Trucking Accident Attorney Blog

As a St. Louis tractor-trailer crash lawyer, I was interested in a news item about the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation’s meeting with trucking industry agency leaders to discuss their oversight of motor carrier transportation. Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, chairman of the subcommittee on surface transportation, called for “universal installation” of electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs) in trucks and buses to improve public safety. As I’ve discussed here before, EOBRs would make it harder for truck drivers to get away with driving for more hours than they are legally allowed to. Hours of Service (HOS) regulations specify how long drivers may work before they are required to rest in order to reduce the likelihood that fatigued drivers will cause accidents that hurt or kill people.

Lautenberg pressed Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator Anne Ferro to explain why only 1.3% of all trucking companies are being required to use EOBRs. As I wrote several weeks ago, the FMCSA is going to require trucking companies with a history of HOS rule-breaking to install EOBRs in 2012. Ferro told Lautenberg that the agency is working on a broader rule requiring EOBRs, but that it would take even longer to get that rule in place than it will to enact the narrower one taking effect in 2012. Meanwhile, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association vice president Todd Spencer insists that EOBRs have nothing to do with public safety. EOBRs "can’t tell if a driver is sleepy, they can’t tell if a driver needs to rest, they can’t tell whether a driver is off duty or whether he’s physically handling 44,000 pounds of cargo. They are no more reliable than the paper logs that they would replace," he said.

Of course, records produced by EOBRs are much less likely to be falsified, which is the whole point of using them. The existing paper logs often are riddled with errors and falsehoods, because drivers want to make more money by getting to their destinations faster, or are pressured by their employers to do so. That sometimes means not taking mandated rest periods, which means they arrive over-tired and sometimes unsafe. Truck drivers are currently allowed to drive 77 hours per week, which is almost twice as long as most people work. In contrast, airline pilots are allowed to fly only 30 hours per week, which is undoubtedly one of the factors making airplanes one of the safest forms of transportation in the United States. Fatigued truck drivers who fell asleep at the wheel, along with drivers who suffered heart attacks while driving, caused 12% of fatal crashes in which truck drivers were at fault, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Large Truck Crash Causation Study.

Truck drivers and the companies that employ them have a legal responsibility to comply with HOS rules and to recognize when drivers are too fatigued to continue driving -- even if HOS rules would let them. They just shouldn't be driving at all if they are too tired to be alert and safe on the roads. Eighteen-wheelers require greater stopping distance than passenger cars do because they are so much heavier. That means that a truck driver needs to be awake enough to pay careful attention to traffic conditions at all times -- otherwise, he or she could cause a horrific crash. As a Missouri semi truck accident lawyer, I certainly don't want to see any more wrecks like the one that killed three people and injured fourteen here in St. Louis in July of 2008, or last year’s tragedy in eastern Oklahoma, which caused nine fatalities.

Continue reading "Senator Calls for EOBRs in All Buses and Trucks to ‘Protect All Drivers on the Roads’" »

As a St. Louis semi truck accident attorney, I've written several posts here about the fatal trucking accident that took place on Highway 40 here in St. Louis in July of 2008. Fourteen people were injured and three were killed when a tractor-trailer driven by Jeffrey R. Knight, 51, of Muscle Shoals, AL, plowed into stopped traffic at the beginning of rush hour. Knight said he had had been reaching for his cell phone and allegedly failed to notice traffic conditions in front of him. He was charged about a year ago with three counts of involuntary manslaughter. Now, almost two years after the crash, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Knight has pleaded guilty to three counts of involuntary manslaughter and was allowed to go free. He was sentenced to one year for each death, to be served concurrently, and freed because of credit for the 371 days he had already spent in jail.

The crash killed Lydia Miller, 55, of Canton, Alvin Mast, 88, of Kahoka, and Charles "Keith" Cason, 55, of Caseyville. Miller and Mast were members of the Amish community who were heading to a funeral with the help of a hired driver; Cason was a copier salesman. Four of Cason’s relatives attended Knight’s sentencing, and prosecutors say the one-year sentence was settled on with the agreement of victims’ families. One of the 14 people injured was Mark Tiburzi, who was severely brain damaged by the crash and is unable to walk or talk. His wife, Cheryl Tiburzi of St. Peters, said she didn’t know the sentencing was happening and didn’t know what to think. Mark Tiburzi now lives in a nursing home where he can get the 24-hour care he now needs. The Tiburzis were awarded $18 million in a lawsuit against Knight and his former trucking company, Holmes Transport, Inc., but Cheryl Tiburzi says she doesn’t expect to see any of that money. Other families had filed their own claims against Knight and Holmes Transport.

As a Missouri big rig accident lawyer, I know that avoidable accidents involving driver distraction and inattention like this one are unfortunately quite common. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Large Truck Crash Causation Study attributes 29% of fatal crashes in which truck drivers were at fault to driver distraction and inattention. This is true of smaller passenger cars as well; in fact, the federal Department of Transportation has made distracted driving a centerpiece of its traffic safety efforts over the past year. Sadly, it is all too common for any error by a truck driver to have terrible consequences for drivers of smaller vehicles, which cannot protect people from the tremendous force that large, heavy tractor-trailers wield in a crash. As a truck driver, Knight had a legal responsibility to live up to a higher standard than drivers of passenger cars do, because his mistakes had much worse repercussions.

Continue reading "Trucker in Massive Highway 40 Accident Pleads Guilty to Causing Three Deaths" »

Last month, I wrote about an accident in which a young southern Illinois couple suffered a devastating trucking accident on their wedding night. Their car collided with a grain truck that pulled out in front of them, leaving Kelli Wisneski, 20, paralyzed from the chest down. Her new husband, Chad Wisneski, 20, suffered seven shoulder fractures in the accident. The Belleville News-Democrat published a follow-up article about the Wisneskis on April 11 discussing Kelli Wisneski’s problems getting access to good medical care. On top of the debilitating health problems that she now suffers because of the accident, Kelli cannot find a doctor to help her stay current on the eighteen prescription medications she needs. As a southern Illinois semi truck crash attorney, I believe this article shows how important money can be for victims of very serious accidents.

According to the article, the eighteen primary care doctors Kelli has tried to see have rejected her as a patient, in part because she relies on Medicaid for her care. Medicaid rules require patients like her to use a primary care doctor to obtain prescriptions. But the Wisneskis have found it nearly impossible to find a doctor for Kelli, in part because doctors don’t want to deal with the paperwork that her Medicaid health coverage entails, or accept its payments, which are low compared with private insurance. They also don't want to handle her case because it’s so complicated. As a result, Kelli actually ran out of medicines she had been legally prescribed and can pay for. That includes a blood pressure pill that keeps her from passing out due to her paralysis, as well as pain medication that gives her relief from constant back and shoulder pain and lets her sleep. Generous members of their southern Illinois community have helped, but they had not found a long-term solution as of the article’s publication.

Accidents involving large trucks often involve serious harm, as I know all too well from my work as a St. Louis tractor-trailer accident lawyer. Very few people confronted with a devastating injury think first about money, but it’s vitally important for helping people with new disabilities ensure that they’ll be taken care of. The article notes that Kelli spent months in the hospital and in a rehabilitation clinic. Now, Kelli's mother and Chad share the 24-hour-a-day job of caring for Kelli, who needs help with eating, bathing, and other basic functions. All of this costs the family money and time, including time they could spend at work. In cases like this, someone like Kelli and her family may be able to sue an at-fault truck driver, and the company that employed the driver, to pay for medical bills, caregiving, a lifetime of lost wages and other costs. They can also recover compensation for living with a permanent disability, physical pain, emotional suffering and other losses.

Continue reading "Woman Paralyzed by Truck Accident Cannot Find Doctor Who Will Accept Medicaid" »

Last month, I blogged about the
National Transportation Safety Board's Most Wanted List. In the List, the NTSB called for interstate commercial truck and bus companies to install electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs). These recorders automatically keep track of the number of hours a driver has worked and record the date, time, and location.
This electronic recordkeeping helps track semi truck drivers' Hours of Service (HOS) and provides important information for accident reconstruction. As a St. Louis tractor-trailer crash lawyer, I agree with the NTSB that we should take every precaution to make the roads safer for drivers of all kinds of vehicles.

Driver fatigue is a serious problem for the semi truck industry. Federal laws on truck drivers' hours of service require that drivers take eight hours off duty for every twelve hours they drive, in order to prevent them from making errors that cause serious accidents. Federal regulations require drivers to keep a log of their hours of service. These logs are often handwritten, with toll receipts to back up their information, so it has been easy for drivers to falsify this information in order to keep working past the hours of service cutoff. According to Logistics Management contributing editor John Schulz, "drivers’ paper log books … often are derisively referred to … as “comic books” because they are so laughably dishonest. Drivers in the past have often kept two log books -- one for regulators and the other, accurate, one for getting paid for their actual driving time."

Some trucking companies that have good safety records have already voluntarily installed EOBRs in their trucks, taking advantage of their capacity to automate and streamline monitoring of drivers, recordkeeping, and communication. The devices have been credited with improving safety and efficiency beyond just the HOS concern, because they can alert drivers when they are driving too fast, braking too hard or idling too much, and help companies precisely predict shipments' arrivals. Where the large trucking companies see benefits to using EOBRs voluntarily, the Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association opposes their use because they see EOBRs as too costly and a potential privacy violation. As a southern Illinois big rig accident attorney, I can't say that I have a lot of sympathy with the Association’s position, given the potential public safety benefits of EOBRs.

This month, the NTSB has gotten its wish for better oversight -- sort of. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has just set a new rule requiring EOBRs in big rigs, but it only applies to trucks driven for carriers whose compliance reviews reveal HOS violations at or above 10%. The rule will go into effect on June 12, 2012, to give manufacturers time to produce EOBRs to specifications. The FMCSA will consider broadening the rule to encompass more trucking companies later this year.

The carriers that are found to have patterns of HOS violations will have to install EOBRs in all their vehicles for at least two years. Watchers predict that this will affect approximately 5,700 carriers by the end of the rule's first year in effect. This is a higher number than the NTSB had predicted, but it's still only 0.8% of all carriers in the United States. As a Missouri semi truck accident lawyer, I applaud the FMCSA for going this far, but clearly it needs to go further. According to the FMCSA, there were about 100 fatalities caused by semi truck driver fatigue in 2007. One hundred people lost their lives because truck drivers were too tired to be on the road.

Continue reading "Federal Agency Requires Tighter Oversight of Tired Truck Drivers" »