Georgia Truck Accident Attorney Blog
Log trucks hauling tree-length loads of pulp wood to paper and fiberboard mills extending far beyond a trailer’s end present nasty hazards on rural Georgia’s highways. Drivers approaching log trucks from the rear or side on dark roads are at risk of being impaled or beheaded. Extensive experience has taught us the problems and some ways to deal with them, though we will not publish the “secret sauce” for insurance company representatives to see.
1. Inadequate insurance on Georgia log trucks.
Georgia law requires only $100,000 liability insurance for 18-wheeler log trucks with tree-length timber that operate only within Georgia’s state lines. This is grossly inadequate for catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases. Through decades of experience, we have found ways to locate other insurance coverages and multiply the potential recovery. In a recent log truck case in rural Georgia, we recovered sixteen times the truck’s insurance policy limit—$1.6 million—although the coverage on the truck was only $100,000.
2. Visual confusion of overlength loads in Georgia log truck accidents.
Drivers approaching an overlength log load from the rear confront a lot of visual confusion as the load extends far beyond the end of the trailer. Often, the end of a load of logs bounces around, almost dragging on the pavement and obscuring the taillights of the trailer. The fancy word for this is “conspicuity.” This is especially dangerous in twilight or dark, too often causing impalement or beheading of an innocent person in a following vehicle. We have had numerous cases where a load of logs extending twenty feet or more behind a trailer impaled the vehicle of an innocent driver.
3. Log load swing out on turns.
Another hazard is when an extended load of logs swings out in a turn. We had a case in which a log truck driver in predawn darkness was making a U-turn on a divided four-lane highway. The extended load of logs formed a black fence in the dark across a traffic lane. The grisly results of such accidents are all too predictable.
4. Inadequate Georgia log trucking safety rules.
Log trucks operating solely within the state lines of Georgia are subject to the Georgia Forest Products Trucking Rules, not the stricter Federal Motor Carrier Safety Rules. These state rules were written by representatives of the logging industry in a way to avoid citations and prosecutions for unsafe practices. There is no specific rule on one of the greatest hazards, tree-length logs hanging twenty feet or more off the end of a trailer on highways. Through long experience, we have found ways to layer the federal rules and other industry materials with expert testimony from retired loggers with many years of experience to support a standard of safety that is more reasonable than the minimal, lax state regulations.
5. Weak enforcement of Georgia’s weak log truck safety rules.
Georgia law requires both a red flag and a red light on the extreme end of the load must be plainly visible from 500 feet to the rear and sides. While some sort of light is usually hung at the end of the load, it is rarely visible more than about fifty 50 feet behind the truck on the highway. Often when following log trucks, you may see the required light is weak, flickering, with a loose bulb, poor wiring, and poorly maintained. The red flags are often extremely dirty, stained, and barely visible.
The same is true about side reflectors, which are required on log trailers to make them visible to drivers approaching from the side at night. The reflectors are often thickly covered with mud, damaged, or missing. With few trucking safety enforcement officers spread thin across the state, enforcement is rare.
6. Inadequate training of Georgia log truck drivers.
Due to low qualification requirements and low pay, log truck drivers are often the least trained and qualified truck drivers on the road. Log truck drivers can be 18 rather than 21, and with only a brief Commercial Driver’s License training course that covers nothing about the unique hazards of log trucks. They are often nice people but are not well trained. The basic Commercial Driver’s License training does not cover anything about extended-length loads of logs or the need to make sure logs are cut shorter for safety. In one recent fatality case, the log truck driver was a recent immigrant from Guatemala who had been driving a truck only a short time and had no training about the specifics of log truck safety.
7. Unconscious bias of rural law enforcement officers in favor of log truck operators.
Nearly all log truck operators, drivers, and crashes are in rural counties where the forest products industry is a major part of the local economy. Everyone in the county – including law enforcement officers and potential jurors — grows accustomed to seeing objectively unsafe practices in log truck operations, so they think the danger is normal. Law enforcement officers and potential jurors in those counties are likely to have friends and relatives who are timber producers and haulers. Knowing this is hard labor, it is only human to be sympathetic to the log truck operator. We are alert to ways of dealing with unconscious bias and overcoming it.
8. Inadequate training of law enforcement officers responding to log truck crashes in Georgia.
Even if they are not biased in favor of log truck operators because a friend or relative is one, the rural deputy sheriffs who most often respond to log truck crashes have not been trained on the inadequate Forest Products Trucking Rules. They don’t know that a light in the rear of the load must be clearly visible from 500 feet. They don’t know how many reflectors must be clearly visible on the side of a trailer. They don’t know to ask who loaded the trailer or where they are hauling the logs to. Because they are not trained in this, they do not get a lot of critical information or take the right photos at the scene. At Johnson & Ward, through long experience we have found ways to ferret out critical information that officers not adequately trained in log truck safety do not know to look for.
8. Unfavorable venues for Georgia log truck accident cases.
Lawsuits must be filed in the county where a defendant resides. Logging operators almost always reside in rural counties where the forest products industry is dominant and most jurors have friends and relatives who work in that industry, so they are accustomed to seeing unsafely overloaded log trucks every day. Their sympathies lie with the log truck operator. At Johnson & Ward, through long experience we have succeeded in securing venue in urban counties where judges and jurors can view unsafe log truck operations with fresh eyes.
If a tragic log truck accident has impacted you or your family, contact us today. Let our experience work for you.