Charlottesville Personal Injury Lawyer - Tractor-Trailer Accidents

Obama Appointment for Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is Stunning

Greg Webb — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:26:05 GMT

President Obama made a strange appointment regarding who would become leader of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ("FMCSA"). Although Obama has passed an order stating he would limit lobbyists’ power to enter the government as high officials to influence policy from within, he appointed Anne Ferro, a major trucking industry lobbyist in Maryland, to lead this agency that oversees truck safety. The order prohibits hiring anyone who lobbied an executive-branch agency within the past two years; this technically means federally registered lobbyists. It is unclear how Obama feels hiring Ferro is consistent with the order.

Members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee meet Wednesday to decide whether Ms. Ferro should be confirmed. Many committee members feel that during his term, President Bush was wrong to install people from the trucking industry to regulate their own industry and do not feel President Obama should do this either. While Ferro has promoted such positive programs as a graduated licensing system for new drivers and an ignition interlock program for drunk drivers, she also has spoken in support of the Bush administration’s loosening of restrictions on drivers’ schedules and driver fatigue; this decision is in defiance of considerable evidence of danger from fatigued drivers.

This record of Ferro’s, some believe (including this writer), should disqualify Ferro from the appointment. The reason for the latter is that there are many people in this country who die each year because of truck drivers operating 18-wheelers, weighing upwards of 80,000 pounds, and the drivers, and/or their employers, are violating federal and state safety regulations (which are or were in place for a reason). Unfortunately, I represent a family currently, and have many times in the past, where the driver was fatigued and should not have been behind the wheel of his rig rolling down the highway. Loosening restrictions on the trucking industry is similar, in some respects, to loosening restrictions on the banking industry (look what happened there).

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Greg Webb

Four Out of Five Ain’t Bad? – Research Finds 1 out of 5 Trucks Unfit

Greg Webb — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:54:11 GMT

Recently, a new batch of statistics has emerged from research done by the American Association for Justice (AAJ) regarding motor carrier safety violations. Violations found include such unsafe practices as "overloading trucks, allowing unqualified or untrained drivers behind the wheel, failing to maintain tires and brakes, and salary systems that encourage truck drivers to exceed speed limits and maximum driving hours."

AAJ reports that 9 million trucks occupy U.S. roadways each year. And, although they represent less than 4% of all passenger vehicles, they make up 12% of vehicles involved in motor vehicle fatalities, with 4,000 people dying every year from accidents involving collisions with trucks. The most distressing part about these figures is that most of these violations result from companies trying to cut corners and maximize profits; most of these accidents are preventable, if not largely resulting from judgment errors.

In April 2009, the AAJ found that there were more than 28,000 trucking companies, with over 200,000 trucks (collectively) driving on U.S. roads, incurring thousands of violations – "defective brakes, bald tires, loads that dangerously exceed weight limits, and drivers with little or no training or drug and alcohol dependence." The real issue at hand is that, to other motorists, these problems are impossible to detect. One simply cannot tell that the truck riding in front of it, the one doing 75 in the left hand lane, has defective brakes and bald tires until it’s too late. This is exactly what happened to young, "newly-commissioned Army officer" Matthew Giuliano.

Matthew drove directly into the back of a truck that, earlier, was having air brake issues due to a small eroded hole caused by a dragging hose. The drivers – a husband and wife duo – repaired the malfunction with a toothpick and electrical tape.

A toothpick. And electrical tape.

It was only a matter of time before such a jury-rigged repair gave way, and, somewhat predictably, it did. Sadly, there was no way for Mr. Giuliano to avoid the accident that took his life. However, it could have been easily avoided if the drivers of that truck stopped at any of the repair shops they passed in the two hours between their makeshift solution and the time of the accident.

Reportedly, it would have cost them $12.

Even more disheartening is the fact that the dispatcher for the trucking company commended them for their thriftiness and quick-thinking. For some reason, one would like to think that a driver – a professional driver – would know better than to employ such unproven Boy Scout heroics on the forty-ton metal missile he’s driving. More so, one would like to think that the checks-and-balances in place would tell him he was off base.

Now, while this may have been a case leaning on the extreme shoulders of the "miserable judgment" scale, it doesn’t change the fact that the method of thinking apparently used by the two drivers in Mr. Giuliano’s case appears to be part of a greater collective consciousness that envelops a large part of the trucking industry: time over safety.

What’s worse is that smaller trucking companies will rarely spring for more than the minimum required insurance coverage – $750,000 – a number that hasn’t change in almost 30 years. The AAJ’s research indicates that 87% of the companies in violation are operating fleets of 10 trucks or less. This number, relative to the number of accidents each year involving trucks, seems to call for a change in that minimum, considering the number of victims that are forced to rely on Medicare/Medicaid to pick up the slack.

Similarly, the AAJ cites Florida trucking company Benton’s Express, who had a driver come to it and complain about his regularly overloaded truck and its difficulty to control. That was until he blew out a tire in 2004, leading to an investigation that found several companies in the Florida area who routinely faked paperwork in order to get away with illegally overloading their trucks.

It all ties back to this theme of time over safety. It is easier (unsafe) to load a truck with product beyond its maximum, so that it takes fewer trips to move said product, than it is to safely (not as easily) transport the maximum number of product until the product is fully delivered.

Furthermore, the AJJ states that its research concluded that "A 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that ‘nearly one-third of commercial motor vehicle crashes that states are required to report to the federal government were not reported, and those that were reported were not always accurate, timely, or consistent.’" In addition, companies that incur a large number of violations or particularly severe violations often change their names, coming back as "reincarnations." Such is the case with Iguala BusMex Inc., which was a new company waiting for approval for a federal license when one of its busses crashed after it blew a tire and ran into a guard rail, killing 17 passengers. A later investigation revealed that Iguala BusMex was incorporated and owned by the same individual as Angel Tours Inc., a company that was shut down after accruing a large number of violations.

The research done by the AAJ was compiled and can be found at: www.justice.org/trucksafetyviolations. It includes all 28,274 trucking companies with violations and is broken down by state. The AAJ states that "All of the listed companies have either conditional or unsatisfactory safety ratings. A conditional rating means that the truck company’s records indicate the truck was out of compliance with one or more safety requirements. An unsatisfactory rating means that the truck company’s records indicated evidence of substantial noncompliance with safety requirements."

In addition to these figures, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance conducted its own set of comprehensive roadside inspections in June 2009. It announced the inspection dates four months ahead of time, giving plenty of warning for companies to address problems. These dates were publicly aware within the bounds of the trucking industry. Regardless, 22.2% of the trucks inspected failed and were taken out of service.

"Even still, Bill Graves, President and CEO of the American Trucking Association (ATA), said the results ‘illustrate the trucking industry’s deep commitment to the safety of all motorists.’"

This writer has represented many victims (and families) of tractor-trailer crashes. Some of the driver "training" (or lack thereof), maintenance (or lack thereof), and supervision (or lack thereof) I have seen is astounding. Suffice it to say that, whenever I am on a highway and happen to be in the vicinity of a tractor trailer, I try to get out of the vicinity as safely and quickly as possible.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Greg Webb

Tractor-Trailers Make Interstate 81 A Dangerous Ride

Greg Webb — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:08:58 GMT

Interstate 81 runs from central Tennessee to the Canadian border, offering picturesque views of the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains as it winds through Virginia. Drivers, however, report nerves and fear because of the incredible number of tractor-trailers on I-81.

The Virginia Department of Transportation reports that trucks account for one of every four vehicles on I-81, in some stretches making up nearly half of the vehicles on the highway. That’s the highest ratio on any major Virginia highway and well above what I-81 was designed to carry.

In Virginia, the more heavily traveled I-95 bears more crashes – almost twice as many as I-81 between 2003 and 2007 – but the fatality rate for crashes on I-81 is nearly double that of I-95. Lon Anderson, spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, noted that a car surrounded by tractor-trailers is likely going to be the “jelly in the sandwich” if something goes wrong.

Last week, on a 15-mile stretch of I-81 near I-66, four crashes occurred in less than ten hours between Thursday evening and Friday morning. They involved nine tractor-trailers and two passenger vehicles, leaving two dead and several injured. The first crash occurred around 7:20 PM, when a truck overturned in the median, spilling its load of watermelons and creating a jam that backed up for miles. Traffic was still barely moving after 10 PM when brothers Stone and William Weeks drove through in their Honda Civic. A tractor-trailer rammed their car from behind, forcing it underneath the truck in front of it and starting a fire that killed both brothers. Reporter Darryl Woodson, editor of the Lexington News-Gazette, says that his paper doesn’t even try to cover all the interstate wrecks because the incidents are so frequent.

Interstate 81 is popular among truckers because it is a north-south alternative to I-95 that avoids tolls and bypasses traffic around major cities. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, the highway carries even more truckers ferrying goods from the border into U.S. markets. However, tourists exploring the Shenandoah Valley use I-81 and one-third of the state’s college students use the corridor to access James Madison University and Virginia Tech.

During the last decade, Virginia transportation officials considered building a parallel highway for trucks only. The idea was discarded after officials determined that it would create space for trucks but wouldn’t ease congestion or other vehicles. More recently, officials looked at widening the interstate from two lanes to four, but that is unlikely to happen with the state in financial crisis and tolls considered politically undesirable. I-81 program manager for Virginia’s Transportation Department Fred Altizer Jr. stated that nothing will happen because there is no revenue to support it.

Environmental groups have lobbied unsuccessfully for more investment in rail, arguing that it is a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to keep trucks off the road. In the meantime, I-81 traffic has tripled in the past two decades in the Winchester and Roanoke regions. Trucks slow dramatically on inclines then barrel down after reaching the crest of the hill, often tailgating smaller vehicles in front of them.

Truckers report that other drivers often don’t give them enough room and are unaware that a tractor-trailer can require the length of a football field to stop. One truck driver said that he would much rather be surrounded by trucks driven by professionals than cars whose drivers seem oblivious to the dangers of sharing the road with tractor-trailers.

This writer has personal experience with I-81, having driven it for nearly 30 years, including from Tennessee all the way to Watertown, New York where I was stationed with the 10^th Mountain Division in the late 1980’s. Interstate 81 has definitely gotten worse (as far as safety) in the past 10-15 years in Virginia, and I think that a lane expansion will have to be done sometime in the next 10 years. If not, it will become either a parking lot for tractor trailers, or just too risky to travel in a passenger car – or both. I hope the money is found to widen it to at least 3 lanes running north and south. This is an important infrastructure project not only for Virginia, but for the country, because this Interstate is important for the nation’s commerce, and, perhaps, even national security. I hope that our future governors and elected representatives will take this project on with a strong commitment.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Greg Webb

Increased Scrutiny For Bus Industry Due To Recent Crashes

Greg Webb — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:18:24 GMT

Texas legislators and safety experts have asked for tougher enforcement of motor carrier regulations after an illegal bus crashed in North Texas, killing seventeen Vietnamese Catholics from Houston. The bus, which was owned and operated by Angel de la Torre, was illegal because the operator was barred twice from traveling outside of Texas under two different company names. The owner lost his permit, reapplied, and was allowed to continue to operate. Federal investigators are currently sifting through the wreckage, trying to find what went wrong so a tragedy like this will never happen again. Lawmakers in Austin and Washington echoed this sentiment after two more crashes this weekend in Mississippi and Nevada put the issue of bus safety on every politician’s agenda. A similar situation also occurred when a bus, sent to pick up elderly evacuees trying to escape Hurricane Rita, erupted into fire, killing twenty-three passengers. Safety officials state, however, that none of the seventeen recommendations, including four key bus safety regulations, made by the National Transit Safety Board (NTSB) were acted on by the federal government.

Keith Holloway, spokesman for the NTSB, confirmed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not responded in regards to drafting new federal regulations to implement the recommended changes. A spokesman for the agency has said no changes in federal regulations will be made until it is certain it would be effective in improving safety. Many are wondering if anything can actually be done since in the most recent case, the bus operator was bent on breaking the law; new regulations would not have really had an effect if the owner did not follow them.

Two U.S. Senators from Texas and Ohio are calling for the passage of their legislation, the Motorcoach Enhanced Safety Act; a hearing before the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is scheduled for next month. This bill was first introduced after a bus crash in Georgia killed several athletes from an Ohio college. It requires bus owners to provide fire extinguishers, safety belts and other safety enhancements. This call for reform is nothing new for Texans. In the past six years, fifty-two people have died in passenger bus accidents and the records show very little has been done to weed out troubled bus carriers. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/buscrash/5937817.html

These crashes are killing dozens of innocent people; people who depend upon these bus carriers to be safe, and, indeed, trust that they are safe and obeying relevant traffic safety regulations. Unfortunately, appropriate government agencies either are unable, because of funding, or incapable, because of incompetence, of protecting citizens from these catastrophes. These types of tragedies can be prevented, but this is of little consolation to the familes involved.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Greg Webb

Truck and Bus Drivers, Though Medically Unfit, Are Still On Roads

Greg Webb — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:00:00 GMT

The Government Accountability Office, a government watchdog, has found about 4%, or 563,000 U.S. truck and bus driving license holders are receiving full federal disability benefits while still holding their commercial driver’s license. Drivers’ disabilities include hearing, vision, and seizure problems. Some are so severe, license holders would generally be denied certification to drive trucks and buses.

The report stated tractor-trailer and bus drivers have suffered seizures, heart attacks or unconscious spells that have led to deadly accidents. The problems persist even after many government warnings and hundreds of deaths and injuries blamed on the drivers’ health problems. The U.S. Transportation Department said 5,300 people died in 2006 due to wrecks involving large commercial trucks or buses and about 126,000 more were injured. A recent federal safety study found that cases in which drivers fell asleep, suffered a heart attack or seizure or otherwise were physically impaired were a leading cause of serious crashes involving large trucks. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, an agency responsible for cracking down on unfit truckers, has admitted that it has not completed any of the eight recommendations United States safety regulators proposed in 2001. Two recommendations are setting a minimum standard for officials who determine whether truckers are medically safe to drive and preventing truckers from doctor shopping to find those that might overlook risky health conditions.

This, in this author’s opinion - having represented a number of family’s who have had family member’s killed or have themselves been seriously injured because of serious truck crashes - is a large problem that needs to be dealt with expeditiously by the federal government. There are many good truck drivers on the roads, and America needs these people for its economy to function well, but citizens do not need unfit and unhealthy drivers operating these massive tractors and trucks on our highways. The risks are extraordinary, and the consequences can be catastrophic on many levels.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Greg Webb

New Trucking Technology Can Aid Accident and Crash Victims

Greg Webb — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:20:16 GMT

Trucking companies have started using a variety of hi-tech devices, such as GPS systems, on-board computers, electronic logging and satellite and wireless tracking, which are changing the face of trucking litigation. These devices can provide a plethora of information about an accident and the history of the vehicle and driver. On-board recorders, for example, can measure over 175 characteristics, such as vehicle speed, hard-braking incidents and vehicle maintenance. In the highly-regulated trucking industry, these electronic devices are a way to monitor a driver’s route, how long the driver stops at rest stops, how long a driver is on the road and much more. This information can also be a huge advantage to plaintiff’s attorneys who are using it to bring claims against trucking companies for negligent supervision and maintenance. These new devices also attribute to trucking accidents now becoming a specialized area of litigation.

The main source of information in the truck is the “black box”, also known as the electronic data recorder, which records incidents of hard-braking, sudden decelerations, when the truck traveled at various speeds and cruise control settings. Newer electronic on-board computers can also monitor the speed of the truck, every time the driver goes over the specified number of hours that they are allowed to drive and the number of times the driver goes over the speed limit. Additionally, some companies have replaced the driver’s hand-written log notes with GPS technology that tracks a driver’s schedule and route and beams the information back to the company itself. Even more technology is being developed that can warn drivers of anything coming up in their blind spot or if they are drifting into another lane, while being uploaded to the company computer in real time. All of this combined date can help reconstruct an accident.

The paper trail left by these informative devices can lead to punitive damages if the driver was working over the legally specified amount of hours, resulting in exhaustion. It can also determine whether the driver did not maintain the vehicle even though the on-board computers indicated maintenance problems. On the flip side, however, companies are only required to keep most records for six months, meaning a plaintiff’s attorney must immediately send a “records preservation” letter to get them to keep the data. This policy also serves as a big problem since lawyers do not get these cases until long after the accident, so the data has been erased.

http://www.lawyersweeklyusa.com/index.cfm/archive/view/id/431123

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Greg Webb

Trucking Company Pays For Reckless Driving Death of Two Children

Greg Webb — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:30:52 GMT

In a Madera County, California case, Brundage-Bone Concrete Pumping, a nationwide concrete pumping company, has agreed to pay nine million dollars in a wrongful death lawsuit to the parents of two children killed in an automobile accident involving one of the company's trucks. The two sisters, Korren Radke, seven years old, and Chloe Baker, two years old, were killed last June when the company's concrete pumper truck rear-ended the family's car. The driver of the truck was said to have been driving at an unsafe speed and was thus unable to come to a controlled stop when the family's car came to a stop ahead of him due to a disabled car on the highway.

There are numerous similar cases like this in the Charlottesville and Central Virginia area where large trucks have caused accidents, and destroyed families, because of reckless driving, poor driver training, and/or improper or poor mainteance of these large trucks. Despite federal regulations that attempt to regulate and/or mandate safety, these accidents continue to occur at an alarming pace. They are preventable accidents.

For more information on this subject, see our section on Tractor Trailer Accidents.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Greg Webb

Tractor Trailer Crash Yields $36.5 Million Award To Crash Victim's Family

Greg Webb — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:44:24 GMT

In April 2004, Thomas Steven, a Wichita businessman and father of eight, was killed in an automobile accident due to the negligence of Steven Jones, a Swift tractor trailer driver. Swift is one of the largest trucking companies in the United States, hauling goods and cargo for such companies as Wal-Mart, Target, and Rite-Aid. Jones failed to slow down on a sweeping flat curve leading to an intersection even after driving over three sets of rumble strips, which are designed to warn drivers that a stop sign controlled intersection is approaching. Jones then proceeded to run through the stop sign and crashed into Steven's Chevrolet Suburban, resulting in Steven's death and seriously injuring two passengers in the Stevens car.

Steven's family sued Swift and was awarded $36.5 million in damages by a jury. Swift would not release the driver logs they were required to keep under federal regulations. These logs may have potentially been even more damaging to the case because they may have shown whether the driver had driven more than the federally mandated time allowed under law, and therefore may have been fatigued at the time of the accident.

While most truck drivers are good drivers and obey the rules of the road, there are many who, in an effort to meet deadlines and earn more money - generally the more they haul and the faster they deliver goods the more they earn - exceed federally mandated limits for the number of hours that can be driven per day. This practice may lead to more tractor trailer accidents than normally would be seen. Unfortunately, I have seen too many tractor trailer accidents destroy the lives of individuals and their families. Often times these accidents could have easily been avoided had the drivers followed applicable federal regulations.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Tractor trailer accidents.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Greg Webb

$1M Settlement in Trucking Accident Lawsuit

Bryan Slaughter — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 20:56:31 GMT

Michie Hamlett attorneys Greg Webb and Bryan Slaughter obtained a $1,000,000 confidential settlement on behalf of their client, who was hit head by a large truck on his way to work one morning. The truck crossed the center line and hit the plaintiff's vehicle, pushing plaintiff off of the road with the truck resting partially on the plaintiff's vehicle when the vehicles came to rest. Plaintiff had to be cut from the vehicle and evacuated by helicopter for emergency medical care. Plaintiff had life-threatening injuries and remained in the hospital for 3 months.

The defendants offered up their $1,000,000 in policy limits four months before trial. Because the defendants had no appreciable assets to satisfy a judgement exceeding $1,000,000, the Plaintiff elected to accept the offer of policy limits.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Bryan Slaughter

Man Dies in Fiery Crash

Christina Cole — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:01:30 GMT

According to Virginia State Police, one of three victims killed Sunday in a three vehicle accident involving a gas tanker has been identified as a Haymarket man.

Weeks was killed during an early morning chain reaction crash on I-66 west of Fairfax County.

At 3:50 am the gas-tanker truck crashed into the rear of Week's 2000 Jeep, which than crashed the rear of a 1996 Volvo station wagon. The gas tank on the Jeep exploded into a fire, which engulfed all the vehicles minus the trailer of the tanker truck.

The driver of the Volvo and a passenger - both 18-years-old - were also killed in the crash. Police were unable to identify the victims until earlier this morning due to the extreme burns. Their identity had to be confirmed with dental records.

The truck driver was treated at the scene for minor injuries. The investigation is still ongoing.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Christina Cole