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New Year’s resolutions — mine included — often include aspirational goals for improved fitness and weight loss. As a trucking accident attorney in Atlanta, Goorgia, that perennial promise to myself is also a reminder of the relation between obesity, sleep apnea and dangers in interstate trucking.

Fortunately, Weight Watchers now has a mobile version that works with Blackberry. Truck drivers, as well as trial lawyers, could find that useful.

Last spring, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Medical Review Board recommended that holders of Commercial Drivers Licenses be referred for medical testing for sleep apnea if they have Body Mass Index (BMI) over 30. One-third of Americans were classified as obese in 2003-2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and from what I see in truck stops and in litigation, truck drivers who have little way to maintain a good fitness routine on the road are no exception.

BMI combines a person’s height and weight to set a score. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an adult’s BMI can be calculated by dividing the person’s weight in pounds by inches squared and multiplying that number by 703. A BMI number of 30 indicates obesity, according to the BMI system. A BMI calculator is available at www.cdc.gov.

Sleep apnea occurs most often when throat muscles relax during sleep, momentarily preventing oxygen from traveling to one’s lungs.

I would not be surprised to see this recommendation become the basis for new rules under the Obama administration, as the Medical Review Board normally has considerable influence.
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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.
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For years we have been hearing about a severe shortage of qualified over the road truck drivers, contributing to widespread safety concerns.

Now the severe economic recession has cut into shipping volume, led to an ongoing consolidation of the trucking industry, and a glut of qualified drivers, as reported by Rick Rommell of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

This is just the latest “bad news / good news” story in the interesting times in which we live.
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Truck driver fatigue as a cause of major tractor trailer accidents is an old story. As a trucking trial lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, I have seen it too many times.

In today’s Baltimore Sun, there is an editorial, “Yawning Danger,” urging the incoming Obama administration to overturn the hours of service rule that is set to become permanent on the last day of the Bush administration. The old rule limited truck drivers to 10 hours of driving in one day. The current temporary rule, which will become “permanent” on January 19th, allows driving 11 hours during 14 hours on duty.

The editorial points out:

Has the 11th hour made the roads more dangerous? Are 11th-hour drivers more likely to be involved in crashes? Some research suggests no, and that’s the evidence sited by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration when it granted the rule change in November. But advocates say the government’s analysis relies heavily on one study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute that is deeply flawed (depending, for instance, on truckers being videotaped; the presence of a camera onboard likely affected their performance).

The bulk of 35 years of research, the petitioners point out, shows that the performance of long-haul truck drivers diminishes even before the 10-hour limit is reached. And while the number of highway fatalities was down the last two years, it went up the first year the new rules were in place. Recent safety improvements to roads and vehicles as well as lower average highway speeds may be masking the effect of the longer hours.

It seems like common sense that fatigue is progressive, and that one is more fatigued and more accident prone in the 11th hour of driving than in the 10th hour.
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A tractor trailer accident on an icy interstate highway in Indiana underscores the importance of the rule requiring drivers of commercial vehicles to exercise “extreme caution” in hazardous weather conditions.

On I-74 in Indiana, a firefighter was suffered a crushed pelvis, broken leg, and multiple internal injuries when he was struck and pinned under the rear drive axle of a tractor trailer as it came to a rest in the soggy ditch of the icy interstate. Police said the accident happened while I-74 was covered with ice after freezing rain fell. Sheriff Ken Campbell added: “Emergency responders are put at an unnecessary risk by motorists who insist on driving too fast in these road conditions.”

49 CFR 392.14 requires:

Extreme caution in the operation of a commercial motor vehicle shall be exercised when hazardous conditions, such as those caused by snow, ice, sleet, fog, mist, rain, dust, or smoke, adversely affect visibility or traction. Speed shall be reduced when such conditions exist. If conditions become sufficiently dangerous, the operation of the commercial motor vehicle shall be discontinued and shall not be resumed until the commercial motor vehicle can be safely operated. Whenever compliance with the foregoing provisions of this rule increases hazard to passengers, the commercial motor vehicle may be operated to the nearest point at which the safety of passengers is assured.

As a truck driver client recently told me, it’s better to pull over in bad weather than to unnecesarily risk injury or death to himself or others.
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Trucking safety lawyers as well as everyone else concerned about transportation issues needs to pay attention to personnel choices in the US Department of Transportation. You remember the old cliche that “personnel is policy.” Even an humble personal injury trial attorney handling trucking accident cases in Atlanta should be attentive.

President-elect Obama has picked Ray LaHood, a retiring Republican congressman from rural Illinois as his Secretary of Transportation. Here’s what some of the commentators around the country are saying:

* John Hughes and Julianna Goldman at Bloomberg.com write:

Even with firm Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Obama will need help across the aisle. Legislation to upgrade the nation’s air-traffic control system has been stuck in Congress for more than a year and the Bush administration has been fighting airlines over flight rights in New York. Meanwhile, Obama is planning to give states an infusion of funds to create jobs by improving the nation’s infrastructure. . . .
In an attempt to cut through partisan rancor in the late 1990’s, LaHood organized a series of annual retreats — at resorts a short train or car ride outside of Washington — to bring together lawmakers and their families.

* In The New Republic, John B. Judis writes “LaHood and Solis: Second Round Picks”:

Bush’s administration. But they should be important in Obama’s administration. Transportation has a stake in America’s two biggest manufacturing industries, planes and auto. Much of the $900 billion and rising in infrastructure funding is going to go through the Transportation Department. The secretary is not just going to be responsible for shepherding this spending through Congress, but also for shaping what kind of spending occurs. What gets funded–highways, airports, rail, mass transit–and in what proportion will determine what the country looks like well into the next decades. LaHood is being touted as being pro-rail because he didn’t vote against AMTRAK, but I have heard little to convince me that he will bring any kind of vision to the job or that he will able to sell controversial provisions in the Senate.

* National Journal’s Expert Blog on transportation issues includes a collection of comments from figures in aviation, highway construction, etc. There is no end to lobbyists.

* John O’Dell at Green Car Advisor on Edmunds.com writes:

LaHood has little transportation record beyond his support for Amtrak, the national passenger train program, and his apparently friendly relationship with the Teamsters Union and other transportation unions, which endorsed and financially supported him during his congressional career. The national Teamseters Union also has endorsed his nomination as Transportation Secretary.

* American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) is the industry organization of companies providing pavement markings, road signs, work zone traffic control devices, guardrail, and other roadside safety features. It issued a statement that it was “is enthused by the selection and recommends prompt confirmation from the Senate.”

* Oliver Patton at TruckingInfo.com wrote that LaHood will “have to hit the ground running: Obama has called for massive public works investments, in the short term for economic stimulus and in the longer term for rebuilding and modernizing transportation infrastructure.”
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A truck wreck in New Hampshire sounds similar to the the first interstate trucking personal injury case I handled as a “puppy lawyer” about 25 years ago, before I learned the basics of anything as fundamental as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.

In the New Hampshire accident this morning, a state snow plow truck on I-89 was struck in the rear by a tractor trailer. The tractor trailer driver was hospitalized for a head injury.

My case a quarter century ago arose out of a rare Georgia snow storm after Christmas. A Georgia DOT snow removal truck was outfitted with a blade in the front and salt spreader in back. With two workers in the cab, it was moving slowly clearing snow next to the median barrier. A flatbed tractor trailer running empty on the way home Texas was traveling way too fast, skidded on an icy spot, and skidded into the DOT truck. The Texas trucker clearly was not exercising the “extreme caution” required of commercial trucks in hazardous weather conditions.

The fellow “riding shotgun” in the DOT vehicle wasn’t hurt significantly in the initial impact, but was trapped, wedged between the median barrier and the 18 wheeler, when the snow removal truck caught fire. By the time someone broke out the windshield and pulled him to safety, he had second and third degree burns over much of his body. The case was a learning experience for me in that it was my first case involving a serious burn injury.
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Driving a gasoline tanker truck is one of the most dangerous and nerve-racking of occupations. I have heard from tanker truck drivers that they live in constant amprehension of disaster. After a relatively minor collision, their stress may suffer a form of post-traumatic stress disorder from contemplation of the close call.

This week a gasoline tanker truck operated by Florida Rock and Tanklines crashed and burned on Georgia Highway 157 on Lookout Mountain, as reported by WTVC television in Chattanooga. The driver was killed in the resulting explosion and fire.

Highway 157 is a beautiful route through a bucolic mountaintop landscape. Until I was 12 I lived at Mentone, Alabama, on top of Lookout Mountain, and went to school at Menlo, Georgia, in Shinbone Valley, so the site of this fiery crash is just a few miles north of the route I rode to school every day.

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Taking a break from trucking accident litigation on the day after Christmas, I’m sitting at home in Atlanta, in a house where it seems everyone else is either sleeping or out bargain hunting, reading the news.

A few quick notes on the news as it relates to the trucking industry safety and economics, which in turn ultimately affects safety:

* Three members of a Duluth, Georgia, family were killed on Christmas Eve when they were rearended by a tractor trailer on the Pennsylvania Turnpike en route to New York. Benito Rivera, Christina Rivera-Morales and their four year old child were killed. Their two year old survived. One report says this happened in freezing rain, the sort of adverse weather that requires that truckers operate with “extreme caution.” According to another report, the family vehicle had lost control and come to rest across the traffic lane in the dark. Let’s remember that family in our prayers, as well as the overstressed and underpaid trucker who probably hit them while trying to get home for Christmas with his family, and hold our own loved ones tight.

* YRC Worldwide parent company of Yellow Freight, cancelled a $150 million tender offer and is negotiating for easier terms on its credit lines as its shares dropped 18% and Moody’s cut its credit rating. The carrier’s freight tonnage was down substantially — 11%, 12% 21% depending on how the counting is done — from last year YRC was also negotiating a sale-leaseback of a portion of its facilities.

* Navistar International,manufacturer of trucks, buses, and diesel engines, is restating its net income upward due to an accounting error. While reported earning were up, the stock went down. The company benefited from higher military revenue and demand for more fuel efficient trucks, offsetting some of the decline in general trucking demand.

* The Wall Street Journal in a lead editorial blasted prospective DOT Secretary Ray LaHood as “Obama’s Secretary of Earmarks,” criticizing him for having “facilitatated the incontinent spending that helped Republicans lose their majority….” That is followed by an editorial titled “…And Bridges to Everywhere,” lampooning some spending projects proposed by local governments. Let’s hope that the new infrastructure spending will be more like Ike’s building of the interstate highway system in my youth, investing in our children’s future.

* California has passed the nation’s strictest rules on diesel fuel emissions. While my son may breathe marginally cleaner air near L.A., the increased cost for truckers to comply comes at a very difficult time.

* In another California story, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced on Christmas Eve a ruling that the hours of service rules for interstate truckers do not preempt California laws and regulations requiring employers to provide employees with meal and rest breaks.

* The U.S. isn’t the only country where the economic slowdown is affecting trucking. In India, about 158,000 commercial trucks went back to the lenders in December alone.
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Handling a lot of truck and bus accident cases in my law practice in Georgia, I often see cases where there are truckers on both sides of the case, as one tractor trailer crashes into another tractor trailer. It drives home the fact that truck driving is a hazardous occupation.

This week’s news included another of those incidents, this time on I-80 in Iowa. Saturday about 7:30 P.M., an unidentified truck driver was killed when he rearended another truck, and his tractor caught fire. The driver of the lead truck was injured.
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