Entry-level truck drivers with commercial licensing requirements will face significant changes to training rules and regulations in 2020. New Commercial Driver Rules According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCSA), new rules will soon apply to entry-level commercial truck drivers. On February 7, 2020, new national training standards will apply to all entry-level driver [...]
Truckers are supposed to be professional drivers. I know this because I've worked on truck crash lawsuits for more than 30 years. Yet, the lawyers on the other side—the insurance company attorneys— almost always object. They accuse me of holding a truck driver to "too high of a standard." They also regularly object to proposing that [...]
In the late summer of 2018, a terrible collision between a bus and a semi-truck shut down a New Mexico highway. The next day, a truck crash lawsuit was filed in court. Here's what happened. A Greyhound bus carrying almost 50 people was headed west along I-40. A semi-truck headed east on I-40 swerved across [...]
Off-tracking truck: Rear wheels take a different, shorter path than the front wheels when the semi truck is turning or cornering. We might think of it as "cutting the corner" of a turn. I have seen this before, with a client who was run over by the back wheels of a semi-truck turning the corner. In this [...]
Micheal Belzer, an economics professor at Wayne State University, recently published a study showing a strong correlation between truck driver pay and road safety. In this article, Truck drivers are overtired, underworked, and underpaid, he explains his findings. The data suggest that economic factors affecting drivers contribute significantly to truck crashes. A link between truck driver pay and safety [...]
A motor carrier in Yakima, Diamond Freight, has been tied to another serious truck crash* in Central Washington. Yakima trucking company involved in second fatal crash, via Yakima Herald The local news outlet reported that "The Washington State Patrol confirmed that both drivers worked for Diamond Freight Systems — which also goes by NW Freight Inc. — based [...]
On the evening of November 9th, 2016 a semi-truck struck an Oregon man on I-84 in Idaho. The State Police reported that 24-year-old Matthew Martin, of Ontario, Oregon, had hit a guardrail. His Toyota ended up in the center lane. He exited the car and was hit by a semi-truck. Martin later died in an [...]
There are no national standards for training new semi-truck drivers. Here's why that's a problem. Several years ago, I represented Angelah, a young girl with a mild traumatic brain injury. She had been in a terrible crash. Her mother was driving. The afternoon was rainy, and the road was wet. A truck driver failed to [...]
A quick lesson in trucking law: maintenance duty You probably know that specific laws and regulations apply to all commercial trucks that use our public highways.* One of those rules: every trucking company must have a regular truck maintenance program to keep its equipment in safe operating condition. As a back-up, the truck driver must [...]
Trucking companies must drug-test all applicants when hiring truck drivers. A driver must be tested again if he or she is involved in a truck accident crash that results in a serious injury or fatality. Those results are shared with The Department of Transportation (DOT), which regulates the trucking industry. Currently, The Department of Transportation (DOT) [...]
