Georgia Truck Accident Lawyers Blog

A two-day forum, headed by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), aimed to get input from safety experts, federal regulators and truck and bus industry leaders to see what can be done, and is being done, to help prevent fatal trucking accidents in Georgia and elsewhere. They also looked to figure out why previous safety recommendations have yet to be enacted, according to the Associated Press.

Although fatal trucking accidents decreased from 2008 to 2009, from 5,200 deaths to 3,200, many credit this decline to the economy and the decrease in driving as other traffic fatalities have mirrored this trend. Our Georgia trucking accident lawyers and other safety advocates worry that these statistics will see an increase as our economy recovers and motorists hit the road again.

"Even if you don't necessarily have more crashes, when there is a crash, there is more damage," said Henry Jasny, general counsel for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.

We recognize that one of the main contributors to the fatal accidents is fatigued drivers. Companies and drivers are looking to make more money by working longer hours. Because of this trend, the Obama administration is seeking to enforce new rules and regulations to track these driver hours. Currently, driver work hours are recorded on paper and can be easily falsified to benefit the company and the driver. According to the NTSB, roughly a third of these commercial motor vehicle accidents are due to fatigue. The Administration is looking to require all buses and trucks to come equipped with electronic recording devices to companies are not able to overwork their drivers.

"We must remind ourselves that each data point in these statistics represents a family member that will never come home to loved ones," Sumwalt said.

More specifically, the administration also would like to limit the hours a driver may spend behind the wheel from 11 hours to 10 hours a day. This proposal also would require that drivers take mandatory rest breaks, limit the overall work day to 14 hours and require that drivers be given more time off to rest once they've reached their 60 hour weekly driving limit.

"From an economic standpoint, it would do a great deal of harm to this industry and wouldn't improve safety," said Dave Osiecki, senior vice president at the American Trucking Associations.

The proposed regulations don't stop there. The administration also seeks to equip trucks and buses with safety technology that is now common on most new model passenger vehicles. They're looking to set up electronic systems that monitor stability control to prevent rollovers, warning systems that alert drivers when they're drifting into another lane, adaptive cruise control that automatically adjusts speed to traffic and warning systems that alert drivers to an impeding collision.

Without the fancy new gadgets, driver alertness may be the one saving grace motorists have to help them avoid a potentially fatal accident.

AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety offers these tips to help prevent all motorists from dangerous drowsy driving:

-Do not get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle if you feel tired.

-Make sure you get enough sleep the night before you plan to take a long trip.

-Travel with a passenger. This way if you become sleepy at the wheel, you can switch with your passenger and catch up on your rest.

-If you're feeling tired and are not traveling with a passenger, pull over and take a power nap.

-Schedule yourself a break every two hours, or every 100 miles, and stop to stretch or rest.

Continue reading " Forum Aims to Reduce Risks of Trucking Accidents in Georgia and Elsewhere " »

Trucking accident survivors, families of these victims and Members of Congress are pleased to announce the new Safe Highways and Infrastructure Preservation Act (SHIPA).

The new poll put out by the Truck Safety Coalition (TSC), illustrates an overwhelming amount of support for these size and weight limitations and the revising of the federal rule to cap the number of hours a truck driver may work on the road to reduce risks of a trucking accident in Georgia and elsewhere. Another report, including the top 10 states for the most fatal trucking accident occurrences, will be released as well, according to The Auto Channel.

Our Georgia truck accident attorneys understand the dangers that these large trucks and fatigued drives place on other motorists on our roadways. We understand that a revision of current trucking regulations is necessary as these measures need to be reevaluated to ensure road safety. Oftentimes these trucks plow through smaller vehicles with deadly consequences.

The Safe Highways and Infrastructure Preservation Act, House Bill 1218, aims to regulate the minimize weight and length limitations for all vehicles on federal highways. This bill will mainly pertain to large, commercial big rigs.

As we previously discussed on our Georgia Truck Accident Lawyers Blog, the National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB) asked the American Trucking Association to equip their trucks and buses with automated and tamperproof on-board recording devices. These are meant to reduce the risks of fatigued driving accidents as drivers will be unable to falsify paper records. Falsified paper records currently allow drivers to work longer than the law allows.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, these large commercial trucks were involved in accidents that resulted in nearly 3,500 deaths in 2009. That same year, these accidents resulted in nearly 74,000 injuries. The United States witnessed nearly 300,000 crashes involving commercial trucks.

Motorists are urged to follow these safety tips when driving near big trucks to ensure their own safety:

-Be cautious of wind gusts from the large trucks.

-Keep both hands on the wheel as these wind gusts from a passing truck have the strength and ability to move your car.

-Do not speed up when a truck is passing you. Instead, you are urged to steer clear of the passing truck and slow down slightly. This will allow you to get out of their blind spots quicker once they've passed.

-If you see a truck driver signaling to change lanes, allow them to.

-Leave plenty of room between you and a truck.

-When passing a truck, do not proceed back into the original lane until you can see the entire truck in your rear view mirrors.

Continue reading " New Bill Aiming to Limit Weight and Size Regulations Seeks to Reduce Risks of Truck Accidents in Georgia and Elsewhere " »

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) just wrapped up a two-day forum that focused on efforts to help prevent tour bus accidents. This forum comes after many deadly accidents this year, like the one on Interstate 95 near the Bronx-Westchester border that took the lives of 15 passengers and injured 18 more. The forum took concerns from federal regulators, safety experts, and the tour bus and trucking industries about ways to make our roads even safer and how to prevent future trucking accidents in Georgia and elsewhere in the United States.

They also discussed how and why previous safety recommendations seemed to fail or had not been fully implemented, according to Lo Hud.

Our Georgia trucking accident lawyers advocate the reexamination of current rules and regulations of these large trucks and their drivers. We also understand the great dangers facing passenger-vehicle motorists when involved in an accident with one of these larger vehicles -- the passenger-vehicle occupant is at a much higher risk for injury or death as a result of an accident with a large truck or commercial bus.

According to the Associated Press, big tour buses are involved in accident that cause about 20 deaths a year to passengers. These statistics mirror those of airline passenger trips. Between 2000 and 2009, tour buses were involved in 338 fatal crashes. Truck fatalities have been steadily decreasing, falling from 5,200 in 2005 to 3,200 in 2009.

Still, thousands are seriously injured in accidents with large commercial vehicles each year. And, like airline traffic, Atlanta is a southern hub which increases the risk to motorists throughout Georgia.

"We must remind ourselves that each data point in these statistics represents a family member that will never come home to loved ones," NTSB member Robert Sumwalt told The Associated Press.

The Obama administration has recently proposed several steps in an effort to toughen bus and truck regulations. One of their proposals would require that all trucks and buses be equipped with devices that record how many hours drivers are behind the wheel as many drivers are overworked and driving while fatigued. As many as a third of all commercial motor vehicle accidents are due to truck driver fatigue, according to NTSB.

The NTSB has been suggesting that buses increase the strength of their roofs for years now. They also encourage bus companies to offer better emergency exits, better fire protection and windows that prevent passengers from being ejected.

They would also like buses to include electronic stability control in an effort to prevent rollovers, warning systems that alert drivers when they're drifting into another lane, adaptive cruise control that automatically adjusts speed to traffic and warning systems that alert drivers to an impeding collision.

"From an economic standpoint, it would do a great deal of harm to this industry and wouldn't improve safety," said Dave Osiecki, senior vice president at the American Trucking Associations.

In other words, it's about the money. Yet these same companies will be the first to scream foul when a careless accident leads to a personal injury or wrongful death verdict to compensate victims of preventable injury.

Continue reading " Advocates Call on Bus Companies to Increase Safety Measures to Reduce Risks of Trucking Accidents in Georgia and Elsewhere " »

A driver lost their life earlier this month after being involved in a Georgia trucking accident on Interstate 20, according to Atlanta police. The accident happened when a passenger vehicle was smashed under the rear of a tractor trailer. Several lanes on the interstate were shut down. Atlanta Fire and Rescue and the Georgia State Patrol responded to the accident, according to My Fox Atlanta.

Fox 5 reports that a second accident happened around the same time as the Interstate 20 collision, killed a newlywed and sent her husband to the hospital after their car suffered a rollover accident on Interstate 285. The accident reportedly happened on the west side of the Interstate 285 right before the M.L. King Boulevard overpass. The car was clipped by a tractor trailer that was changing lanes in front of them. The tractor trailer sent the car into the inner barrier wall, back into traffic lanes causing it to bounce back into traffic where it was hit by a semi.

Our Georgia trucking accident attorneys helps victims of accidents with tractor trailers or other large trucks. Injuries experienced in these accidents are oftentimes very serious, if not fatal. The size of trucks and the impact that they have on passenger vehicles can equal catastrophic damage and injury. An experienced attorney needs to be contacted immediately if you or a loved one has been involved in an accident with one of these trucks.

Rescue crews were forced to use the Jaws of Life in the rollover accident to retrieve the newlywed victims from the mangled car. The new bride died at the scene. Neither of the truck drivers that were involved were injured.

Recent investigations led to charges being filed against the driver of the tractor trailer. He is accused of causing the accident. He is facing charges of vehicular homicide and improper lane change. He was held in the Fulton County Jail.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly 3,500 fatalities, and approximately 74,000 injuries, were suffered in the United States because of traffic accidents involving large trucks in 2009. Nearly 2,000 large trucks were involved in fatal accidents in Georgia in that same year.

As more and more trucks hit the road in Atlanta during this spring and summer travel season, many worry the fatality rate will increase. Drivers are urged to practice defensive driving skills in an attempt to help prevent these potentially deadly accidents.

Continue reading " Recent Georgia Trucking Accident Worry Safety Advocates as Spring and Summer Traveling Season Begins " »

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) data that show 78 percent of commercial truck and bus drivers wore safety belts while operating behind the wheel in 2010, compared to 74 percent in 2009.

According to FMCSA's Safety Belt Usage by Commercial Motor Vehicle Drivers Survey, the number of commercial drivers that are wearing safety belts has increased by 14 percent since 2007.

The 2010 survey observed 26,830 commercial drivers operating medium- to heavy-duty trucks and buses at 998 roadside sites nationwide. The survey found that safety belt use for commercial drivers and their occupants was higher, 80 percent, in states where law enforcement may stop drivers for not wearing a safety belt, versus 72 percent in states with weaker secondary enforcement belt use laws.

A regional breakdown showed that safety belt use rates for commercial drivers and their occupants were highest in the West, at 82 percent, compared with 79 percent in the South, 73 percent in the Midwest and 69 percent in the Northeast.

The executive summary for the survey appears below.

Continue reading " Seat Belt Usage By Commercial Drivers Increases " »

Access to information and data concerning safety records and actions against motor carriers and drivers has become much easier to obtain.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has launched a new web page that improves free public access to orders and decisions on FMCSA civil penalty and safety rating cases. The web page also provides frequently asked questions intended to help parties understand FMCSA's process for making these legal determinations.

Until now, FMCSA's civil penalty and safety rating cases were available only by going through a cumbersome process at www.regualtions.gov or through paid private-sector legal research websites. Now members of the public can search the full text of hundreds of orders and decisions in cases where motor carriers have contested violations and penalties issued by FMCSA.

The new FMCSA web page includes decisions dated from 2009 to the present that can be sorted by carrier name, case type, docket number and order title.

FMCSA will add new decisions once they become final. In addition, the web page includes links for online Freedom of Information Act requests, as well as links to applicable statutes and regulations and other helpful resources on the functions of FMCSA's Office of Chief Counsel.

This information is now available at:
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/about/offices/cc/about-cc/about.aspx

Bus accidents cause numerous deaths and injuries every year in the Georgia and the United States. This firm recently represented a young man seriously injured when the driver of the bus in which he was riding mistakenly exited I-75 in Atlanta and fell from a bridge. Several young men and the driver were killed and many injured.

Last week U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced several new measures that the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is taking to help ensure that passengers traveling by bus are as safe as possible.

The U.S. DOT will now require more rigorous commercial driver's license testing standards, seek new rules to strengthen passenger carrier and driver compliance with federal safety regulations, and empower consumers to review safety records of bus companies before booking.

Secretary also announced that FMCSA will be teaming up with state law enforcement to conduct unannounced motorcoach inspections at popular travel destinations throughout the spring and summer peak travel season.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) issued a new final rule requiring anyone applying for a commercial driver’s license (CDL) to first obtain a commercial driver’s learner’s permit. The rule also requires all state licensing agencies to use a CDL testing system that meets the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators CDL knowledge and skill standards, and prohibits the use of foreign language interpreters to reduce the potential for testing fraud.

Prior to this new rule, CDL applicants were not required to first obtain a learner's permit and CDL testing systems were not uniform nationwide.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued several new policy proposals designed to raise the bar for passenger carrier safety, including a provision that would give the U.S. DOT greater authority to pursue enforcement action against unsafe "reincarnated" passenger carriers by establishing a federal standard to help determine whether a new carrier is simply a reincarnation of an old, unsafe carrier.

The Department is also proposing to require new motorcoach companies to undergo a full safety audit before receiving U.S. DOT operating authority, revise current law to ensure a driver's CDL can be suspended or revoked for drug- and alcohol-related offenses committed in non-commercial vehicles, and raise the penalty from $2,000 a day to $25,000 for passenger carriers that attempt to operate without USDOT authority.

The USDOT also unveiled a safety checklist that will help consumers review a bus company's safety record, safety rating and USDOT operating authority before buying a ticket or hiring a bus company for group travel.

The checklist is now available online at FMCSA's Passenger Bus Safety Web site. FMCSA is also encouraging consumers to report any unsafe bus company, vehicle or driver to the agency through a toll free hotline 1-888-DOT-SAFT (1-888-368-7238).

In addition, FMCSA and its state and local enforcement partners are supporting improved passenger bus safety with a growing number of unannounced bus safety inspections across the country. Starting this week and lasting throughout the summer travel season, the enforcement campaign will target popular destinations such as amusement parks, national parks, casinos, and sports event venues.

Over the past five years, FMCSA has doubled the number of unannounced bus safety inspections and comprehensive safety reviews of the nation's estimated 4,000 passenger bus companies. Roadside safety inspections of motorcoaches jumped from 12,991 in 2005 to 25,703 in 2010, while compliance reviews rose from 457 in 2005 to 1,042 in 2010.

The Administration has taken a number of additional actions over the past several years to improve passenger safety:

• Last December, USDOT launched a new safety measurement system titled Compliance, Safety, Accountability that provides detailed safety data to identify bus companies for safety interventions.

• The Obama Administration is spearheading major improvements to passenger carrier safety through a wide-ranging Motorcoach Safety Action Plan. USDOT has proposed rules that will require buses to have seat belts and electronic on-board recorders to replace easily falsified paper records of driver hours.

• Last year, USDOT adopted a rule to combat distracted driving by banning commercial drivers from texting behind the wheel and proposed a new standard to prohibit hand-held mobile phone use.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has fined three moving companies, Lightning Van Lines, Inc. of San Leandro, California; Viking Moving and Storage, Inc. of Oakland, California and are Guardian Moving & Storage of Los Angeles, California, $25,000 each during an enforcement sweep that took place in March.

Our Atlanta truck accident lawyers applaud FMCSA efforts to remove unsafe moving trucks from our roadways. We know in 2009, Georgia had 1,750 fatal accidents, 133 involved large trucks.

Compliance reviews of 67 moving companies were conducted by 37 FMCSA and state investigators as part of the agencies Household Goods Strike Force. The Strike Force purpose is to protect the public from deceptive moving companies. High risk companies were targeted in Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; Los Angeles and San Jose, California; and Las Vegas, Nevada.

"We are committed to protecting the public from unscrupulous movers that attempt to operate unsafely," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "We want these carriers to know that there are serious legal and financial consequences for evading federal regulations."

Investigators looked for regulatory violations including: not providing consumers with a mediation process, collecting fees higher than the original estimate and not giving customers their shipment.

"FMCSA is committed to raising the bar for safety and closing cases on rogue household goods movers," said FMCSA Administrator Anne S. Ferro. "We will do this by keeping the focus on safety and on improving service to the American public, one safe and successful move at a time."

Avoid these mistakes when choosing a moving company:
-Getting estimates over the phone, movers need to see your belongings to give you an accurate estimate.

-Accepting the first estimate, you need several estimates for a fair comparison.

-Accepting the lowest estimate, a super low estimate should signal a red flag.

-Not asking about additional charges, always ask what will cost you extra.

-Choosing an uninsured or unlicensed company, moving companies have to be licensed and carry insurance.

-Not getting a written contract, your agreement must be in writing so you know exactly what you are paying for.

-Not disclosing issues to the movers, let them know your new apartment is on the 3rd floor with no elevator.

-Not understanding the insurance coverage the movers provide, it is wise to pay extra for coverage that will give you replacement value for damaged items.

Continue reading " Moving Companies under Scrutiny; Fraud, Georgia Trucking Accidents a Risk " »

All drivers know that our interstate highways are crowded with trucking companies hauling cargo to destinations throughout the United States. The Code of Federal Regulations addresses requirements for proper cargo securement. These regulations are found at Title 49, Chapter 3, Parts 392.9 and 393.1 through 393.136. These cargo securement regulations are quite specific and provide commodities specific regulations for machinery, logs and other products. Obviously, the general requirements include specified performance criteria for the securement system being utilized by the trucking company. The regulations also require a certain number of tie downs to secure the load according to the length of the cargo and the weights involved. Whatever the cargo is, it must be restrained sufficiently to prevent rolling or shifting during transit. Additionally, of course, the regulations require that the drivers of the interstate trucks carrying the cargo must periodically inspect their load to make sure that it has been properly secured.

In virtually any accident involving a falling cargo situation, the Code of Federal Regulations will be implicated because the regulations themselves set forth the specific requirements for the safe and proper securement of cargo being transported in interstate commerce. The improper securement of cargo obviously can result in serious personal injury claims with life altering consequences. Accordingly, in any traffic accident involving falling cargo, it is imperative that an investigation be conducted as soon as possible to evaluate why it is that the cargo fell off the truck. Clearly, if proper securement regulations had been followed, which are designed to prevent all such incidents, the accident would probably have never occurred. Thus, typically, in any case involving falling cargo, there will be a violation of the Code of Federal Regulations, but as is true of any legal case, it is imperative that an investigation be conducted as soon as possible so that the issues can be carefully examined.