Georgia Truck Accident Lawyers Blog

Liability insurance limits for your typical tractor-trailer company, as mandated by federal law, is $750,000.00 in coverage for the protection of innocent members of the motoring public who might be unfortunate enough to be injured by a large tractor-trailer rig. In any serious collision in which the innocent third party victim is hit by a tractor-trailer, it does not take much imagination to realize that $750,000.00 will not go very far, particularly with the increasing cost of healthcare. If someone has numerous orthopaedic injuries and requires surgery, for example, $750,000.00 might not go far enough, particularly if the innocent victim has to lose time from work and/or is permanently disabled.

The current required liability limits for commercial motor carriers was enacted by way of the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. These limits have not been increased therefore for almost thirty (30) years. Such limits need to be doubled, if not tripled, at a minimum, in order to protect the innocent members of the motoring public. The chief reason for this is because of the devastating damage usually done by a big tractor-trailer rig when it is involved in a collision. The injuries, damages, lost wages, permanent disfigurement and wrongful deaths one sees in the context of tractor-trailer accidents certainly would seem to militate in favor of increased liability limits.

Now that we have a new Congress and a new President, one can only hope that a law that was enacted in 1980 is amended so that innocent members of the motoring public may receive the protection they need if involved in a collision with a commercial motor carrier. While the increase in premiums might result in increased costs for the trucking business, they have avoided these costs for the past thirty (30) years and it is now time that the liability limits for commercial motor carriers be increased.

Our Atlanta truck accident lawyers see many instances in which trucking companies simply ignore or pay little attention to safety rules and regulations designed to protect the motoring public. During the past 15 years, the three-strikes-you're-out rule has become a key aspect of the U.S. criminal justice system. The policy generally holds that repeat offenders are given mandatory life sentences when convicted of committing particularly egregious crimes like kidnapping and aggravated assault.

This concept has been adapted and adopted by other government units and applied to all sorts of regulatory requirements and enforcement actions, including by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Now, the FMCSA has thrown out its three-strikes policy for assessing maximum fines for motor carriers found to have committed a pattern of violations of "critical or acute" safety rules and gone to a two strikes rule. This basically tells trucking companies and drivers that on the second strike a large fine will follow. The change went into effect April 1.

The Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999, which created the FMCSA, mandated the agency assess maximum civil penalties on anyone who committed a "pattern of violations" of important safety regulations, or to have "previously committed the same or a related violation" of critical regulations.

Five years later, the agency clarified its enforcement policy by adopting a three-strikes rule that defined both the "pattern of violations," and "previously committed the same or related violation," as three cases of violations occurring within the previous six years.

Within a year or two of adopting that policy, the agency began coming under fire from members of Congress and others who contended its enforcement efforts were too weak. Congress ordered the Government Accountability Office to examine the agency's enforcement practices.

In 2007, the GAO issued a report that said the FMCSA three-strikes policy had failed to assess maximum penalties against serious safety-rules violators and hadn't achieved the 1999 law's intent that maximum penalties be imposed when there had been two distinct patterns of violations or repeat violations.

Now, with a new administration in charge, the agency has revised its policy and issued a two-strikes rule. When the agency discovers two or more critical and/or acute violations in each of three or more different regulatory parts it can assess maximum fines.

A rogue carrier will be subject to the maximum fines when the pattern of critical or acute violations is discovered after the operator has had "previous contact" with the FMCSA, a state motor carrier safety enforcement agency, or other FMCSA-designated representative acting on behalf of FMCSA.

This new policy should lead to stricter enforcement of safety regulations, encourage lax companies to adopt better safety standards, and hopefully reduce the rate of injuries and deaths caused by unsafe trucks and unsafe driving practices.

As Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP representing victims of trucking accidents, automobile accidents, and workers compensation accidents we often see our clients who cannot work because of serious injuries, fall behind in paying their bills. When that happens they often start getting calls from collection agencies and even lawyers attempting to collect. Sometimes these collections people cross the line and violate the law.

This week I read an article about a man with a disabling brain injury and no money who told a debt collection lawyers that the time for seeking payment had expired and that the suit that had previously been filed to collect the debt had been dismissed. Notwithstanding that conversation, the law firm sued him anyway, trying to collect a credit card debt on behalf of the creditor. He hired a lawyer, got the collections suit dismissed and then sued the collections law firm for violating debt collections laws. A jury awarded him $311,000.00!

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, often referred to as the "FDCPA", was passed by Congress in 1977 in response to abusive conduct by collection agencies, and concern that the abuses were causing an increase in the filings of personal bankruptcies. The purpose of the Act is to provide guidelines for collection agencies which are seeking to collect legitimate debts, while providing protections and remedies for debtors. The FDCPA applies to personal, family, and household debts, including debts associated with the purchase of a car, for medical care, for retail financing, for first and second mortgages, and for money owed on credit card accounts. Please note that most states have similar laws, which typically proscribe the same types of misconduct by debt collectors and which may cover a broader range of debts than the federal law.

The Act regulates the conduct of debt collectors: any person who regularly collects debts owed to others. This definition includes lawyers who perform debt collection services on a regular basis. Even where money is legitimately owed, a debt collector's conduct is restricted by this law. In-house collection agents are not ordinarily covered by the Act. For example, if you have a store credit card, and the store's own collection department contacts you, the FDCPA does not apply. However if the same store uses an outside collection agency to contact you in relation to that same debt, the outside agency's conduct is restricted by the FDCPA. Similarly, if the same store uses an in-house collection agent, but suggests to you that the collection is being performed by a third party, the FDCPA may apply to them as a result of that representation. Please note that there may be other laws in your state which restrict the conduct of in-house collection agents.

In order to prove violations of collections laws a consumer MUST document all communication with the collector. If you do not have a way to record telephone calls coming into your home - get one and don’t erase anything on it.

Truck drivers operating on the roads of Georgia and across the nation are subject to hours of service restrictions. These restrict the number of hours a driver may operate a truck in a certain time frame. It has been shown that fatigued drivers are a major contributing factor to truck crashes.

Legislation enacted in the last Congress and pushed by the Bush administration granted certain carriers exemptions from the restrictions. Now, a recent study by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Volpe National Transportation Systems Center found trucking carriers that received hours of service regulations exemptions reported higher crash rates than those that didn't obtain waivers from the rules.

The legislation exempted agricultural carriers from the hours of service regulations if they operated only within a 100-mile radius from their central base of operation. It also exempted utility service vehicle drivers from all hours-of-service regulations.

The Volpe study found that agricultural carrier operating exclusively within a 100-mile radius had a 19% higher crash rate than agricultural carriers operating outside a 100-mile radius between 2005 and 2007, while utility service motor carrier crash rates jumped by 40% during the same period.

These results show that safety is clearly compromised by these exemptions. Safety groups have called for their repeal in the upcoming Transportation Reauthorization Act.

The study also showed that in 2007 agricultural carriers as a whole had higher violation and out of service rates than the rest of the trucking industry in the categories of unsafe driver, driver fitness, vehicle maintenance, and improper loading - with a 32% overall average increase.

Agricultural carriers operating solely within a 100-mile radius had higher violations and out of service rates than those operating outside of a 100-mile radius in the categories of unsafe driving, driver fitness, vehicle maintenance, and improper loading, the Volpe study reported, with the overall average increase in the case at 24 percent

As Georgia injury lawyers we handle all types of automobile accident and trucking accident cases involving serious injury and wrongful death. This week I read about an unusual collision in Carrollton involving an ambulance and a truck. According to the Georgia State Patrol, a woman was driving a non-emergency ambulance when she swerved onto the shoulder, overcorrected, crossed the center line and veered into oncoming traffic where she hit a truck head-on. The ambulance driver, in critical condition, was airlifted to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta after Monday's accident. Fortunately, there were no patients in the ambulance. The condition of the man driving the truck was not disclosed.

The Georgia Injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have represented thousands of victims involved in automobile accidents and trucking/tractor trailer accidents. Regretfully many have resulted in serious, life changing injuries and some have resulted in death. In some of these cases, the injuries could have been lessened had the victim been wearing a seatbelt.

For years, Georgia law has required occupants of passenger cars to wear seatbelts; however, pickup trucks have been exempt. Recently, a bid to require adults in pickup trucks to buckle their seat belts was narrowly defeated by a Georgia House panel, defying supporters of stronger safety standards that are in effect in most of the nation.

Georgia already requires minors to wear seat belts and adults to wear them except in pickup trucks. Indiana law was similar to Georgia law on this subject; however, in 2007 the legislature passed a law which now requires adults to buckle up in pickup trucks. New Hampshire has no seat belt requirements whatsoever for adults.

The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have represented many victims of traumatic brain injury resulting from serious automobile accidents, tractor trailer accidents, workers compensation accidents, ATV/All Terrain Vehicle accidents, motorcycle accidents and premises liability accidents. A traumatic brain injury (TBI) is caused by a blow or jolt to the head or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the normal function of the brain. Not all blows or jolts to the head result in a TBI. The severity of a TBI may range from “mild,” i.e., a brief change in mental status or consciousness to “severe,” i.e., an extended period of unconsciousness or amnesia after the injury.

What many people do not realize is that major depression is a complication seen in about one-third of patients within the first year of a TBI and when present, is associated with poor psychosocial functioning and persisting post-concussive symptoms. Major depression is associated with substantial psychosocial dysfunction and post-concussive symptomatology following traumatic brain injury. Medication has been and is still prescribed to treat this complication; however, in a recent large clinical sample of patients with symptoms of major depression, anti-depressant medication has been shown to lead to the remission of symptoms in a minority of patients.

As a Georgia injury lawyer, I have represented a lot of truck drivers over the years in workers compensation claims, usually involving back injuries. Many of these drivers were well into their sixties and many had significant health problems which probably put the public at risk of serious injury and death had they become involved in a tractor trailer accident. It was always surprising when these older truck drivers who were clearly in bad health were able to pass a DOT physical examination. Last summer the Associated Press released a report which talked about this growing problem. Tractor-trailer and bus drivers in the Unites States are driving our highways with commercial licenses even though they qualify for full federal disability payments. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has admitted that it has fallen short in implementing the 8 recommendations that U.S. Safety Regulators have proposed since 2001. One of these would set minimum standards for officials who determine whether truckers are medically safe to drive. Truckers who have violated the medical rules set out by the government are every where but 12 states have proven to be leaders in producing violations. Texas, Maryland, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Alabama, New Jersey, Minnesota and Ohio were all states where drivers broke the rules most often. The AP article lists several appalling cases where truck drivers have caused fatalities as a result of their medical violations. In some cases, morbidly obese truck drivers had heart attacks while others admitted to occasional blacking out and forgetting things. If you or a loved one have been injured as a result of being involved in a tractor trailer truck accident, call the trucking accident injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP for a free consultation.

Georgia injury lawyers know well the serious injuries and wrongful deaths people suffer as a result of motor vehicle accidents; however, perhaps the most catastrophic accident is one involving tractor trailers. Some of the reasons for trucking accidents being such horrible accidents are plain to see. The size and weight of the trucks and cargo have the capacity to do tremendous harm if they are driven recklessly, negligently or under dangerous conditions.

A couple of years ago we represented a young wrecker driver who was off on the grass on Interstate 75 in Georgia. He was there with the police trying to remove vehicle which had been involved in a prior collision. As he was loading one of the wrecked cars on his flatbed wrecker, he looked up to see a tractor trailer veering off the roadway and heading directly towards him. He ran up the embankment to try to avoid being hit and was run over by the truck. As a result he sustained vary serious injuries. As it turned out, the guy who was actually in control of the truck was just a guy who was accompanying the real truck driver. He did not have a commercial drivers license and was actually on disability because of a spinal cord injury that affected the use of his lower extremities!

Many truck accidents occur because the driver is without sufficient skills or training; driving faster than the speed limit or too fast for the conditions; driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol; driving without sufficient sleep/falsifying logbooks or failing to properly secure loads.

Tractor trailer accident victims often sustain very severe injuries and incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, not to mention thousands in lost wages. In these cases, it important to retain legal counsel as soon as possible to investigate on your behalf and to retain competent accident reconstruction experts.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a accident or wreck involving a truck, call one of the experienced truck accident lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP.