Trucking Accident Attorney Blog

Despite how large and powerful a semi truck obviously is, some people don't seem to "get" the force that a truck that size can generate. Perhaps because people drive safely by them all the time, the imminent deadliness of such a vehicle just doesn't register in most cases.

We have an unfortunate reminder in a recent, horrifying and tragic case just east of Reno, Nevada.

According to investigators and witnesses, a large semi truck struck the side of an Amtrak train. The impact partially derailed the train, killed the driver of the semi and also killed an Amtrak conductor and several passengers. A fire that was started as a result of the impact gutted several cars of the train, making rescue personnel cautious about sending in further workers to what was obviously a dangerous situation.

At first, this seems like something only Hollywood could do — a semi truck was able to strike and derail a train by colliding with it, killing several people inside the train. But that's the kind of power a semi truck can generate, and if it can do that much to a train, what chance does a much smaller vehicle like a passenger car or even a smaller truck have?

Police at the scene said that the presence of tire skid marks on the road leading up to the crossing indicates the driver of the truck did try to stop his vehicle, but obviously was unable to. They have said that further analysis of the tracks will give them some evidence as to just how fast the driver of the truck was going leading up to the impact.

The crossing gates and lights on the intersection of the tracks and the road were working at the time. The driver of the truck plowed right through the gates before impacting the side of the train. Investigations are expected to focus on the driver, the remains of the vehicle and just what lead him to lose control of his truck.

As a Missouri tractor-trailer accident lawyer, I’ve written here many times about the proposed new federal rules limiting how long truck drivers can work in any given day and any work week. So I was interested, but not that surprised, to see that the trucking industry has testified against those rules in a recent Congressional hearing. According to a June 14 article from The Trucker, a representative from the American Trucking Associations spoke to a House subcommittee about the cost of implementing the proposed new rules, currently slated for October. James Burg, owner of a trucking company in Michigan, told the subcommittee that the new rules would drive up his costs by requiring more workers to do the same work.

The new HOS rules would cut the total allowable driving time per day from 11 hours to 10 and total work shifts (which include time for things like paperwork) to 13 hours from 14. They also create a mandatory 30-minute break after seven hours of driving. It also limits the number of hours any trucker can drive in one work week. Burg owns James Burg Trucking Co., which employs 85 drivers, and also sits on the ATA Board of Directors. He told Congress that the cost of hiring new drivers would likely require him to increase revenues by 20 to 25 percent, which he said would eventually get passed on to consumers. This is in line with ATA’s position on the proposed HOS rules — it argues that current rules are working fine.

I do not doubt that ATA opposes the new HOS rules because those rules could cost trucking companies money. But as a St. Louis semi truck accident attorney, I think it’s important to ask whether profit for private trucking companies is our top priority as a society. Fatigued driving is a serious problem for drivers of cars as well as trucks, but it’s somewhat institutionalized in trucking companies, for exactly the financial reasons Burg discussed. Longer shifts on the road save money and prevent fines for missing delivery deadlines. They also increase the risk that a trucker on the road for hours will be too tired to react or pay close attention, which can lead to deadly accidents. Thus, arguably, consumers pay the price whether or not HOS rules are implemented — either by paying extra for groceries or losing loved ones and abilities. I know which choice my clients would prefer.

Continue reading "Trucking Industry Group Testifies Before Congress on New Hours of Service Rules" »

Sometimes an accident just is so bizarre that, despite the seriousness of the event at the time, it comes across as downright hilarious after the fact.

Several days ago, a vehicle rear-ended a semi truck that was transporting a load of honey bees along highway I-80 in California. The trucking accident, as can be imagined, released a swarm of the angry insects into the air. An officer was stung multiple times, but was treated on-scene and no serious harm was done.

Highway patrol and cleanup officials were unable to get near the scene of the accident due to the swarm of bees. It seems that emergency officials finally hired a beekeeper to come and help round up the insects. The crash closed down multiple lanes for several hours, but roads were ultimately reopened later that day.

It's rather surreal, isn't it? It comes across like the plot to a small throwaway scene in a bad comedy movie. However, funny as it is, there is an element of seriousness to the matter.

Bees sting when they're angered, and that includes honey bees. Regardless of whether these are the "sting once and die" types, all bee stings include a certain amount of venom. There are people allergic to bee stings, but anyone can have a serious reaction when stung enough times by the critters. Fortunately no one was seriously injured in this case, but it does shed a light on the transportation of potentially hazardous cargo.

Further, the accident shut down highways. These trucks don't just carry potentially dangerous supplies: The same accidents that spill cargo onto passers-by often trap those same passengers in place. It isn't that hard to imagine a handful of bees jumping into a family's car, nor is it too hard to imagine a gas spill sparking and catching fire.

So whether bees or petrol, drive carefully around semi trucks whenever you can.

As a Missouri semi truck crash lawyer, I was interested to read about criminal consequences for a trucker who allegedly killed two people with negligent driving. According to a June 9 article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, truck driver Jay Valentine of Texas pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of careless driving. Valentine, 33, was accused of causing a crash on Interstate 55 near Herculaneum in June of 2010 when he took his eyes off the road too long. The truck crashed into a line of traffic, triggering a chain-reaction crash that ultimately involved eight cars and killed two people, one of whom was dragged inside his car for the length of a football field.

On June 2, 2010, Valentine was heading north on Interstate 55 when something distracted him. He told investigators he couldn’t remember exactly why he looked to the right, but when he turned his attention back to the road, he saw that traffic was slowing and it was too late to stop in time. Instead, his big rig hit a 2005 Ford Focus driven by Charles Martin, 52, of Perryville. This was the car that was ultimately dragged a very long way; one trooper at the scene said it looked like scrap metal. The semi then hit several more vehicles, causing a pileup that badly injured Alana McKnight, 28, of Festus. McKnight was airlifted to the hospital but later died. Prosecutors said they reviewed the facts thoroughly and did not believe more serious charges were appropriate. However, Valentine and his former trucking company face four lawsuits from crash victims and their relatives.

Some observers might be disappointed that prosecutors didn’t file more serious criminal charges against Valentine. I am a St. Louis tractor-trailer accident attorney, not a criminal attorney, but I do know that prosecutors generally prefer not to file charges they don’t believe will hold up in court. Although the driving described here is certainly inappropriate and unsafe, it may not be a crime worse than careless driving in Missouri. However, that doesn’t mean the victims of this accident have no recourse. As the article notes, families of both of the people killed are suing Valentine and his trucking company, Western Express Inc. They also face a claim by three people who were seriously injured in the crash, all of whom are claiming compensation for neck and back injuries; one also cites a head injury with permanent scarring.

Continue reading "Truck Driver to Serve Probation for Causing Herculaneum Crash That Took Two Lives" »

A semi truck driver was tragically killed in Canada late last week when his truck collided with the Coquihalla overpass near the city of Merritt. Witnesses to the crash at the intersections of Highways 5 and 97C called for the Merritt branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, reporting the fiery aftermath of the crash.

The witnesses had reported that they saw the driver trapped inside the cab of the vehicle as the flames started. However, the fire quickly spread before they could attempt to get the man out of the truck, cutting him off from rescue. RCMP Constable Tracy Dunsmore reported in an official release, "The driver had been unresponsive upon arrival and there was extensive damage to the front end of the vehicle."

A crash from mid-Missouri caught my eye as a Missouri big rig accident attorney. As KRCG reported June 6, a woman from Jefferson City suffered moderate injuries after an accident sandwiched her SUV between a John Deere tractor and a tractor-trailer. The truck reportedly changed lanes without noticing that traffic in the right lane had slowed to accommodate the tractor and was unable to stop in time. Fortunately, 56-year-old Kent Schmidt of Russellville, the tractor’s driver, and 68-year-old Benjamin Schroyer of Sunrise Beach, the trucker, were not injured. Jenna Surface of Jefferson City, 38, was treated and released from the hospital a few hours after the crash. Traffic backed up for about an hour after as crews cleaned up the wreckage.

The article suggests fault may lie with Schroyer, who was working at the time for Scott’s Concrete in Camdenton. Schmidt’s tractor was in the far right lane of the Missouri River Bridge in Jefferson City, going about 20 mph, and Surface was following behind at around the same speed. Schroyer’s truck was in the middle lane when he tried to change lanes to the right. According to the News-Tribune of Jefferson City, Schroyer told local police that he knew Schmidt and Surface were going slowly, but misjudged their speed when he changed lanes and couldn’t slow down in time. The resulting crash pushed Surface’s Tahoe into Schmidt’s truck and the bridge’s guardrail. It also spilled fuel from the tractor onto the road. The article said the police have not yet said whether they will cite Schroyer for the crash.

If the events took place as reports said, I suspect that they will. As a St. Louis semi truck accident lawyer, I know police agencies are cautious about handing out tickets or criminal charges right after a crash, because they want the full story. But if Schroyer simply wasn’t paying enough attention to notice he needed to reduce his speed, which seems likely, authorities will probably determine that he caused the crash. Not only could this get him a ticket, but it would likely make his employer and its insurance company legally liable for the results of the accident — because he was at work at the time of the crash. Those results are much less serious than they could have been, fortunately, but they still include the bills for Surface’s medical treatment as well as repairs to her vehicle and the tractor.

Continue reading "Jefferson City Crash Involving Tractor and Semi Sends One Woman to the Hospital" »

An 18-wheeler traveling along Nevada's Highway 395 failed to stop and caused a multiple car crash, resulting in several injuries.

According to witnesses at the scene and the Nevada Highway Patrol, the trucker in question did attempt to brake, but was unable to stop his vehicle before it crashed into both a green Honda and a green Ford Explorer. The Explorer then was forced into an adjacent Chevy and a dump truck, with the Chevy van going on to crash into another vehicle. The Honda was knocked into the back of a nearby BMW.

The most frightening aspect of the accident was also one of the most surprising. The Explorer ultimately ended up sandwiched, facing sideways, between the dump truck and the front of the semi truck. Rescue crews at the scene confessed to being very surprised when the driver was pulled from the vehicle, initially having expected him to be in severe or critical condition, in fair condition and expected to recover quickly. According to a rescue officer on scene, this was a surprise given how crushed the vehicle itself was.

Multiple victims of the trucking accident were, however, airlifted or ambulanced out to nearby hospitals in Reno because of the injuries suffered. The exact extent of their injuries is unknown at this time.

Ultimately, the crash involved seven vehicles and eleven motorists by the time it stopped. The combination of crashed vehicles and the on-scene investigation by the Nevada Highway Patrol locked down both of Highway 395's southbound lanes for several hours. This required NDOT personnel to reroute traffic onto nearby roads until about 5 p.m.

The accident ones again illustrates the potential hazards of sharing a road, particularly a road with fewer than three lanes, with a semi truck. Even when they're aware an accident is coming, semi drivers may not be able to stop their vehicle in time, and the collision is very likely to involve more than two vehicles.

As a Missouri semi truck accident lawyer, I was disappointed to read about a crash that was apparently caused by a truck driver’s failure to stop or slow for traffic in time. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, six people, including the trucker, went to the hospital with mild to moderate injuries after the crash in the afternoon of June 1. The crash took place as traffic slowed on Highway 63 to accommodate another crash that had taken place about 15 minutes earlier. Truck driver Pearl Anderson, 61, of Pine Bluff, Ark., apparently did not notice the stopped traffic, then swerved into the next lane. The resulting crashes knocked three cars off the road, entrapping two people inside and causing the truck to lose its load of rebar.

According to the Columbia Missourian, no one suffered life-threatening injuries, but emergency responders needed 15 to 20 minutes to extract the most severely trapped person from her car. Anderson was reportedly northbound in the highway’s left lane when traffic started slowing, with some cars ahead trying to merge to the right. When she noticed the slowdown, Anderson reportedly swerved and hit the rear ends of three different vehicles, forcing all three off the left side of the road. Her Freightliner then traveled off the road itself, lost its load and came to a stop upright. Driver Janice Palmer, 62, suffered moderate injuries; other occupants suffered mild injuries, including a one-year-old girl. A spokesperson for the Missouri Highway Patrol said the cause of the accident was still under investigation.

I’d be very interested in the Highway Patrol’s conclusions, as a St. Louis tractor-trailer accident attorney. We have recently seen several similar failure-to-slow accidents, including the Highway 40 accident in St. Louis that took three lives and injured 14 other people; and the Oklahoma crash, just over the border from Joplin, that took ten lives. In the Oklahoma case, investigators never did find a clear cause, but in St. Louis, the trucker was eventually accused of distracted driving because he was using his cell phone just before he plowed into stopped traffic. And unfortunately, distraction remains a major problem among truck drivers. In addition to cell phones, truckers are frequently encouraged to drive longer than the law allows to save money, exposing other motorists to dangerously sleep-deprived drivers or drivers using stimulant drugs.

Continue reading "Trucker Who Failed to Slow For Traffic Crashes Into Three Cars, Putting Six in Hospital" »

Last December, in an attempt to improve safety on the highways, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) launched its Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA) program. By identifying and sanctioning unsafe commercial bus and trucking companies, the FMCSA hopes to reduce the dangers of trucking accidents and bus accidents on the roadways.

A Safety Measurement System (SMS) will track accident data and any company safety violations. These data are used to rank a trucking company's safety level using seven measurements to judge its safety performance. These measurements include fatigued driving, unsafe driving, driver fitness, vehicle maintenance, crash history, alcohol or controlled substance use and cargo loading indicators. Using the data from these measurements, the FMCSA hopes to find patterns of safety violations that might predict future conduct. They believe that they will be able to correct non-compliance issues early, before accidents occur.

However, when an individual driver working for a company receives a violation, that violation affects the company's safety score but is not used to rate the individual driver. The FMCSA has said that the CSA is not meant to rate individual driver safety; although it does keep records of driver violations, it doesn't take action against drivers with dangerous safety records.

The trucking companies themselves will need to weed out their unsafe drivers.

There is a related initiative called the Pre-employment Screening Program (PSP) that also tracks statistics for individual drivers. While not part of the new CSA, the driver violations it records become part of the CSA scores.

Even though the individual drivers are monitored, there could be gaps that dangerous drivers fall through. CSA program data are not easy for companies to get. And this information may not be sufficient by itself for a trucking company to evaluate drivers. The PSP reports are only available to a prospective employer of a driver — and the PSP data expire. The violation information is only saved for five years and the crash history data is only saved for three years.

As we all know, the trucking business is a profit-driven business. Operators and drivers are always under pressure to drive faster, for longer hours and under any and all weather conditions. Sometimes safety standards are pushed aside for business priorities.

If you or a loved one has been in an accident with a truck, contact a personal injury attorney. We will be able to help you do what federal regulators can't do: hold the trucking companies accountable for their actions.