Georgia Truck Accident Attorney Blog

Driver fatigue is a major cause of catastrophic truck crashes. Michigan attorney Terry Coleman suggests that the correlation of fatigue, slow reaction time and aging should lead to imposing a mandatory retirement for truck drivers at age 65, the same age at which airline pilots are required to retire. While I share the concern for trucking safety, I respectfully disagree with the conclusion.

Having known individuals who retained their full strength and faculties to age 80 and beyond, and others who were debilitated at 45, I am increasingly skeptical of mandatory retirement ages in any field. Rather, I would favor annual testing of key functions - vision, hearing, reaction time, etc. - beginning at perhaps age 60 or 65.

If an individual has the physical and mental ability to working productively and safely, he or she should not be restrained by an arbitrary age limit. And if a younger person is not capable, he or she should not be piloting an 80,000 pound vehicle through highway traffic.

Continue reading " Should there be a mandatory retirement age for truck drivers? " »

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee announced a telephone conference meeting for Monday, December 1, 2008
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST. Here is the rather opaque agenda that has been announced.

1. Call to Order
Larry W. Minor, Designated Federal Official, MCSAC

2. Opening Remarks
David R. Parker, Chair, MCSAC

3. New Business
Warren Dunham, Facilitator, MCSAC
a) Approval of Task Statement 09-01 (National Agenda for Motor Carrier Safety)
b) Review of 2009-2010 Proposed Meeting Dates

4. Adjournment
Larry W. Minor, Designated Federal Official, MCSAC

Members of the public may access the meeting by telephone conference.
Bridge Line: 1-877-940-3750, Passcode: 1435220
Web Link: http://fhwa.na3.acrobat.com/mcsac

Continue reading " Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee agenda " »

While my perspective is that of a trial lawyer handling truck and bus accident injury cases in Atlanta, Georgia, it is necessary to keep up with developments nationally. Therefore, I am following how trucking safety issues are on the agenda for the new administration in Washington.

Last Monday, the transportation transition team met with representatives of major trucking industry interest groups including the American Trucking Association (ATA), the Truckload Carriers Association, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, National Private Truck Council, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), and the truck manufacturers.

According to a report by Jami Jones of Land Line Magazine, some of the issues on which conflicting opinions were presented included:

- Truck size. The American Truicking Association favors using longer and heavier trucks for "productivity improvements." The OOIDA and others counter that this would take a toll on the nation's highway and bridge infrastructure.

- Loading and unloading time. The OOIDA representative pointed out that many drivers spend 30 to 40 or more hours per week waiting at loading docks to get loaded or unloaded. Addressing the waiting time problems at loading docks would improve productivity, as well as enhancing safety by helping encourage compliance with hours of service and reducing driver fatigue.

- Speed limiters. The ATA argues for speed limiters on trucks for reasons of safety and energy conservation. The OOIDA contends that speed limiters would hurt the incomes of truck drivers who are paid by the mile, and would have negative safety effects by ability to change lanes and move with the flow of traffic.

- Pressure from brokers, shippers, receivers and motor carriers. The OOIDA representative pointed out the the FMCSA concentrates too much of its enforcement efforts on drivers, while ignore the relationship between highway safety and the coercive demands of freight brokers, shippers, receivers and motor carriers upon drivers. The OOIDA representative pointed out that pointed out that truckers are under immense pressure from motor carriers, shippers and receivers. And that pressure is far more pervasive than the threat of any inspection scheme by FMCSA. “Unless those economic issues are addressed, drivers who become disqualified from driving … for safety violations will simply be replaced by new drivers facing the same economic pressures,” he told the transition team.

That is consistent with horror stories about economic pressures to violate safety rules I have heard from numerous truck drivers over the years.

- Truck parking and idling. Hours of service regulations require truck drivers to take mandatory rest periods. However, there are often inadequate spaces available for trucks to park and local governments restrict truck parking. Representatives urged a national approach to availability of truck parking for rest.

- Other topics discussed included electronic on-board recorders, parking shortages, idling regulations, highway financing and driver training.

Continue reading " Obama transition team hears truck safety debate points " »

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee (MCSAC) announced on November 26th, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday, that it will hold committee meetings on Dec. 1, the day after the holiday weekend, and Dec. 10. The announcement did not include any indication of what will be on the agenda.

The December 1 meeting, from 12 to 1, will be accessible by conference call, though the announcement did not include direct information on how to access it.

I sent an email on Wednesday, shortly after the announcement came out, asking for the agenda, and did not receive any response. I will try again.

I try not to be too cynical, but the closing days of any administration, when the outgoing officials may be tempted to feather their nests for future jobs in the industry they regulate, is a time to be especially watchful. That's true no matter which party is going out or coming in.

The December 10th meeting is apparently accessible only to those able to attend in person in Washington, DC.

The announcement stated that for more information, one should contact Jeffrey Miller, Chief, Strategic Planning and Program Evaluation Division, Office of Policy Plans and Regulation, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, D.C., 20590, (202) 366-1258, or via e-mail to mcsac@dot.gov.

Continue reading " FMCSA Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee meetings on Dec. 1 and 10 " »

A few days ago, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration published a final rule adopting the provisions of its 2007 interim final rule, increasing the maximum driving time from 10 to 11 hours per day, out of 14 hours on duty.

According to a report by Jill Dunn on e-Trucker.com, the FMCSA and American Trucking Association -- whom some cynics may charge are joined at the hip -- claim that large truck crash, injury and fatality rates have reached the lowest point since the USDOT began recording statistics.

The Teamsters Union, by contrast, claims that the percentage of fatal crashes resulting from driver fatigue rose 20 percent in 2005 from 2004.

Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook says that DOT statistics show that deaths among large trucks occupants increased from 726 to 805 from 2003 to 2006. She also points out that the newest HOS rule does not require electronic on-board recorders which are required in Europe.

A determined advocate can prove anything with statistics. But based on the common sense of humanity, it seems like common sense that any driver is more fatigued and more accident prone in the eleventh hour of driving.

Continue reading " Trucking hours of service debate continues " »

A trucker speeding on a rain-slick expressway caused the fiery chain reaction in a tunnel on I-5 just north of Los Angeles last year. The location on I-5 is near my son's college apartment, so I have been by it many times. However, the case also has a local angle in metro Atlanta.

According to a report from California Highway Patrol investigators, Jose Reyes, 29, was driving at least 65 mph in the rain when his truck veered left and crashed into a concrete median wall after driving through the tunnel. The posted speed limit for that stretch of road is 55 mph, according to a report by Jack Leonard of the Los Angeles Times.

The resulting chain-reaction behind him killed a 6-year-old boy and two adults, and injured 10 others.

The report concluded that Saia Motor Freight Line Inc. was responsible for maintenance of the truck, and that the right front brake of the truck was not in working condition.

Saia Motor Freight Line Inc. is based right here in Fulton County, Georgia, in an office park in the suburb of Johns Creek, Georgia. According to USDOT information, it has 4,339 drivers and 3,552 motor units. While it has a "satisfactory" safety rating, in the past two years it has had 9 fatal crashes and 96 crashes with injuries.

On the face of the LA Times article, there appear to be at least three violations of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. I would bet there are more.

Continue reading " Truck speeding on rain slick freeway with bad brakes caused fiery pileup in tunnel " »

Today's issue of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution includes an article by Steve Owings, who founded Road Safe America after his son was killed by a speeding tractor trailer on cruise control six years ago.

Having met Steve and learned of his motivation to make the roads safer for everyone, I'm just going to copy his article here in order to give his words wider distribution.

Big rig killed our son; drive safely on busiest traffic day

By Stephen C. Owings

For the Journal-Constitution

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

My rearview mirror has turned into a time machine. Every now and then, when I glance into it, I see my son Cullum backing out of our driveway, waving one last time as he pulls away. Then, the truth comes crashing home again: I’m still here, and he’s not.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving will be a hard day for us again this year. It marks the sixth anniversary of Cullum’s tragic, violent passing. He was a young man of 22 with great promise whose life was ended in its prime, without warning, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2002, the busiest highway traffic day of the year. Stopped in an interstate traffic jam while headed back to school in Virginia with his younger brother, Pierce, Cullum saw the lights of the speeding tractor trailer rig in his rearview mirrors. As he was trying to get the car over to the left median to get out of the way, the big rig speeding on cruise control crashed into the boys’ car with full force, crushing it like a toy. That night, we got the phone call every parent dreads and will remember with horror for the rest of our lives: Pierce, who miraculously had survived, told us through his tears from the ambulance that Cullum had been killed.

My wife, Susan, Pierce and I will never stop asking the question why Cullum? However, we believe we have found answers to the many questions about why and how that wreck and thousands more heavy truck-car crashes happen each year. In an effort to learn all we could and then to educate motorists and big rig drivers about the inherent dangers for everyone when heavy commercial trucks travel at high speeds, we founded the nonprofit Road Safe America in 2003.

This Sunday will be the fourth annual national observance of Drive Safer Sunday in America, a day for which we have had state, congressional and media support for a national campaign urging everyone to drive more safely on the busiest highway traffic day of the year.

Since founding Road Safe America, we have been joined by the American Trucking Associations, all national safety advocacy organizations, numerous trucking firms, business executives, insurance companies and thousands of citizens in seeking a national regulation requiring activation of electronic speed limiting governors on all trucks 13 tons and up built after 1992. All trucks built since 1992 already come with the speed governors installed, so it would be a simple thing to activate them. Oddly, the Bush administration has opposed this common sense, inexpensive regulation that would save many of the lives of approximately 4,000 motorists and 1,000 truckers killed each year in crashes involving big trucks. We have asked President-elect Barack Obama to be more compassionate, and we hope his administration will appoint a secretary of transportation who takes action.

If saving lives is not motivation enough to support this cause, in this era of dependency on foreign sources of oil, consider the fact that activation of speed governing technology is already done by many trucking firms as a way to cut fuel use as well as improve safety. With a reduction of only 5 mph, millions of gallons of fuel can be saved annually in the nation’s trucking fleet.

The European Union, Australia, Japan and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have regulations requiring speed-limiting devices set at 65 mph or slower on all large trucks. Sadly, instead of showing international leadership, the U.S. is behind the rest of the world in this area.

According to Australian government statistics, Australia experienced a reduction of 26.5 percent in heavy truck fatalities between 2002 and 2004 through speed governor requirements, aggressive fatigue management programs, random drug testing and seatbelt promotion within the trucking industry.

When an airliner goes down and 200 people perish, it is national news for weeks. But when twice that many are killed every month in crashes involving big trucks, where is the outcry?

No one at Road Safe America is anti-trucking or anti-trucker. In fact, the opposite is the case. In terms of annual deaths and injuries, trucking is the most dangerous profession in America, and we want to change that. We are trying to educate drivers of passenger autos and other vehicles about the need to operate more safely around large trucks because of the dangers present. Trucking is an absolutely vital industry to the economic health and prosperity of our nation. However, by limiting heavy commercial trucks’ speeds, we know that many more drivers will make it home to their families, and more motorists will live to see their loved ones again as well —- this Sunday and for many Sundays to come.

Stephen Owings is an Atlanta resident and the co-founder of Road Safe America.

A collision between a tractor trailer and a fire truck in Crisp County, Georgia, killed the Ohio trucker and sent a local volunteer fireman to a hospital last Saturday.

The Ohio trucker, 33-year-old Shane Alan Waters of New Madison, Ohio, was killed. Ironically, he was also a volunteer fireman back in Ohio.

The cause of the wreck was not immediately apparent in a report by Gabe Jordan in the Cordele Dispatch.

The fire truck was traveling from Arabi to Cordele for a training session. Since it apparently was not on an emergency call, the state law that requires yielding to an emergency vehicle using lights and sirens would not apply.

County governments in Georgia waive sovereign immunity to the extent of motor vehicle liability insurance. A local government may also indemnify employees for negligent torts committed in the line of duty.

Continue reading " Ohio trucker who was volunteer fireman killed in collision with Georgia fire truck " »

A tractor trailer driver going too fast to see his way through dense fog Monday morning in Fresno, California killed a young woman on her way to work.

According to a report by Jim Steinberg and Vanessa Colón of The Fresno Bee, a big-rig drive Martin Nelson, 22, of Fresno, failed to see stopped traffic in heavy fog. He struck a Ford Explorer, killing the woman inside.

At least two critically important provisions of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations appear to have been violated here.

First, 49 C.F.R.§ 392.14 requires:

Extreme caution in the operation of a commercial motor vehicle shall be exercised when hazardous conditions, such as those caused by . . . rain, dust, . . . adversely affect visibility or traction. Speed shall be reduced when such conditions exist. If conditions become sufficiently dangerous, the operation of the commercial motor vehicle shall be discontinued and shall not be resumed until the commercial motor vehicle can be safely operated.

Two California court cases have held that a trial court must instruct a jury on the federal "extreme caution" standard of care rather than the regular negligence standard under state law. Crooks v. Sammons Trucking, Inc., 2001 WL 1654986 (Cal.App. 3 Dist.,2001); Weaver v. Chavez, 133 Cal.App.4th 1350, 35 Cal.Rptr.3d 514 (Cal.App. 2 Dist.,2005). See also, George v. Estate of Baker, 724 N.W.2d 1 (Minn.,2006).

Second, 49 C.F.R. § 392.1 requires:

Every motor carrier, its officers, agents, representatives, and employees responsible for the management, maintenance, operation, or driving of commercial motor vehicles, or the hiring, supervising, training, assigning, or dispatching of drivers, shall be instructed in and comply with the rules in this part.

This case involves a 22-year-old truck driver. My hunch, based on experience in trucking cases, is that his employer checked to see that he had a CDL (Commercial Driver's License, checked to see if he had any moving violatons in the past three years, and tossed him the keys. I seriously doubt that the employer made any efforts at all to assure that he understood and appreciated the need to slow down or pull over when hazardous driving conditions made operation of the tractor trailer unsafe.

As a result, an innocent motorist is dead and her family grieves.

The challenge facing an attorney handling such a case is often to educate judges who don't even know that they are ignorant of motor carrier safety law. That is a continuing challenge as it requires getting a busy judge to focus on a body of federal law with which he or she may have great familiarity. Too many lawyers and judges think a tractor trailer crash is "just a big car wreck" and fail to recognize the legal and technical issues that must be considered.

Continue reading " Big rig crash in morning fog kills woman " »

In my trucking litigation law practice, I all too often see fatal truck accidents that happen in bad weather Despite a federal safety regulation requiring "extreme caution" in hazardous weather, and instructions in the Commercial Drivers License Manual to slow down by at least one-third, truckers under economic pressure from employers, shippers, and sometimes their own creditors, too often speed ahead through rain and snow.

The most recent such crash in the news was yesterday on I-81in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, a road I know well.

It happened about 11:30 a.m. near New Market, Virginia. The road was slickened by snow. A big rig operated by Jose Alberto Sarmiento of Texas, hit several vehicles before rear-ending of a Ford Escort, killing three members of a Virginia family.

According to a report by Pete DeLea in the Daily News Record of Harrisonburg, VA, Sarmiento has been charged with reckless driving and three counts of felony involuntary manslaughter.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, 49 C.F.R. § 392.14 requires:

Extreme caution in the operation of a commercial motor vehicle shall be exercised when hazardous conditions, such as those caused by snow, ice, sleet, fog, mist, rain, dust, or smoke, adversely affect visibility or traction. Speed shall be reduced when such conditions exist. If conditions become sufficiently dangerous, the operation of the commercial motor vehicle shall be discontinued and shall not be resumed until the commercial motor vehicle can be safely operated. Whenever compliance with the foregoing provisions of this rule increases hazard to passengers, the commercial motor vehicle may be operated to the nearest point at which the safety of passengers is assured.

Every reported case that addresses the issue agrees that it is reversible error for a trial court not to instruct a jury on this "extreme caution" standard.

In Crooks v. Sammons Trucking, Inc., 2001 WL 1654986 (Cal.App. 3 Dist.,2001), a tractor trailer sped through blowing snow until striking another tractor trailer. The trial court denied a request to charge on the “extreme caution” standard under 49 C.F.R.§ 392.14, instructing the jury instead on the state standard of ordinary negligence. The appellate court reversed, holding that the trial court should have charged on the higher federal regulatory standard rather than the lower standard provided by state law. The same decision was reached in Weaver v. Chavez, 133 Cal.App.4th 1350, 35 Cal.Rptr.3d 514 (Cal.App. 2 Dist.,2005). Clearly, if the federal “extreme caution” standard preempts a state rule of “ordinary care,” the reasons are even stronger for it to preempt a state standard of “willful or wanton misconduct.”

The Minnesota Supreme Court in George v. Estate of Baker, 724 N.W.2d 1 (Minn.,2006), held that it was reversible error to give a “curative” instruction contradicting an attorney’s argument that a “reasonable care” standard did not apply, even though the full instructions included reference to standards of “utmost care” and “extreme caution.”

In Kentucky, Jurek v. Hubbs, 2004 WL 1487116 (Ky.App.,2004), involved denial of the plaintiff’s motion for directed verdict based on 49 C.F.R.§ 392.14 rather than jury instructions. However, the court recognized that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety "regulations govern the operation of commercial motor vehicles in the United States. To the extent that they establish a standard of care higher than the law, ordinances, or regulations of a particular state jurisdiction, a commercial driver must comply with the FMSCR."

The Virginia Supreme Court held, in Kimberlin v. PM Transport, Inc., 264 Va. 261, 563 S.E.2d 665 (Va.,2002), that it was reversible error to direct a verdict for the defendant where there was a question of fact whether truck driver violated the duty created by 49 C.F.R.§ 392.14 to exercise extreme caution under hazardous conditions and whether violation of such duty was a proximate cause of the accident. The court noted that while violation of the regulation does “not constitute negligence per se [It] simply creates an expanded duty of care for the operation of commercial motor vehicles under the conditions stated therein.”563 S.E.2d at 668-69.

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