This morning on I-85 near Newnan, Georgia, a tractor trailer wrecked due to a blown tire. A 72-year-old trucker driving a 1996 International 4000 tractor-trailer crashed when a right tire reportedly blew on the vehicle, causing him to lose control and strike a guardrail. Fortunately, no injuries were reported. It was a local truck delivering concrete forms.
Most of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations have been adopted for intrastate trucking within Georgia. The FMCSR, at 49 CFR 396.13, requires the driver to make a pre-trip inspection and sign a report noting any defect in equipment. The FMCSR at 49 CFR 392.7, specifies that the pre-trip inspection driver must confirm that the following are in good working order: service brakes, including trailer brake connections; parking (hand) brake; steering mechanism; lighting devices and reflectors; tires; horn; windshield wiper or wipers; rear-vision mirror or mirrors; coupling devices.
Ken Shigley is a trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia who has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale), and is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy,. He served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute, is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America, and is a frequent speaker at continuing legal education programs for the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice. Mr. Shigley has extensive experience representing parties in trucking and bus accidents, products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, spinal cord injury, brain injury and burn injury cases. Currently he is Secretary of the 40,000 member State Bar of Georgia.