Georgia Truck Accident Lawyers Blog

Last Tuesday, our lawyers successfully negotiated a $3,250,000 settlement in a case involving the tragic death of a 64 year old woman in a heavy truck collision. The incident which led to the filing of a lawsuit in federal court in Atlanta, Georgia occurred in the early morning hours of February 5, 2007 on Cobb Parkway in Marietta, Georgia. During the early morning darkness, our clients’ decedent was traveling northbound on Cobb Parkway toward her place of work. Her vehicle struck the rear of a tractor trailer which had stopped in the left lane of the two northbound lanes. The impact caused her vehicle to "underride" the trailer and she was pronounced dead at the scene.

It was determined that the tractor trailer was illegally occupying the left lane and attempting to make a "wide" right turn from the left lane. Additional investigation by our office discovered that at the time of the incident the tractor trailer driver had methamphetamine and a cocaine metabolite in his blood. Our lawyers retained the services of the former head of toxicology for the Georgia State Crime Lab who determined that the ingestion of the illegal drugs by the truck driver had occurred shortly before, of even during the trip by the driver from North Carolina to Georgia.

In previous blog entries we have discussed the dangers of heavy truck and tractor trailer drivers operating large rigs will under the influence of illegal drugs and the frequency of this illegal activity. This case serves as a tragic reminder of the dangers involved. Unfortunately, many drivers feel the need to resort to illegal stimulant drugs in order to overcome fatigue so that they can drive more miles and earn more money.

A federal appeals court recently struck down a Bush administration regulation that increased the number of hours that truck drivers are permitted to drive without rest. This is the second time the regulation has been struck down

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) hours-of-service rule for truckers, issued in Aug. 2005, could put motorists at risk. The rule dramatically increased both the consecutive number of hours that truckers may drive before taking a rest; and, the total number of hours truckers may drive per week.

A lawsuit brought by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, challenged two aspects of the rule: a provision that allowed truck drivers to drive for 11 consecutive hours before taking rest time, increased from the old rule of 10 hours; and, a provision which allowed drivers to “restart” their weekly tally of hours after they had taken a break as short as 34 hours.

The 34-hour restart allowed truckers to drive 77 hours in seven days or 88 hours in eight days – a more than 25 percent increase over pre-2003 rules. On-duty hours during which truckers may drive also climbed, so that a driver working 14-hour shifts under the new rules can now work as many as 84 hours in seven days or 98 hours in eight days – the latter a 40 percent increase over the old limits.

“The trucking profession has become ‘sweatshops on wheels’ because of the excessive and unsafe hours of work and driving time required of truck drivers,” said Daphne Izer, founder of Parents Against Tired Truckers (PATT). “I have paid the ultimate price for government policies that legally allow truck drivers to work and drive exhausted. My 17-year old son Jeff and his three close friends were killed in a preventable crash caused by truck driver fatigue. I welcome the court’s decision that puts people before profits.”

Each year, more than 5,000 people in the United States are killed and more than 110,000 injured in crashes involving large trucks. Truck driver fatigue is a major contributor in many of these crashes.

A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that in 2004, one out of eight traffic deaths resulted from a collision involving a large truck. In that year 416,000 large trucks were involved in traffic crashes in the U.S. Of those, 4,862 were involved in fatal crashes. A total of 5,190 people died (12% of all the traffic fatalities reported in 2004) and an additional 116,000 were injured in those crashes. Among those killed in crashes involving large trucks, 77 percent were occupants of another vehicle, 3 percent were pedestrians, and 24 percent were occupants of large trucks.

A widely cited study by Jones and Stein (Jones I. and H. Stein, Defective Equipment and Tractor-Trailer Crash Involvement. Accident Analysis and Prevention 21:469-81, 1989), reported that brake defects were quite common and were found in 56% of the tractor-trailers involved in crashes. In the more recent Large Truck Crash Causation Study sponsored by the DOT, it was concluded that 29.4% of all large truck crashes involved brake failure, brakes out of adjustment, or other brake related issues.

Compounding the brake defects issue even more is the fact that although original equipment (OE) brakes must comply with federal motor vehicle safety standards which specify maximum stopping distances according to vehicle weight, loading, pedal effort (with and without power assistance) and brake condition (green and burnished linings), there are no federal performance standards for aftermarket (AM) brake linings. It is typically assumed that replacement AM brake linings perform the same as or better than the OE brake linings on a vehicle. Unfortunately, there is currently no methodology or rating system available that can assure OE-equivalent brake performance from AM brake linings.

Our lawyers are frequently handling cases in which the driver of a heavy truck is under the influence of illegal stimulents, such as methamphetamine. In a recent case involving a death caused by a heavy truck, our lawyers discovered that the driver had methamphetamine, amphetamine, and cocaine in his blood at the time of the collision.

Despite Federal regulations that limit the hours they can drive in a single day, truck drivers are constantly looking for ways to stay awake longer, drive farther, and make more money. Seventeen out of 20 truck drivers inter-viewed by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) said that methamphetamine is easy to get at truck stops. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says that people in occupations (such as long-haul truckers) that demand long hours, mental alertness, and physical endurance, have been using methamphetamine at increased rates.

The use of stimulants by truck drivers to combat fatigue is fairly common. Surveys and roadside tests indicate that about one in five drivers use stimulants on at least some trips.

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Large trucks are prone to rollover accidents which can result in serious injury and death. Their high centers of gravity increase the risk of rolling over, particularly on curving ramps.

In 2005, 50 percent of deaths among occupants of large trucks occurred in crashes in which their vehicles rolled over, compared with 60 percent of SUV occupant deaths and 46 percent of pickup occupant deaths (both SUVs and pickups also have high centers of gravity). In contrast, 24 percent of passenger car occupant deaths occurred in vehicles that rolled over.

Electronic stability control (ESC) systems are designed to continuously monitor how well a vehicle is responding to a driver’s input. When the sensors detect the vehicle is straying from the driver’s intended line of travel, ESC brakes individual wheels to keep the vehicle under control. ESC may also modulate engine speed. ESC has been found to lower the risk of a single vehicle crash among passenger vehicles by 41 percent.16 The impact ESC could have on large truck crashes and rollovers is not known.