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As a transportation safety lawyer based in Atlanta, regularly dealing with truck and bus crashes, I see tragic recurring themes over the years. Here it goes again.

Today, a high school student was killed and ten injured in a school bus crash in Carroll County, Georgia. As a parent of two college age children, the news calls to mind the many times my kids rode school buses and team buses. We parents trust the schools and the bus drivers with our the lives of our children. We expect our children to bury us, and to bury our children seems contrary to the order of nature.

Regarding today’s incident in Carroll County, the Georgia State Patrol reported that the bus when it crashed on Highway 113 near Hog Liver Road between Carrollton and Temple, near I-20, around 2 p.m. According to news media reports, the bus flipped and several students were ejected from it.

In Georgia, school personnel are virtually immune from civil liability, but immunity is waived to the extent of insurance coverage for injuries and deaths in school bus operations, including loading and unloading.

Issues involving driver qualifications, tire failure, lack of passenger restraints, etc., come up time and time again. We represented as local counsel in Atlanta ten Bluffton University baseball players from Ohio with regard to injuries sustained in the crash of their team bus in Atlanta in 2007. Earlier we represented the mother of a college student killed when a team van crashed and he was ejected.
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Last night on I-575 in Cherokee County, an 18 wheeler tractor trailer hauling sod crashed at the bottom of an exit ramp from I-575 to Ga. 140 in Canton. The three-vehicle collision resulted in the death of one person, thus far not identified in the media. The tractor trailer crossed over the intersection and hit another vehicle, according a CBS News report.

According an article by Mike Morris in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, police were investigating whether brakes had failed on the tractor trailer.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations govern interstate trucking — between different states. Section 393.40 of the FMCSR defines required brake systems. Section 393.43 sets requirements for breakaway and emergency braking. Section 393.47 covers brake actuators, slack adjusters, linings/pads and drums/rotors. Section 393.52 sets standards for brake performance.

If a truck is operated only intrastate (within Georgia), then it is subject to the Georgia Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. The bulk of the federal rules on equipment required for safe operation, including these rules regarding brakes, are simply incorporated by reference in the Georgia rules.
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As a trucking accident trial attorney in Atlanta, I often see that the trucking companies involved in bad crashes have had terrible safety evaluations for a long time.

Twice in the past few weeks I found in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration safety audits that the companies were cited and fined scores of times for the same rule violations that were involved in the crashes we are addressing.

Now folks in the insurance industry are expressing concern that increased safety monitoring under the FMCSA’s Comprehensive Safety Analysis initiative will result in more warnings and citations about deficient safety practices, which we will in turn use to show the willfulness of unsafe practices.

In some instances, jurors may find that persistence in bad conduct sufficient to award punitive damages or attorney fees in addition to punitive damages. That may be a good thing for promoting safety on the highways, as trucking companies with unsatisfactory safety ratings will face pressure from their insurance companies. Those truckers who don’t care much about safety may care about being able to keep the insurance that is required to operate, and about their paying higher insurance premiums. Thus, the economic impact will give a competitive advantage to safer companies and a competitive disadvantage to unsafe companies.

And trucking trial lawyers like me who know where to obtain those records and how to use them will contribute to a “virtuous cycle” whereby pursuit of our clients’ interests also serves to promote safety for everyone on the highways.
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It’s interesting how handling a truck wreck case in Georgia can draw one into the culture, politics and economics of Eastern Europe. But a case in which a Croatian trucker hit an Atlanta motorist on I-285 did just that.

This week’s Time magazine includes an article for which I was interviewed, Trucking in the U.S.A.: Where the Accent is Russian. The article focuses on the language, cultural and legal challenges created by an influx of Russian truck drivers into the US.

The reporter had read my blog post about taking a deposition in Kansas City of that Croatian truck driver — through an interpreter — who was taught to drive a tractor trailer by “some Russian guy in North Carolina. He said his study of the CDL manual and rules was accomplished by having his 10-year-old daughter translate it for him.

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, at 49 CFR 391.11, requires that in order to get a Commercial Driver’s License, an applicant must be able to “read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records.”
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As a trucking safety trial attorney in Atlanta, I try to keep an eye peeled for developments in Washington that could affect trucking safety on America’s highways. One proposal in Congress, backed by 150 large companies, would allow them to “super size” tractor trailers in interstate commerce from a maximum weight of 80,000 pounds to 96,000 pounds.

In addition, those companies and a group of 19 Western governors are lobbying Congress to allow for more “doubles” and “triples” – multiple trailers hitched together than can span up to 120 feet – on Western highways.

Supporters of the proposals say shippers could load trucks more fully, reducing trucks used by 6%, saving 6.6 million gallons of fuel and eliminating 73,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

However, “super size” trucks would affect safety of other motorists by increasing the blind areas around tractor trailers as well as making them harder to stop. While trucks may have increased braking capacity, passenger cars and pickup trucks will not have any additional structural support added to withstand the impact from these monster trucks. Even if passenger cars were made to withstand these forces, it would be impossible to retrofit millions of cars currently on the road.

In addition to consumer safety organizations that uniformly think this is a bad idea, OIDA (Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association) has stated that the stability of a tractor trailer is “substantially reduced on bigger and heavier trucks.” Rollovers are already the leading cause of truck driver deaths, this proposal would make one of the most deadly professions worse.

A truck inspector quoted in the Wall Street Journal called the idea “insane.” He said he could actually feel the bridges bounce with trucks, and the heavier the trucks the more the bridge bounced. Do we really need the extra strain on the already crumbling bridges and roadways of America?

What do you think? How would this proposal to “super size” tractor trailers affect safety on the roads for the rest of us?
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As a Georgia trucking accident trial attorney based in Atlanta, one of the things I always look at after a catastrophic crash is whether a truck driver was dangerously fatigued due, in part, to violation of hours of service rules. It looks like the rules may change yet again.

Prior to 2003, interstate truckers could drive 10 hours out of a 15 hour work day.

Since 2003, truckers have been allowed to drive 11 consecutive hours a day and work up to 14 hours, followed by a 10-hour off-duty period.

Now the safety advocacy group Public Citizen is pushing for a rule limiting truckers to driving 8 hours in a 12 hour work day.

This week, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration submitted its proposed truck driver hours of service rule to the Office of Management and Budget. Details were not released, but most expect some shortening of driving and work hours.

While fatigue from long hours on the road contributes to serious accidents, trucking industry representatives say that shortening the work day will drive up shipping costs and that increasing the number of trucks on the road will increase safety risks.

Two things we can count on are that the controversy will continue in some form far into the future and that those who want to cheat will find ways to cheat.
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Time and time again, as a trucking accident trial attorney in Georgia, I have seen the dangers of overly tired truck drivers who violated Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations hours of service rules. The paper drivers’ logs are called “comic books” for a reason. Now we see that 2010 Roadcheck revealed that violations for false logs were up over 18% from 2009. Electronic on-board recorders (EOBR’s) are not perfect, they will be better than easily faked paper logs. There are other posts on this blog about driver fatigue, sleep apnea, and the dangers of tired truckers that lead to deaths and injuries of many people each year.
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As Georgia trucking lawyer who has lived in Sandy Springs for 26 years, I was saddened to hear recently that a woman was killed when she was hit by a 18 wheeler on I-285 near Riverwood High School where my son had his glory days in high school football.

Rosario Velez, 44, was in her minivan stopped in the I-285 emergency lane at Riverside Drive, making a phone call, when she was struck by an tractor trailer that, according to the police report, crossed over into the emergency lane to hit her.

Today, Sandy Springs police arrested Joseph Leon Golden, 43, the truck driver from El Paso, Texas. He has been charged with second-degree vehicular homicide and a lane violation, and is being held at the Fulton County Jail on $5,500 bond.
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As a trucking safety trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, I often see how truck driver fatigue contributes to 18 wheeler, semi truck accidents.

I’ve seen tragic cases where truckers tried to make it from Milwaukee to Tampa without required rest breaks, cases where truck drivers crashed when they fell asleep in their 18th or 20th hour behind the wheel. Paper logbooks are nearly useless in detecting such violations but we have been able to ferret them out with a variety of forensic methods.

But I don’t see truckers as bad guys. I’ve represented a lot of them, and have spent many pleasant hours drinking coffee and swapping stories with them in truck stops. They have hard, dangerous jobs. Most are hard-working, honest people who don’t fit any negative stereotypes. But there are still many who don’t fully appreciate how a macho desire to push themselves beyond the legal work hours endangers the lives of other people. The hazard of driver fatigue is complex and multidimensional.

Since 2004, the number of large truck crash injuries per 100 million miles has dropped 25 percent and the truck-involved fatality rate has dropped 22 percent. The fatality rate has dropped 66 percent since the DOT began keeping those records in 1975. The most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) indicate that the truck-involved fatality rate declined 12.3 percent in 2008 to 1.86 per 100 million miles, from 2.12 per 100 million miles in 2007. Persons injured in large truck crashes went from 44.4 per 100 million miles to 39.6, an 11 percent reduction.

There is room for debate, however, as to what factors had most to do with the change. Some attribute it to a change in hours of service rules. Others may point out the decline in truck traffic due to the recession, improved safety features in vehicles, variations in data reporting, etc.

While there is some improvement in accident data, the American Trucking Association has made five suggestions to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to further combat hazards associated with driver fatigue. They are:

(1) Sleep disorder awareness, training and screening. (Raising consciousness of the problem among truck drivers is an extremely important step.)

(2) Promoting the use of fatigue risk management programs. (It has to be in the culture of the trucking companies. I’ve seen too many tragic cases where the trucking company management absolutely turned a blind eye to hours of service violations and driver fatigue.)

(3) Evaluating the use of fatigue detection devices. (When the driver’s eye are drooping and head is nodding, it’s time to pull over!)

(4) Increasing the availability of truck parking on important freight corridors. (It’s one thing to say a trucker can drive only so many hours, but that driver faces a Catch-22 dilemma when there are no legal places to park when he runs out of hours.)

(5) Partnering with the trucking and shipping communities to develop an educational process that identifies for drivers the location of available truck parking. (Of course!)

These all incorporate common sense. If fleshed out with quantifiable, measurable details, they could help a lot.
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