Articles Posted in Tractor-Trailer Accidents

Most trucking and bus companies operate their business in a safe and professional manner. Despite this, every once in awhile the news reports on a tragic accident by a company that has flaunted safety laws.

When a motor carrier accident happens it involves several parties, and the state and federal laws that apply can be complicated. If you or someone you know has been injured in a motor carrier accident, you are encouraged to contact an experienced Tennessee truck accident lawyer who knows how to get you the compensation you deserve.

On January 17th, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (“FMCSA”) announced new rules giving them authority to shut down motor carriers that have shown an “egregious disregard” for federal safety regulations. The FMCSA regulates the trucking industry in the United States. The new rules were created after frustration with companies and executives using “reincarnated” or “chameleon carriers” to move their assets or to establish complicated organizational structures to evade FMCSA violations.

We are intent on shutting down bus and truck companies that willfully endanger the public. [The agency will use] the rule to take stronger action against businesses and individuals that have a history of disregarding basic safety standards.

— FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro

The new regulations were brought about after years of complaints from the U.S. Congress and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) when highly reported and extremely tragic accidents happened despite attempts by the FMCSA to remove carriers with severe safety violations from the road.
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If big rigs get any bigger, as some Congressmen are apparently hoping will happen, we can all but guarantee a spike in the number of injuries and fatalities attributed to tractor-trailer accidents in Tennessee.

It’s simple physics, really.

We know that the bigger a vehicle is, the more damage it is liable to cause. This is especially true when vehicles are only designed to hold a certain threshold of weight and are then overloaded. This poses a danger not only to the driver, but to everyone else who shares the road.

As it stands now, the maximum weight limit threshold is 80,000 pounds. A bill currently moving through the U.S. House of Representatives would up that to 97,000 pounds.

Increasing this weight limit will not serve to reduce overloading vehicles. That will still happen. It’s just that with a measure like this, these massive trucks will have the power to inflict even more damage in collisions with motor vehicles.

The only ones who benefit from this are large shipping and trucking firms, which will be able to fatten their pockets by increasing the amount they can deliver at a time.

However, the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, a group of about 150,000 smaller trucking operations, is staunchly opposed to HR612, mostly for safety reasons but also because the vast majority of trucking firms won’t be able to afford to upgrade their fleet – usually consisting of 20 or fewer vehicles – to compete with the newer, larger models in states that choose to adopt the new federal standards, should they get approval.

It wasn’t long ago that Congress grappled with this same issue. Last year, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), which revamped federal highway safety standards, rejected a proposal to increase tractor-trailer truck weight and size limits. Instead, it ordered a comprehensive study on the impacts of larger trucks on the integrity of highway infrastructure, motor vehicle safety and the economy. We are still awaiting the results of this research, though the Federal Highway Administration conducted its mandated listening session as part of that study at the U.S. Department of Transportation headquarters in Washington D.C. in late May.

In addition to opposition from OOIDA, the Automobile Association of America has come out against efforts to increase size and weight limits on commercial trucks. With a membership some 50 million strong, this could be a powerful voice in talking down these efforts.

As it currently stands, there are some 28,000 motor carrier companies across the country that are actively violating federal safety standards, having a direct impact on safety for all those who travel the highways. Increasing truck size limits won’t help to reduce that number. It will however give these companies more room to push the limits, which in turn puts us all at even greater risk.

And as the OOIDA underscores, the change is in no way necessary to help improve the greater good.
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Two Bonnaroo music festival goers were killed in a Tennessee tractor-trailer crash before ever reaching the concert.

The crash happened just two weeks ahead of implementation of federal rules designed to reduce the number of fatal tractor-trailer accidents here and across the country.

According to investigators’ accounts from the Tennessee Highway Patrol, the accident occurred shortly after midnight on a Thursday, as cars were slowing due to heavy traffic from an earlier accident near I-24 near Murfreesboro.

The driver of the truck was reportedly unable to halt in time. Eight other vehicles were struck. Two of those vehicles burst into flames. One of those vehicles became fully engulfed, causing the deaths of two people from Indiana, a 25-year-old woman and a 28-year-old man. Five other people suffered serious injuries. Seven others, including the trucker, were not injured.

The truck driver, from Kentucky, was cited for failure to exercise due care, and additional charges are pending.

Our Knoxville injury lawyers can’t say for certain that driver fatigue played a role in this crash, but it does seem to fit the mold: The crash occurred after midnight and involved the trucker’s delayed reaction time. By many accounts, drowsy driving affects reflex times just as much as alcohol consumption.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association reports that nearly 15 percent of all fatal trucking crashes are the result of drivers who were overworked and fatigued. It’s for this reason that over the past five years, the agency has been battling to enact a series of hours of service rules that would limit the amount of time a trucker could remain behind the wheel at any given stretch.

Now, those rules will be formalized July 1, 2013.

It should come as no surprise that the industry has put up a fierce fight on this issue, arguing that the changes will deliver a devastating blow not only to the trucking industry but to small businesses nationwide that depend on timely delivery of goods to provide their services. There is no question that the new rules will have some impact on the industry, but we believe the problems stated have been overblown.

What’s more, industry advocates’ assertions that current rules are doing more than enough to tamp down the number of fatal crashes simply doesn’t hold water when you consider crashes like the recent one that happened in Murfreesboro. In no other industry would it be acceptable to allow thousands of innocent people to die and become seriously injured every year, and then chalk it up to merely being a cost of doing business.

That’s why the FMCSA has pressed forward on these rules. They include limiting drivers to a maximum of 11 hours on the road at any given stretch. Drivers are also expected to take at least a 30-minute rest break every eight hours (so at least once a shift) and they have to be off-duty at least 10 hours before getting back on the road after a full shift. Drivers will go from being allowed to work a maximum of 82 hours in a seven-day week to being allowed to work only 70 in a work week. This will ensure that drivers have more time to rest and recharge so that when they do get back to the road, they will be refreshed – and less likely to fatal mistakes, like the one that senselessly claimed those two young lives in Tennessee.
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Trucks, due to their large size and their unique characteristics, are especially dangerous vehicles when involved in collisions with passenger vehicles. A passenger car is significantly outweighed by a truck, and when a truck and a passenger car get into a crash, a lot can go wrong. One of the biggest dangers, however, is something called an underride accident.

Our Knoxville truck accident attorneys know that an underride crash happens when a car actually slides right underneath a truck. This can cause devastating injuries due to the extensive damage done to the car.

Semitrailers are typically designed with the aim of preventing these types of crashes as a primary concern. But unfortunately there are some design flaws and areas where the design is lacking. A recent report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) highlights the potential problems that may occur in certain types of crashes involving large trucks.

Crash Test Reveals an Underside Accident Risk

According to the IIHS news release, a new type of crash test was conducted, which involved a car crashing into the back of a very large truck. The test was unique, however, because the car crashed only into a small portion of the rear of the truck.

When the car hit only a small portion of the side rear of the truck, there was a greater chance of the car getting trapped under the truck in an underride accident. As the IIHS points out, this means that the majority of trailers failed in preventing a potentially fatal underride accident.

When an underride accident occurs and the front of the passenger vehicle ends up underneath the bottom of the truck, the top of the occupant compartment is usually crushed or sheared away. Air bags, seatbelts and other safety devices in cars are virtually ineffective in this situation, and head and neck injuries are very common among those in the accident.

Crash Test Shows Underride Crashes a Serious Risk

Because underride crashes are so dangerous, trucks are designed to prevent this scenario from occurring. In fact, trucks are generally required to have steel bars called underride guards that hang from the rear of the trailer, with the aim of preventing a car from slipping underneath the truck.

Unfortunately, these underride guards may not be providing adequate protection. As IIHS points out, earlier studies indicated that the requirements for underride guards in the U.S. were inadequate both in terms of the dimensions and in terms of the minimum strength of the bars.

IIHS petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Institute (NHTSA) to make changes to the standards in 2011 to address these serious issues. IISH also asked NHTSA to apply standards regarding underride bars to certain other types of trucks that were not currently required to have them, such as dump trucks.

NHTSA has not responded to these requests or made any changes. However, Canada has tougher standards on underride bars and has since 2007, so many truck manufacturers have bars that exceed NHTSA standards even when the trucks are sold in the U.S.

The new crash tests, however, indicate that even trucks with better underride bars have vulnerabilities when a passenger car hits a truck from the side rear. Drivers of passenger cars need to be aware of the very serious risk of underride accidents that can exist when an accident of this type occurs.
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It’s been almost a year since a trucker from Florida fell asleep at the wheel of his rig in West Knoxville, slamming into a police cruiser that then burst into flames, critically injuring the sergeant inside.

Now, our Knoxville truck accident lawyers understand that truck driver has been indicted by a grand jury on criminal charges of aggravated assault, reckless driving, reckless endangerment and failure to drive within a single lane of traffic.

The 57-year-old truck driver admitted to emergency responders that he had been so tired just before the wreck, he had been splashing his face with cold water to stay awake. He had been hired by the Orlando-based trucking agency just two weeks before.

Alcohol is not believed to have been a factor in the crash.

Immediately after the wreck, the truck driver ran to the aid of the officer, helping to pull him from the cruiser, with the help of paramedics who happened upon the scene on their way back from transporting a different patient to the hospital. Paramedics also suffered burns as a result.

The trooper inside the burning vehicle, meanwhile, nearly died. He had his emergency lights flashing and was parked on the shoulder of the highway when the crash happened. Although it was touch-and-go for some time, he was later transferred to a rehabilitation facility, where he underwent months and months of intensive physical therapy. He has since returned home, but he has not been able to go back to work.

The truck driver is reportedly working to negotiate some sort of plea deal, though the details of what that might look like aren’t yet clear. The driver is said to be devastated by the crash and wracked with guilt over the injuries suffered by the trooper.

No doubt, most people who are involved in fatal or near-fatal accidents don’t set out that day to do so. But truckers who fail to adhere to hours of service restrictions or continue to drive when it’s obvious even to them that they are too tired to do so must be held accountable. In cases where the company’s scheduling prohibits adherence to federal hours of service operations, they too need to be held accountable.

According to the the AAA Foundation, it’s not just truck drivers, either. While nearly all drivers surveyed in 2012 reported that driving drowsy was a risk to their safety and was unacceptable, almost a third admitted to being so tired behind the wheel within the last month that they could barely keep their eyes open.

It’s estimated that about 17 percent of all fatal crashes involve drivers who were sleepy.

Every single driver has a responsibility to ensure he or she is alert and oriented to the road ahead. If you need to pull over and take a nap, do so. Here are some key warning signs that you need to stop driving:

• Your eyelids are getting heavy or you have difficulty keeping your eyes open and focused;
• You are having trouble keeping your head up;
• You find yourself rubbing your eyes or yawning;
• You are missing traffic signs or signals or driving past your exit;
• You can’t remember the last few miles you drove;
• You have drifted from your lane or hit the rumble strips.

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Our Knoxville truck accident lawyers know that speed kills.

That fact is especially compounded when the vehicle that’s moving too fast is a tractor-trailer truck and is overweight.

This is why we are in firm support of regulations proposed by the U.S. Department of Transportation that would require all heavy commercial vehicles to set their top speed at 65 miles per hour. It’s not a formal rule yet, but the department administration has indicated it intends to push such regulation hard in 2013.

That push is further fueled by recent reports like the one out of Atlanta, indicating there are a number of companies that, despite racking up dozens of tickets for overweight vehicles, continue to put overweight vehicles on the road – right beside you and your family. A recent Florida report found an estimated 30 percent of tractor-trailers and dump trucks are running overweight — that’s about 1 in 3! Fines for a first offense are often small and tight budgets have enforcement officers in short supply. Meanwhile, about 1 in 8 fatal collisions involves a large truck.

It’s cheaper and there is more money to be made — even if they got caught and are forced to pay the fine.

This is particularly troubling when you consider that in 2010, more than 3,600 people died and another 80,000 were seriously injured in crashes that involved a large truck. These trucks are defined as having a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or more.

Here in this country, there were more than a quarter million of these vehicles involved in traffic crashes in 2010. That represented a nearly 10 percent increase from the previous year.

It’s unsurprising that the majority of those hurt in these crashes are those in the other vehicles. In fact, these accounted for approximately three-quarters of the injuries and deaths.

Large trucks account for less than 5 percent of all vehicle miles traveled in this country. But when they are involved in crashes, they have a higher likelihood of fatalities, due to their size. They account for approximately 8 percent of all vehicles involved in fatal crashes. Being overburdened with weight and then speed – makes for a deadly combination.

In Tennessee, large trucks account for approximately 6.5 percent of the roughly 1,400 fatal crashes we see each year. Very few of these incidents involved truckers who had been drinking (about 2 percent). However, about a quarter of all truckers involved in fatal crashes did have at least one prior speeding conviction. That’s a higher rate than passenger car drivers, whose rate is about 18 percent.

All of this contributes to the transportation department’s recommendation to require trucks to lower their top speeds. Setting these limits won’t prevent every trucking accident, but it may go a long way in holding both the drivers and their employers accountable.
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Congress recently passed a host of improvements aimed at reducing the risk of fatal tractor-trailer accidents in Tennessee and elsewhere. But much work remains to be done.

The $105 billion 2013-2014 transportation bill (MAP-21: Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act), was signed by President Obama in July and is the first long-term highway authorization act passed since 2005.

Among the biggest improvements: The creation of a database for drug test results and the electronic logging of drive time. “These rules, along with the new drug and alcohol database, will go a long way towards reducing truck/car fatalities in America,” said Steve Owings, who founded RoadSafe America with his wife after their son was killed in an accident involving a commercial semi.

Trucking accident lawyers understand there are many other improvements that could be made to reduce the risks for millions of motorists who share the road with trucks.

Better Drug Testing: Even once a drug-testing database is up and running, a Congressional report indicates these federal tests are easily beat. Testing of hair (instead of urine) would drastically increase accountability. The other serious concern is medical exemptions for narcotic pain medication. There are safety concerns about allowing truckers to drive while using narcotic painkillers — even with a note from their doctor.

Collision Avoidance and Adaptive Cruise Control: Proven technologies, including speed-limiters, should be adapted to help improve safety.

Liability: Shippers and receivers must be held more accountable. The owner of freight has an obligation to ensure its safe transport. Entities hiring truckers to transport goods must be encouraged to put safety ahead of the cheapest transport option.

Trucker Health: The new law will establish a database of certified medical examiners. These doctors will be recognized by the USDOT as qualified to give annual trucker physicals. Under the current system, many drivers allegedly are paying unethical practitioners for the medical results they need to continue driving. However, there are a number of other serious health concerns — including sleep apnea — that need to be addressed by federal safety officials.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was formed in 2000 with a primary mission of preventing commercial motor-vehicle related fatalities and injuries and continues to take steps to improve safety. This month, it announced that it was expanding its Pre-Employment Screening Program. While the system allows potential employers to access a driver’s immediate past history of accidents and inspections, it requires the driver’s written permission.

The system also cannot be used to check the status of current employees — only drivers under consideration for hire. Moving forward, regardless of who wins the election in November, there must be a renewed focus on the effort to pass some of these common-sense approaches meant to reduce the risk of Tennessee trucking accidents and serious and fatal commercial driving accidents nationwide.
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When you are involved in a Tennessee trucking accident it is important to have an experienced personal injury attorney to guide you in the settlement and trial process. A veteran Knoxville injury attorney can help you identify the parties that are at fault or those who are acting negligently. And most importantly can help you deal with insurance companies focused on limiting your claim and protecting their bottom line.

Rhodes v. AIG is a case that illustrates the deceptive practices of insurance companies. The issue addressed here is how to manage damages where the defendant insurance company is engaged in willful and knowing unfair settlement practices.

Rhodes was the driver of a passenger vehicle when the defendant Carl Zalewski, who was negligently driving an eighteen wheel truck, hit plaintiff in the rear of her car. While Zalewski was driving this truck, he was acting within his job duties as a driver for Driver Logistic Services (DLS). DLS had their primary insurance with Zurich and their excess policy with National Union Fire Insurance Company (“National Union”). Their coverage was $2 million and $50 million respectively.

Excess insurance coverage is used by large companies to shield themselves from the risks and liabilities of these highly dangerous accidents involving trucks.

Upon the impact to the plaintiff’s vehicle, Rhodes suffered a fractured spine leading her to become paraplegic. Plaintiff spent several months in the hospital after spinal fusion surgery. She also suffered from several other health issues because of this injury to her spine.

Through this case it is seen how tragic the injuries can be in trucking accident cases. This plaintiff, who was not at fault, will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Also, her family suffered and will continue to suffer greatly because of the injuries Rhodes sustained.

The court in this case was charged with interpreting their state statute in determining how to establish a punitive damages award in the instance where one party fails to promptly, fairly and equitably negotiate settlement with the plaintiff. The Georgia Statute does not require insurance companies to settle with plaintiffs, but what is required is that the insurance companies act promptly and reasonably when the negotiations are taking place.

In order to find the defendant’s guilty of this, the court said that the plaintiff had to prove that the breaching party willfully and knowingly participated in these unfair settlement practices. Plaintiff alleges that both of the insurance companies involved were participating in this behavior, which was therefore a violation of the statute at issue.

Five months after the plaintiff filed a lawsuit against the two insurance companies, plaintiff settled with National Union, the excess insurance carrier, through their claims administrators at AIG.

Although the plaintiff settled with one of the parties, the case continued to the superior court where the court heard the case. They found that the primary insurance company did not violate the statute because it did not infringe on the integrity of the settlement process. The court went on to explain that the issue of whether National Union or their claim administrators at AIG violated the statute was irrelevant because even if the plaintiff proved that those parties were engaging in this behavior, she would be barred from collecting damages from them two times.

What the court did explain was that the state statute that is controlling in deciding punitive damages associated with unfair settlement practices, awards damages where the plaintiff is able to prove that there is a link between their injuries and the unfair practices she is contending. If the plaintiff is able to prove this, the court held that the statute indicates the plaintiff’s award for punitive damages is two times the award plaintiff received in the original suit.

The application of the law to the facts in this case would have led the plaintiff to receive an exorbitant amount of money. Although the court was very sympathetic to plaintiff’s injuries, they do contend that they do not necessarily agree with doubling the original damages award as punishment for unfair settlement practices.

Rhodes is a case that warns the legislatures to make sure that the statutes that are used in determining damages, provide for an equitable award.

Had the attorney in this case warned her client not to settle, the client would have received an additional $22 million dollars.

You need the right attorney to help you navigate through all the law to get you the award you are entitled to.
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Trucking accidents in Knoxville and across the country are part of the reason more teenagers are losing their lives behind the wheel.

A new report released by the Governors Highway Safety Association indicates that for the first time in 8 years, teen driver deaths overall were increasing. For the first six months of last year compared to the first six months of 2010, there was an 11 percent increase in the number of teen drivers killed nationwide. That includes statistics analyzed from all 50 states, as well as Washington D.C.

While our Knoxville trucking accident attorneys understand the report doesn’t specifically break down how many of those were due to accidents involving big rigs, based on previous research, it is safe to say crashes with large trucks were at least partially to blame.

In fact, the National Highway Safety Association reported that between 1975 and 2005, more than 7 percent of all those killed in large trucking accidents were aged 17 and under. Drivers aged 18 to 25 accounted for 17 percent of all trucking accident fatalities – a larger portion than any other age group.

The new report from the governor’s association found that in a state-by-state examination of teen fatalities, driver fatalities for 16-year-olds increased by 16 percent, while driver fatalities for 17-year-olds is up by 17 percent. Overall, 19 states (including Tennessee) reported some decrease in fatalities, while 23 states reported a marked increase. Some states, including Florida, North Carolina and Texas, reported a skyrocketing increase.

Researchers pointed to the fact that the benefits of graduated driver’s license programs, such as the one implemented in Tennessee in 2001, are beginning to level off.

While many fatal trucking accidents in Knoxville involve truck driver error (most commonly, failure to maintain proper lanes, speeding or distracted driving), it pays for teens to be educated in how to maneuver around these large vehicles.

The fact is that when a passenger vehicle is involved in a wreck with a big rig, there is an increased chance that the injuries will be more severe or result in death.

This underscores how critical it is for parents to have some discussion with their teen about how to drive safely around large trucks, as they don’t operate under the same laws of physics as passenger vehicles.

The Geico Educational Foundation, an arm of the car insurance company, recently released an easy-to-read brochure that breaks down some of the ways teens can be sure to avoid a Knoxville trucking accident.

The brochure first goes over the basics of any safe driver: Don’t speed, drive aggressively or allow yourself to be distracted by your friends or cell phone.

Secondly, it urges teens to avoid the trucker’s blind spots. These cover pretty wide swaths of roadway around the truck, but the best rule to follow is to make sure you can see the trucker’s mirrors. If you can’t, the trucker can’t see you.

Thirdly, if you plan to pass a large truck, make sure you can see the front of the rig in your rear view. Don’t ever flash your brights at a trucker to signal that you plan to change lanes. This can be very confusing, as it sometimes signals a police cruiser is up ahead. Either way, simply use your turn signal.

Finally, don’t stop suddenly in front of a trucker or swerve abruptly in front of him or her. Truck drivers aren’t able to slow or stop as quickly as someone in an SUV or passenger car. It’s better to give yourself plenty of space so this won’t be an issue.
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