Georgia Truck Accident Attorney Blog

While my law practice primarily involves representing individuals and families in injury and death claims caused by negligent trucking companies, I get a lot of calls from truck drivers. Some of them are bright, sophisticated people.

Last week I had a call from a truck driver who has a master's degree from a nationally prominent university. Truck driving wasn't the original career plan, but the market's a little weak for liberal arts and social sciences degrees.

Our conversation wandered through several aspects of the trucking lifestyle. One thing we discussed was the difficulty of maintaining a sensible regimen of diet and exercise, a topic on which I recently wrote.

This trucker talked at length about the near impossibility of finding healthy food at truck stops, and the lack of safe places to get exercise at or near truck stops. The trucker commented on gaining 30 pounds in the first four months on the road.

In 2007, the Transportation Research Board published a lengthy report on Health and Wellness Programs for Commercial Drivers.

A common sense observation in the report is:

It is estimated that more than 50% of commercial drivers are regular smokers. Many are obese, lack proper physical exercise, tend to develop chronic diseases such as diabetes at relatively early ages, and may have slightly elevated suicide rates.

A few key points from the report are:

• What is needed is long-term is a cultural change, a paradigm shift in the transportation industry toward embracing integrated models of health, safety, and productivity management
as being the joint and shared responsibility of individual drivers, their managers, and senior leadership of their organizations.

• Transportation companies interested in developing their own employee health and wellness programs are still very much in need of guidance and resources on “how to do it.” Better tools and off-the-shelf practices for translating knowledge into action are needed.

• Prominent in the practical experiences of carriers is the difficulty of making employee health and wellness program elements available to the drivers themselves—that is, how does one effectively reach and obtain driver involvement, especially when drivers are so mobile because of their day-to-day working environment and their quick turnover rates in employment?

• Commercial driver advocate groups (e.g., FMCSA, ATA, NPTC, ATRI, the ABA, UMA, and others) each have important roles to play in helping bring about the needed culture change toward employee (driver) health and wellness programs.

• Screening for deficits in specific visual, mental, and physical abilities that significantly predict at-fault crashes can be practically carried out in an office environment. With the
aging of the work force, such practices will have increasing value for industry and highway safety.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is attempting to address this problem with reforms of regulations on medical certification of drivers. But truck drivers' lifestyle, diet and exercise, remain huge challenges.

It's a long report with a lot of detail. I commend it to professional truck drivers and safety managers.

Continue reading " Health and wellness challenges for truck drivers affect safety " »

Roughly one third of Division I NCAA university sports programs have used charter buses from companies with deficient safety records, according to a report by Paula Lavigne of ESPN.

The number of smaller college and high school teams traveling in buses with safety problems is undoubtedly much higher.

Recently, I've been part of the team of lawyers representing members of the Bluffton University baseball team in injury and death claims arising from the crash of their charter bus in Atlanta in March 2007. It's been a sobering experience, especially when I consider the fact that both of my children travel in team buses about which I know little. And several years ago, I was part of a similar team of lawyers who worked together on a crash of a van carrying cheerleaders from the University of West Georgia.

Some of the issues regarding charter bus safety mentioned in the ESPN feature, or seen in the Bluffton case, include:

- Lack of seatbelts and safety glass in side windows to restrain passenger movement in a crash. Seatbelts are generally seen in tour buses in Europe and Austrailia, but because they are not required by the government in the US, they are not standard equipment here. The Bluffton crash has added impetus to a movement to require seatbelts in tour buses in the US.

- Safety ratings. Colleges should check the Safestat scores of bus companies before entrusting our kids to them.

- Driver fatigue, which is often due to driving over the legal hours.

- Tire underinflation or defects, which leads to blowouts and loss of control. (In the West Georgia case, a defective tire delaminated at high speed with a driver who was untrained and inexperienced in operating that type of vehicle.)

- Use of untrained drivers in college owned passenger vans.

For more information, see the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Adminisation's guide to chartering buses for student transportation.

Continue reading " One-third of D-1 universities have used charter bus companies with deficient safety ratings " »

A truck loaded with 32,000 pounds of pressurized hydrofluoric acid overturned in Wind Gap, Pennsylvania, at 2:58 AM Saturday morning, prompting evacuation of everyone within a one mile radius.

The truck was operated by Honeywell, the worlds largest producer of hydrofluoric acid. Reportedly, the trucker from Ontario, Canada, left the road when the swerved to avoid a deer.

The acid leak was stoped by noon, and the 5000 evacuees began returning home in the afternoon.

According to the Centers for Disease Control here in Atlanta, Georgia, hydrogen fluoride is a hazardous chemical compound used mainly for industrial purposes such as etching glass, and is extremely corrosive. It also is an ingredient in high-octane gasoline, refrigerants, aluminum and light bulbs. Contact with concentrated solutions can cause severe burns, and the gas causes respiratory irritation, severe eye damage and pulmonary edema.

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations include strict rules on transporation of hazardous substances, require at least $5 million liability insurance coverage of hazmat truckers, and specify limited routes for hazmat trucking.

Continue reading " Hazmat truck of hydrofluoric acid overturns, prompts evacuation " »

Not surprisingly, the "safety culture" of a trucking company is a huge factor in determining whether its drivers are involved in catastrophic truck crashes.

The Transportation Research Board published a couple of years ago "The Role of Safety Culture
in Preventing Commercial Motor Vehicle Crashes."

Some key points from that study are:

• Culture and safety have a clear connection.
• Safety culture is best defined and indexed by an organization’s norms, attitudes, values, and
beliefs regarding safety.
• Effective top to bottom safety communication and interactions enhance safety culture.
• Terms such as “accident” and “mishap” are often replaced with the terms “crash,” “wreck,”
and other more appropriate, straightforward terms in many safe cultures.
• In many instances, organizations, organizational subgroups, and professions may each have
identifiable safety culture.
• Recognition and certain rewards systems for safe behavior are an effective component of safety culture.
• Driver experience enhances a safety culture, especially if that experience is with one carrier.
Driver retention problems, however, have the potential for degrading a safety culture.
• Many levels of communicating safety culture are necessary in “remote workforce” industries
such as truck and bus operations.
• Policies, procedures, employee safety responsibilities, and safety messages must be clear and simple.
Hiring practices, safety training and education, company orientation, and safety management
are all key components of a safety culture.
• Measuring safety performance of drivers and the organization as a whole are key components of a safety culture.

Actions that companies may take to improve their safety culture include the following:

• Develop or redevelop internal definitions of culture and safety.
• Conduct “Swiss cheese” analyses, to determine what omissions in the management system contributed to accidents.
• Identify and dispel myths, such as the tendency to always blame weather or outside factors.
• Conduct institutional safety knowledge development.
• Define or redefine employee safety roles from top to bottom
• Assess the effectiveness of safety communication and reengineer systems of safety communication.
• Create or enhance a system of safety record data collection and analysis.
• Develop or redevelop motivational tools, such as tying driver compensation and advancement to safety.
• Improve driver retention.

It's a long report. I commend it to any truckers and safety managers who are interested in improving safety.

And I will certainly refer to it in "looking under the hood" of the management system of companies whose trucks crash into my clients, causing serious injury or death.

Continue reading " "Safety culture" is important for prevention of catastrophic truck crashes " »

As a trucking safety trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, and engaged with attorneys handling these cases from coast to coast, I try to keep up with the continuing shell game as the folks responsible for putting truckers on the road and pushing them often beyond both the rules and their capacity, seek to avoid accountability to people they hurt.

A recent article by Robert Franklin in Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel Quarterly, titled "But I didn't do it!": Expanding Theories of Vicarious Liability," is a pretty good outline of liability theories against brokers and shippers, and defenses against each of those theories of liabilty.

It includes discussion of claims for:

* negligent hiring
* negligent entrustment
* failure to provide "safe and adequate service, equipment, and facilities"
* status of a broker as a motor carrier under the regulations
* aiding and abetting a motor carrier's violation of the regulations
* negligent selection of an independent contractor
* truck driver for Company A as permissive user of trailer owned and insured by Company B

We have dealt with most of these theories and defense in our cases, but there are always new wrinkles to consider.

Thanks to Ronald Miller at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog for pointing this out.

Continue reading " Defense-oriented article casts more light on claims against freight brokers and shippers " »

Corporate shell games to avoid accountability for injuring or killing people are all too common. We see it an a variety of contexts. Today I got an email outlining how attorneys for nursing homes are directing their clients to lower their insurance coverage to $100,000 and set up an intricate network of corporate entities to protect the real estate and the owners' assets, while leaving anyone injured in their operations high and dry.

In the trucking context, there is a long history of motor carriers using creative subterfuges to avoid financial responsibility for people harmed by trucks hauling freight for them. Between 1935 and 1956, many interstate motor carriers attempted to immunize themselves from liability for the negligence of their drivers by leasing trucks and nominally classifying the drivers who operated the trucks as “independent contractors."

Because trip-leasing made it difficult for a member of the public injured by the operation of a leased vehicle to fix carrier responsibility, and in order to protect the public from the negligent conduct of the often judgment-proof truck-lessor operators, Congress passed a law in 1956 to require interstate motor carriers to assume full direction and control of the vehicles that they leased “as if they were the owners of such vehicles.”

The purpose of that legislation was to ensure that interstate motor carriers would be fully responsible for the maintenance and operation of the leased equipment and the supervision of the borrowed drivers, thereby protecting the public from accidents, preventing public confusion about who was financially responsible if accidents occurred, and providing financially responsible defendants. Thus, since 1956, owner-operators who are independent contractors in relation to motor carriers have been considered “statutory employees” of the carriers in relation to any injured member of the public.

Congress has unambiguously expressed its clear intent to establish minimum national standards for safety and and financial responsibility of motor carriers. The Regulations authorized by Congress unambiguously support holding a motor carrier accountable for injury to an innocent member of the traveling public.

Under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, the definition of “motor carrier” includes “a motor carrier’s agent,” “employee” includes “an independent contractor while in the course of operating a commercial motor vehicle,” and “lease” includes a “contract or arrangement in which the owner grants the use of equipment, with or without driver. . . .” The disjunctive reference to “contract or arrangement” must have some significance other than mere redundancy. In addition, the Regulations require that “[e]very motor carrier, its officers, agents . . . shall be instructed in and comply with the rules. . . .”

While the Regulations require a written lease, until last summer there had never been a reported court decision anywhere in the United States that let a motor carrier evade liability when it informally hired an owner-operator without bothering with the formality of a lease.

However, in one of our cases in which a jury had awarded over $2.3 million to our client for a serious permanent injury, a single judge of the Georgia Court of Appeals wrote a decision that disregards or misconstrues the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations and conflicts with every relevant reported decision of both federal and state courts across the nation. See Clarendon Nat. Ins. Co. v. Johnson, 293 Ga.App. 103, 666 S.E.2d 567 (2008).

Standing the law on its head, that decision provides judicial blessing for motor carriers to circumvent all responsibility for owner-operator drivers by avoiding either execution of a written lease or use of the word “lease” in an oral arrangement. The only case cited as authority for the holding was an unpublished Texas decision that has nothing to do with our case, either on the facts or on the law.

This decision enables interstate motor carriers to hire without accountability unqualified owner-operator drivers who have no motor carrier authority and no commercial driver’s license, and who make no pretense of complying with any of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.

This decision allows violation of one of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations to exempt motor carriers from compliance with the rest of the regulations, thus enabling them to immunize themselves through semantics. In this time of economic turmoil, motor carriers are freed to roll back the clock more than half a century to the type of abuse that the 1956 adoption of the “statutory employer” rule was designed to eliminate.

Within the past few days we have filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. That is a statistical long shot, as the Supreme Court agrees to hear only a tiny percentage of even highly meritorious cases.

If this decision stands, interstate trucking companies that are inclined to evade safety and financial responsibility rules will be able to revert to the pre-1956 practice of using non-compliant, unqualified and financially incapable “independent contractor” truckers for whom the carriers would bear no responsibility to the public. All of this was pointed out the the Georgia Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, but under the circumstances I find it hard to believe that anyone other than the one judge whose name is on the decision actually read and reflected upon the briefs and the implications of the decision.

Avoiding the expense of equipment maintenance, safety management and financial responsibility required by federal law, they could undercut the cost structure of law-abiding motor carriers and owner-operators, subjecting lawful trucking operations to unfair competition from those that exploit this loophole.

As bad drives out good, if this Georgia Court of Appeals decision approving the evasion of interstate motor carrier responsibility stands, the safety of the public on highways throughout the United States will be adversely impacted.

And innocent people across the country will die because one judge of the Georgia Court of Appeals gave his blessing to an evasion of responsibility contrary to all other interstate motor carrier law in the United States.

No, I'm not attempting to argue my appeal in a blog, as if that were even possible. I'm just warning other folks around the country that they may see the same sort of evasion as motor carriers learn that this shell game fooled a state Court of Appeals.

Continue reading " Intricate shell games evade accountability " »

Today in Bartow, Florida, a jury returned a $65 million verdict -- all compensatory damages, no punitives -- in a truck crash case against Bynum Transport. I understand the case involved a stop light collision with contested liability. The damage award was apparently all to fund a huge life care plan for severely brain damaged 19-year-old plaintiff.

This case may illustrate the fact that conservative, small town jurors are fully capable of returning an adequate verdict in these cases. Bartow, where the population in the 2000 census was 15,340, is the seat of Polk County. The population is 2/3 white. Polk County has been considered one of the most reliably Republican counties in Florida, and John McCain easily carried it in the last election. So this was not a wildly liberal runaway jury, but apparently conservative folks who were willing to follow the rules.

I don't have any information yet on how much of that verdict may be collectable.

Continue reading " Polk County, Florida, jury returns $65 million verdict in trucking brain injury case " »

A fatal truck crash in the Philadelphia area involved such egregious safety violations that vehicular homicide charges have been brought against:

- The driver. He had been ordered to be taken out of service on four of six compliance checks since June due to faulty brakes and a falsified log-book. Before the fatal crash he had called his boss to report that the brakes were bad, but continued on until the fatal crash.

- The truck owner. He allegedly knew that the rig's brakes were defective and took no steps to fix them.

- A garage owner, who allegedly sold an inspection sticker for the truck for $200 without inspecting it.

Pennsylvania state police reported that

Of the ten brake assemblies on the truck tractor and trailer, none were working more than 50 percent capacity. . . . Three brake assemblies failed completely. . . . Two were grossly out of adjustment and barely functioning. . . . All were close to rupturing or exploding.

Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said, "This was a 74,000-pound death machine that was careening across the highways of this country, endangering people until it took [the victim's] life."

The prior safety violations occurred in Iowa, California, Arizona, Maryland, and Kentucky. Pennsylvania officials blamed a "loophole" in the nation's trucking-oversight system, as repair after citation for violations is primarily on an honor system.

Continue reading " Truck driver, owner & garage owner all charged with vehicular homicide in Pennsylvania truck crash " »

When you or a loved one have been badly hurt in a catastrophic trucking accident, you may expect someone from the trucking company or its insurer to try to lull you into complacency. The objective is to avoid paying the value of the case, which they recognize is substantial. The tactics may remind you of the old joke, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” They are from the insurance company and are “here to help you.”

The standard tactics, which my friend Morgan Adams in Chattanooga discussed in a recent blog post, include some variation of the following:

1. Pretending to be your friend. At trucking defense seminars, claims adjusters talk about how they try to become friends with a family by apologizing and offering to buy them a car and a house in exchange for giving up their claims. The adjusters take every opportunity to demonize any lawyers that the family might hire to represent them. At all costs they want to prevent the family from talking to an experienced trucking lawyer who would know how to investigate the case, demand that the company preserve paper and electronic records, and discovery trucking company’s violations of laws that contributed to causing the crash. In one recent case we handled, the adjuster started out talking to the family about paying their deductibles and copays on medical expense, and replacing their car, while at the same time trying to dispose of the physical evidence. But when the family hired me, and I deployed a rapid response to preserve evidence and make appropriate demands, the company soon paid its million dollar policy limit. Insurance adjusters know that revealing the truth could increase the value of the case significantly, and will do whatever they can to prevent that.

2. The misuse of annuities. Structured settlement annuities are a useful tool in settling cases because all the lifetime payments are tax-free and the burden of managing investments is lifted. However, in considering structured settlements, it is essential to focus first on what the defendant or its insurer is paying. Insurance companies will often show an unrepresented plaintiff that they will pay your family a million dollars over the next thirty years, while failing to mention that the annuity only costs $100,000 (or whatever) while the case has a present fair value in excess of a million dollars. In addition, they will use one of their own affiliated companies and brokers to issue the annuity, just switching the money from one hand to another. Thus, they play a shell game and get by with paying only a fraction of what the case is worth.

3. Inflation. No one knows exactly what future inflation will be, but we know that historically there is likely to be inflation. The adjusters will not seriously discuss with you how inflation will affect the value of funds paid.

4. Future medical expense. They exclude consideration of future medical expenses that eat into money paid to the family.They often fail to inform you of the impact of reimbursement claims by your health insurer, and do not protect your interests against such claims.

5. Future income loss. They exclude consideration of the full loss of income of the victim. People who have had major injuries often can’t work as much or as long as they would have, even if they initially return to work at the same job and at the same rate of pay.

6. Non-economic loss. They treat the non-economic losses of the family as having little or no value. The loss of quality of life, or the loss of a parent, is a matter of immense value which must be accounted for in a fair settlement of a case.

Remember the insurance adjuster’s job is to try to minimize payments on claims. No matter how friendly they may act, they are not there to help you.

Continue reading " How insurance adjusters lull you into complacency in order to take advantage of you " »

President Obama has signed legislation killing the Transportation Department’s controversial test of longhaul cross-border trucking with Mexico. As a trucking safety trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, I haven't yet seen problems with Mexican truckers but I do see truckers who don't speak English although adequate English proficiency is required under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.

A provision of a $410 billion spending bill prevents DOT from using any money in the 2009 fiscal year to “establish, implement, continue, promote or in any way permit” a cross-border trucking program with Mexico. However, the Department of Transportation quickly released a statement to the effect that officials would study the issue some more.

All this is well summarized in an article by Sean McNally in Transport Topics.

Until President Clinton signed a moratorium on admission of Mexican trucks in 1994, Mexican trucks entered the US routinely, much as Canadian trucks do.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) trucking companies in all three counties claimed rights to move freely back and forth between the countries. However, it never happened with Mexican trucks.

The US DOT over the past couple of years made halting efforts to begin admitting a limited number of Mexican truckers to the US. However, there was a firestorm of controversy, largely expressed in terms of maintaining US safety standards on Mexican trucks entering the US when safety standards and enforcement in Mexico are questionable. There were also concerns expressed about the violent drug trade in Mexico, and the potential for Mexican trucks smuggling drugs, illegal immigrants and terrorists.

Now the Mexican government is talking about economic retribution and Mexican trucking companies are threatening lawsuits in US courts.

Continue reading " Mexican trucks barred from US again " »

Truck driver fatigue is one of the most obvious causes of truck crashes. Obstructive sleep apnea is among the most common contributing factors. Obesity is a big risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea.

Now there is another study reconfirming the obvious: that obesity-driven testing strategies identify commercial truck drivers with a high likelihood of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and that mandating obstructive sleep apnea screenings could reduce the risk of truck crashes.

The study by Cambridge Health Alliance published in the March 2009 edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine concludes that:

- Truck drivers with sleep apnea have up to a 7-fold increased risk of being involved in a motor vehicle crash.

- Drivers with sleep apnea frequently minimize or underreport symptoms such as snoring and daytime sleepiness.

- A majority of truck drivers did not follow through on physician recommendations for sleep studies and sleep apnea treatment.

- It is possible that many of the 14 million truck drivers on American road have undiagnosed or untreated sleep apnea.

- "It is very likely that most of the drivers who did not comply with sleep studies or sleep apnea treatment sought medical certification from examiners who do not screen for sleep apnea and are driving with untreated or inadequately treated sleep apnea."

- The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is currently deliberating recommendations to require sleep apnea screening for all obese drivers based on body mass index or "BMI."

Continue reading " Sleep apnea in truck drivers linked to obesity " »

Trucking is among the more dangerous occupations. A significant percentage of my work as a trucking safety trial attorney in Atlanta is representation of injured truck drivers and their survivors when a crash is caused not by the trucker, but by another motorist.

Many lawyers in such situations may overlook the fact that many trucking insurance policies include uninsured motorist (UM) insurance coverage equal to the liability coverage. It's not always there, but it's definitely worth checking.

So if a truck driver is hurt or killed due to negligence of a motorist who has only $25,000 coverage, the truck's UM coverage is available for damages above $25,000 up to the UM limits of the policy on the truck.

This morning I received an insurance policy in a case where I represent the folks who were hit by an 18 wheeler. The policy includes $1,000,000 for both liability and UM coverage. If the trucker had been killed due to negligence of the other driver, rather than the other way around, the truck driver's family could collected on the $1,000,000 UM coverage.

Continue reading " Insurance coverage for truck drivers hurt or killed by other drivers " »

Handling truck accident injury and death cases in Georgia, I have often seen how inadequate the levels of insurance coverage can be for the havoc created by large truck crashes. Now there are efforts to catch up the levels of coverage for 29 years of inflation.

The current levels of insurance coverage required for interstate motor carriers were set in 1980.

The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 set minimum insurance standards for interstate trucks at $750,000 for trucks hauling general freight up to $5 million for trucks carrying hazardous materials.

Adjusted to inflation according to the Consumer Price Index:

• $750,000 in 1980 equals $1,921,811in 2009, and is worth only $292,693 today.

• $1 million in 1980 equals $2,562,415 in 2009, and is worth only $390,257 today.

• $5 million in 1980 equals $12,812,075 in 2009, and is worth only $2,491,933 today.

My friend Steve Gursten in Michigan has done a good job summarizing some horror stories of the inadequacy of the 1980 levels of coverage required for trucking companies on michiganautolaw.com.

Continue reading " Time to adjust motor carrier insurance requirements for 29 years of inflation " »

Driver fatigue is one of the major causes of large truck crashes, though perhaps less so than prescription and over the counter medications. The battle over truck drivers' hours of service rules has raged for six years now. I won't repeat the whole controversy here. While there is much more detail, the short version is that under the old rule truckers could drive 10 hours per day, and now they can drive 11 hours per day. They are now allowed 77 hours in seven days or 88 hours in eight days, 25 percent more than previously.

The current rule became final immediately prior to the inauguration of President Obama. The latest round in the hours of service battle came when the same groups that went to court several times to challenge the current rule during the Bush administration. Now they have written to DOT Secretary Ray LaHood, urging that the newly permanent hours of service be tossed out.

There are bright, competent people of good will on both sides of this debate. I have friends who are vigorous advocates on both sides who cite scientific studies to justify their positions. I can't say who is right or wrong. It makes sense that circadian rhythms matter, as the proponents of the current rule point out. It also makes sense that the longer you drive, the more weary you become.

I'm not a sleep scientist, so all I have is experience and common sense. As a lawyer handling these case, I will just work with whatever rules are in effect.

Continue reading " Battle over hours of service regulation enters new round " »

As a trucking safety trial attorney in Atlanta, I often see cases involving medically unfit drivers. I've seen cases where truckers were blind in one eye, were supposed to carry an oxygen tank 24/7 for COPD, or had untreated obstructive sleep apnea, all medically disqualifying conditions.

Fortunately, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has initiated efforts to tighten medical certification requirements.

As reported by the Kentucky Post, in 2008 a congressional investigation revealed roughly one-third of medical certificates examined in roadside stops could not be verified. The doctors either didn't exist or denied ever examining the truck driver.

Blank medical cards have been readily available on government websites. Until now, there has been nothing to stop drivers from just filling out the certificates themselves. A trucker could pick a doctor's name from the phonebook, sign the certificate in their own hand, and look up the doctor's medical license number on the internet. There is now no electronic database for truck drivers' medical cards. When a trooper stops a trucker, there is no way for the officer to verify the medical card is real or valid. It's just a piece of paper.

The congressional investigation also revealed more than 500,000 commercial drivers qualify for full medical disability, according to federal agencies like the Veterans Administration and the Social Security Administration.

Until the new rules on medical certification take effect, those of us who handle trucking cases for the people hurt by truck accidents must be diligent in checking behind the medical certifications, which are too often bogus.

Continue reading " At last, FMCSA is tightening up medical certification of truck drivers " »