual tells its drivers all about the company’s safety policies and procedures. Generally, these manuals just recite Chapter 2 (the safety chapter) of the state’s CDL manual, and occasionally they includes material from a defensive driving course for truck Drivers such as the Smith System. Not a lot of difference in these manuals other than they do show the standards a driver is expected to follow, and that the company knew its driver’s should follow these rules. Frankly, driving safely is something we all learn and, for the most part, it involves basic physics we all know. Big things in motion (trucks) take longer to stop than little things in motion (cars). Thus trucks need more stopping distance than cars and better have good brakes! Not a lot of different ways you can discuss safe following distances and how to brake a tractor trailer.

Recently, however,  I have found I have had to fight for a copies of trucking companies’ driver’s manuals as the companies have suddenly started to say they are "secret." I have even had to file motions with judges to get this information [see my blog here]. More and more trucking company defense lawyers apparently believe there is some litigation advantage in keeping this information confidential, out of the public eye, and have put out and email telling all the other trucking defense lawyers not to turn over the driver’s manual. This is a bad trend, doesn’t make sense, and should be stopped.

Of course "this gives us an unfair advantage in litigation" is not what the trucking company lawyers are saying in court. In court they claim that their ability to keep the public safe is a "competitive advantage" that they don’t want leaked to other trucking companies. How to drive an 80,000 pound tractor trailer on our highways and streets without killing people should never be a competitive advantage for a trucking company.

I find it outrageous that a trucking company can claim that the the public’s (that is you and me my friends) safety is a competitive advantage (we kill less people than they do) worthy of a court’s protection. The fact they KILL less people on the road is, in fact, a good thing, but that they wont share that information to keep everyone on the road safe is appalling. It stinks to the high heavens. Luckily, some lawyers fight back on this issue, and some judges have common sense. 

Recently attorney Ed Ciarimboli, at Fellerman & Ciarimboli in Kingston, PA,  took this issue (and several others) in front of  judge in Pennsylvania and received an Order telling the trucking company, A. Duie Pyle (a very large trucking company with over 800 drivers and over 36 Million miles on the roadways in 2010)  that they had to turn over the manual without a secrecy Order. This type of hard work makes us all much safer when we drive. My hats off to Mr. Ciarimboli and the judge in that case (I would list his name but I cant read his signature!). A copy of the judge’s Order can be found HERE.
 

Trucking companies, as corporations, can only act though people. In trucking cases companies will often hire experts that give the company the answer they want (That the company isn’t responsible and it is the truck accident victims fault) rather than the truth. In many cases evidence is also allowed to be destroyed, even when the company knows that the evidence is critical to proving how a wreck happened.

In a 2003 decision, in a typical case, Bulkmatic’s expert, Stephen Chewing,  was found to have failed to "preserve the black box data [which] exhibited willfulness and bad faith that prejudiced [the victim of the truck wreck.]" The black box data would have shown the truck’s speed, when the driver braked, and other significant items that would have assisted the victim’s accident reconstructionist in the case against Bulkmatic. The full opinion of the court can be read HERE

Destruction of evidence is a common problem in trucking cases. Don’t wait to hire a lawyer while evidence in your case is being destroyed. While the insurance company is stringing you along with promises that everything will be "fine", the trucking company is getting rid of the proof you need to make a full recovery in your case. Whether you hire my firm or another, a competent truck accident law firm will immediately have a letter out to the trucking company and its driver telling them to save all the critical evidence.

A sample letter requesting evidence to be saved, and not destroyed (or "spoliated" as we say in the legal world), can be found in my prior blogs under "SPOLIATION."