Published on:

By

I’m just a trucking accident trial lawyer in Georgia, and it’s been over three decades since my last economics class in college. Therefore, even though I read the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily more or less regularly, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my blog post about implications of the economic crisis for trucking and insurance was cited as one of the best legal blog posts expressing insight on the ongoing economic calamity. My econ profs at Furman way back when would be astonished.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

At a trucking litigation seminar in New Orleans last spring, I had the opportunity to pinch hit for Allan J. Kam, who consults on federal motor carrier safety issues around the country.

Mr. Kam is the preeminent authority on how politicians and the trucking industry have blocked safety changes that have led to thousands of semi truck accident wrongful deaths and catastrophic serious injuries from underride accidents over the past 40 years.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has identified underride truck accidents as a major safety problem and proposed safety standards as far back as 1967. These safety standards, many of which have been in effect in Europe and Asia for years, would have prevented many unnecessary injuries and wrongful deaths. But it wasn’t until 1996 that some significantly weaker safety standards were finally enacted.

The battle over truck underride guards tells the story:

* In 1967, the NHTSA proposed rulemaking for truck underride guards, aiming make truck accidents less catastrophic.

* In 1969, the NHTSA proposed requiring a rear under guard to block vehicles from sliding underneath large tractor-trailers. The proposal was opposed by the trucking industry.

* In 1970, the NHTSA tried again, but with lower standards. Again, the industry opposed any new truck safety rules.

* In 1977, new calls were made for truck underride protection, due in part, to information showing the number of cars rear-ending the back-ends of large trucks was as high as 40,000, resulting in 300 wrongful deaths and nearly 9,000 personal injuries a year.

* In 1996, a much weaker truck underride safety rule was finally implemented.

Watch the video below to see startling truck underride accidents and safety precautions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmw0HIKgHiM

Unfortunately, thousands of people have been killed or seriously injured because of this 40-year delay. Those tragedies will continue because the safety standards are still too lenient.

Lawyers representing families of people seriously injured and killed in these underride truck accidents face great challenges in the courtroom proving that existing truck safety standards are actually minimum standards, which are watered down and the result of political compromise.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

As a lawyer handling catastrophic trucking accidents, I have repeatedly seen the deadly effects of driver fatigue as truckers are pushed beyond their physical limits by trucking companies and shippers.

Now the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday recommended that trucking companies and the government place increased emphasis on making sure truck drivers follow regulations governing proper rest. Additionally, officials at the NTSB recommended that the government should investigate the use of alarms and other devices to monitor drivers’ alertness. Experts estimate that fatigue is responsible for one in eight large-truck crashes.

The NTSB also called upon the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to step up enforcement of trucking companies, making sure their record-keeping is up to date and drivers are being given adequate time to rest.

Investigators also debated the use of technology designed to warn of impending collisions and automatically engage the brakes. They discussed concerns that automatic braking could interfere with the stability of large rigs, so the board recommended that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study the technology and mandate its use if it proves effective.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

As a truck accident trial lawyer, I’m neither an economist nor an investment guru. However, I have ridden through a few economic cycles during my career.

Earlier I wrote about some of the short term implications of the current Wall Street debacles on trucking and insurance. I expect to see more corner cutting on trucking safety as companies deal with high fuel costs, more truckers failing to renew insurance policies above the minimum required by law, more small trucking companies failing, more consolidation in the trucking industry, and more insurance companies blaming trial lawyers and claimants for premium increases that really result from their investment losses.

As a result, we will probably see more bad truck accidents, more liability claims, more lawsuits, and as insurers try to avoid paying claims that they should settle, more substantial jury verdicts.

Some marginal insurers and self-insured trucking companies may go under, leaving claimants without recourse, as happened in the notorious Builders Transport bankruptcy a number in the early nineties. We lawyers who handle trucking cases will need to evaluate solvency of insurers more closely, as well as liability and damages, in screening cases.

That’s the short term — the next 3 to 5 years. But what will be the long-term effect over the next 8 to 10 years?

Consolidation of the trucking industry may result in more systematic safety management. While there are exceptions, larger trucking companies are able to have more professional management, screen their drivers, and supervise their fleets more competently with trained safety and risk managers, better technology, and satellite communications systems to monitor and manage drivers. That’s not to say they are angels. They also have greater capacity for sophisticated mischief. Smaller trucking companies often lack sophisticated management, are more likely to hire marginal drivers, and are more prone to purchase minimum limits of insurance from shadier than average insurance companies.

Insurance coverage amounts may go up. Larger trucking companies have more to lose, and therefore typically carry more insurance than smaller trucking companies. Maybe it’s mere wishful thinking, but perhaps there could even be an increase in the required minimum amounts of coverage to keep up with inflation and a tightening of criteria for self-insurance in the trucking industry.

Consolidation of inter-modal freight companies, combining rail and truck transport of containerized freight, will expand. They may maintain the appearance of separate entities to shield against liability.

There will be increased use of tandem trailers. Longer and heavier tractor-trailer combinations will almost certainly have adverse effects on highway safety.

The shortage of qualified truck drivers as Boomers reach retirement age will lead to hiring of more immigrant truck drivers and further relaxing of English language competency requirements. That has negative safety implications. Also look for revival of the proposal to open the US to Mexican trucking companies.

The defense of trucking accident cases will become even tougher. All large trucking companies deploy “rapid response teams” immediately after serious accidents, often arriving before the debris is cleared. Their skill in securing favorable evidence and “losing” bad evidence is amazing. With consolidation of the industry, I expect their ability to control evidence while victims are still in the emergency room will become even more pronounced.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

As a truck accident trial lawyer in Atlanta, I’m puzzling over how the falling dominoes in the current crisis on Wall Street will impact the trucking and insurance industries.

High fuel prices, hurricanes, dependence on foreign oil, the subprime mortgage mess, the economic rise of China and India, the cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and deferred spending on American infrastructure combine to affect both trucking and insurance.

Oil prices have risen due in large part to the increased world demand accompanying the economic development of China and India, while we are dependent upon Arabs, Russians, etc. for our supply. On the other hand, oil prices are moderated by any economic slowdown that decreases demand.

Hurricanes, which may be increasing in intensity due to global warming, temporarily impact fuel prices as they hamper production, refinery and port capacity on the Gulf coast. Payment of hurricane losses impacts the insurance industry that has already been impacted by the financial mess.

In trucking, high fuel costs have both direct and indirect effects. The direct impact of high fuel prices on truckers is obvious. Moreover, I have heard from truckers that motor carriers collect fuel surcharges and too often fail to pass it on to independent owner operators who actually purchase the fuel. The indirect impact is on demand, as shippers shift more long-haul business from trucks to rail. Any slowdown in the economy further depresses demand for shipping.

As more shipping shifts from long-haul trucks to multimodal freight logistics systems involving both long-haul rail and short-haul trucking, we are likely to see more freight containers bolted to poorly maintained trailer chassis. We will see a shift in the technical, regulatory and insurance issues involved in trucking accidents that result. Unfortunately, some judges who have poor understanding of trucking regulations and case law will not comprehend what is going on and render simplistic judgments with devastating impacts on innocent victims. The challenge for lawyers will be to ferret out the details of business relationships in order to overcome the multiple layers of defenses.

Under economic pressure, we can expect many trucking companies to cut corners on all aspects of safety. Those companies that carry more insurance than the law requires will be tempted to bet the company that, despite compromises on safety, they won’t face catastrophic injury claims.

There is already an ongoing shakeout in the trucking industry. That will continue. I keep hearing reports of owner operators just walking away from rigs they can’t pay for any more Some of those used trucks will wind up being exported to other countries. I expect we will see a trend toward reduction of trucking industry capacity and consolidation in the trucking industry.

At the same time, the financial crisis that began with the meltdown in subprime mortgage-backed securities has reached beyond investment banking to the insurance giant AIG. Laying aside any feelings of schadenfreude (joy about another’s misfortune) due to the arrogant corporate culture of AIG under the leadership of former CEO Hank Greenberg, we have to recognize the prominent role of AIG in the insurance industry. As the implications of its downfall ripple through the insurance industry, I expect to share the pain.

While AIG is the teetering giant in the news today, we will soon find that the impact of the financial crisis is widespread in the insurance industry, affecting both the insurance companies that are familiar to the public and the reinsurers that insure the insurance companies. If reinsurers begin to fail, the shock waves will reverberate throughout the insurance industry.

The insurance industry has a long history of blaming injury victims and trial lawyers for its own investment losses. It seems that every financial crisis affecting insurers’ investments is soon followed by a new round of premium increases. Unwilling to accept responsibility for investment losses, insurers blame the little guys and campaign for a new round of “tort reform.”

Due to the financial meltdown related to securitization of subprime mortgages, we will likely see increasing insurance premiums for everyone, including truckers. Many truckers who are already struggling will be put out of business by increases in fuel and insurance costs unrelated to anything they did wrong.

As the truckers cut costs, safety management will be one of the first things cut. The end result will be that more people will be killed or injured. Lawyers like me will represent the victims. Insurance and trucking companies will fight even harder to avoid paying claims. Stubborn refusals to pay legitimate claims will result in more trials of cases they should settle, and more large jury verdicts.

In this environment more than ever, families that are devastated when trucking companies operate in an unsafe manner need to understand that the insurance companies send “rapid response” teams to scenes of serious accidents, and will try to lull them into complacency while crucial evidence is “lost” or destroyed. Time is of the essence as it is essential to take early action to preserve evidence. We are prepared to fight the good fight against trucking and companies that are determined to avoid and delay payment of legitimate claims.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Georgia has seen two catastrophic armored truck accidents within the past week, at Calhoun and Tucker.

Gordon County officer killed.

On August 22nd near Calhoun, Gordon County ordinance enforcement officer Kathy Cox was killed when a Loomis Fargo armored truck failed to stop behind a slowing vehicle, veered into the opposite lane, and hit Mrs. Cox head on. She died a horrifying death in a fiery crash.

Kathy Cox’s older sister, Karen, was in my class at Douglas County High School in the late sixties. I remember her as a little kid hanging around on the few occasions I was in their home to meet with a group about some class project. Karen died in a motor vehicle accident roughly two decades ago. I can scarcely imagine their mother’s pain and loss.

The Loomis armored truck from Chattanooga, where I was taking depositions this week, was driven by Daniel Allen Clark of Fort Payne, Ala., where I was born. The wreck occurred in Gordon County, where last year we won the largest jury verdict in the history of the county.

Loomis Armored, USA, Inc., now part of an international conglomerate of cash handling businesses, started out as Wells Fargo in the days of the California gold rush of the nineteenth century. It has 2,992 drivers of 4,575 armored trucks nationwide.
Ironically, Loomis announced on August 26th its acquisition in Georgia of EM Armored Car Service, Inc., a Savannah.

DeKalb County school bus hit, child critically injured.

Just five days later on August 27th in Tucker, a Garda armored truck struck a school bus that was stopped with its lights flashing and sign extended. A 13-year-old girl who was boarding the bus at the time of impact was transported to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in critical condition.

Garda is a global security and cash logistics company based in Montreal, Canada.

Garda has nine regional operating companies, including Garda Southeast based in Smyrna, GA, with 106 power units and 315 drivers.

Both Loomis and Garda are interstate motor carriers required to comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Both can be held accountable by Georgia juries if the families select a lawyer who knows how to use those regulations.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

As an Atlanta trial lawyer handling trucking accident cases throughout Georgia, and occasionally in neighboring states, I watch doings at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) with considerable interest. The news about FMCSA coming out of Washington this week was pretty scathing.

The Senate Appropriations Committee’s Transportation, Housing and Urban Development report on the FMCSA blasted the agency for its failure to put the top priority on safety, expressing “immense frustration.” See reports by Barb Kampbell on TheTrucker.com and by Justin Carretta of Fleetowner.com.

A few key points are:

* “FMCSA has shown a pattern of undermining its safety mission by proposing weak regulations and failing to provide adequate oversight and enforcement of existing regulations.”

* Regarding the Hours of Service rule, “the rules that FMCSA has proposed fail to achieve maximum safety benefits, and in some instances may undermine safety … clear and consistent regulations are critical to the industry, so that they can manage operations in a compliant way; FMCSA has not provided that consistency.”

* In the area of drug testing, investigators from the Government Accountability Office found that 22 of 24 drug testing centers failed to follow sample collection protocols. In some instances, drivers fail drug tests at one location and are simply transferred to another area to continue driving.

* A 2001 National Transportation Safety Board recommendation to FMCSA that it take action to prevent medically unqualified drivers from operating commercial vehicles has not been satisfied.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

As a Georgia trucking safety trial lawyer based in Atlanta, I often see the tragic effects of fatigue among truck drivers who are pushed by trucking companies and shippers to perform beyond the normal limits of human capability.

On the other side of the Atlantic, SafeDrive Europe has released its Driver Fatigue Monitor, which is intended to cut the number of fatigue-related wrecks by alerting drivers to the first sign of drowsiness. The Driver Fatigue Monitor was developed by sleep expert Dr. Richard Grace alongside the Carnegie Mellon Institute in Pennsylvania and is already available in the US. According to a report in Logistics Manager, the device measures drowsiness by checking the per cent of eye closure through a real time camera and computer. If a driver appears to be reaching a dangerously fatigued state the monitor is designed to notify them through audible and visible indicators, giving them enough time to pull over safely.

It can be permanently installed into a vehicle or is available as a portable version, which plugs into the cigarette lighter.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

The inside of a truck cab offers more electronics and gadgets than ever before. A trucker can monitor how his truck and engine are performing, GPS mapping to stay on the right route, email communications with his dispatcher, cell phone conversations with family, and perhaps a reckless few play a movie or surf the web while driving.

A recent study of driver distraction by Volvo concludes:

It is positive that the number of safety and information systems in modern vehicles is increasing. Taken individually, they offer many benefits as regards traffic safety and productivity, for instance, but the driver does risk being over-burdened by too much information. Especially bearing in mind that many drivers also have their mobile phones and perhaps also a GPS navigator in the vehicle. In order not to jeopardise traffic safety, we have developed solutions that allow all the systems to interact smoothly,

If you are driving 60 mph and take your eyes off the road for three seconds, you will drive the equivalent length of a football field without knowing what’s going on around you. Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that a major 2006 study, sponsored by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Virginia Tech, found that nearly 80% of crashes, and 65% of near-crashes, involved some form of driver inattention, such as cell phone use and drowsiness, within three seconds before the event.

The reports a study last year found high numbers of drivers who were distracted by talking on cell phones, sending text messages, reading the newspaper and even shaving while driving. A followup study cites the availability of technology was mentioned by 35% as the reason distracted driving is so common, and 48% considered cell phones and other technology use to be the most dangerous distraction. Nearly half of teens and Gen Y drivers blamed having to stay connected socially as a reason why they drive while distracted. For boomers, the pressure was more work-related.

When I started out as a young prosecutor, public awareness of the problem of drinking while driving was nowhere near what it is now. It was too often a matter of jokes rather than revulsion.

It appears that public awareness of the dangers of cell phone use and texting while driving is now about where awareness of drinking and driving was in the late seventies.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

In my trucking trial law practice as an attorney in Atlanta, I see too many trucking accidents where drug use — including prescription medications — is a contributing factor. Recently the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report on truckers’ drug tests that explains why and how.

The GAO report describes a defective oversight system that lets truckers fail a drug test but easily move on to driving for another company. Fewer than half of the roughly 85,000 truck drivers who test positive in random drug tests each year are believed to complete the required treatment and follow-up testing to return to their jobs, according to a news report by Gregg Jones of the Dallas Morning News.

The report noted that some trucking companies don’t bother to conduct the required pre-employment and random drug tests and have limited incentives to do so. Since only about 2 percent of all trucking companies undergo checks each year by state agencies and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, there is little incentive to comply.

Truckers who choose to do so can beat the testing system by using false IDs and chemicals to alter their urine for drug tests. If caught, they can move on to other trucking companies, which the GAO described as “job-hopping.”

When those tactics wear out, they can “state-hop.” The states agencies generally don’t communicate well with each other. Therefore, one of the report’s recommendations is creation of a national database of truckers who fail drug tests.

Drug use could be significantly higher among truck drivers than what the random test data indicates because not all companies actually test, urinalysis can be unreliable, and results can be altered. For example, at 10 of 24 sites investigators who posed as truckers appearing for drug tests were not required to empty their pant pockets, although that is a requirement designed to prevent a driver from substituting clean urine samples or using drug-concealing agents.
Continue reading →

Contact Information
1629 Monroe Dr NE
Atlanta, GA 30324
Phone: (404) 253-7862
Fax: (404) 524-1769
Email: ken.shigley@johnsonward.com
This website is in no way intended to constitute and does not constitute legal advice. There is no attorney/client relationship created by reading or viewing this website. Sending email does not create an attorney/client relationship with any lawyer or law firm on this website.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2015 – 2025, Kenneth L. Shigley, LLC
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design