› $150,000,000 verdict in personal injury case
A Department of Transportation official was sentenced to 18 months in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to accepting bribes from the trucking companies he was supposed to be inspecting, a felony under U.S. law. In addition to the prison sentence, James H. Wood, 45, of Delevan, New York, was also ordered to forfeit $41,300 to the federal government.
A Kentucky trucking company must pay $7 million in damages for hiring an unqualified driver and pushing him to drive an excessively long route, which resulted in a crash that killed another commercial truck driver, a U.S. District Court jury in Harrison, Arkansas, ordered.
There is no doubt logging trucks have a bad reputation. Anyone who lives near a timber operation or along a route heavily traveled by logging trucks has heard stories about poorly secured logs coming loose on the highway and causing horrific crashes. Seldom, however, do we hear of crashes as incomprehensible and tragic as the fatal logging truck crash last Tuesday that killed a 5-year-old boy who was asleep on the couch in his house.
A commercial truck driver faces seven serious criminal charges, including second-degree murder, after his 18-wheeler lost its brakes on a steep mountain highway near Los Angeles and plowed into traffic, killing a 12-year-old girl and her father.
A tractor trailer laden with watermelons overturned on Highway 68 near Bullhead City, Arizona, Tuesday, spilling its cargo across a long stretch of the road and injuring the driver.
Apparently commercial drivers who obtain a license under a different name after their legitimate one was suspended aren’t a rare breed, at least in New York state. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced this week that the latest and most sweeping crackdown on commercial drivers – a sting prompted by the horrific Bronx bus crash in March that killed 15 people – has resulted in removing 173 drivers commercial drivers from the roads, including 46 arrests.
The potential for a “catastrophic event” and the costs associated with it are at the center of a debate in Savannah, Georgia after a liquid natural gas (LNG) processor nearby petitioned federal regulators to allow overland shipping of volatile gas.
Just after the horrific March 12 bus crash in the Bronx that killed 15 people and injured 17 others, federal and state regulators coordinated a sweeping crackdown of commercial motor coach companies in New York State, resulting in about 20 percent of buses and drivers being pulled out of service and reinforcing the adage that people usually have to die before appropriate action is taken.
JACKSON, Miss.— A tractor trailer collided with a school bus on a rural Mississippi highway Friday morning, killing one child and injuring at least 10 others.
New York’s Department of Transportation has suspended the commercial driver’s license of Ophadell Williams, the driver of the bus that crashed in New York City’s Bronx borough, killing 15 people. The horrific crash has also prompted state regulators to take further actions in an effort to correct the safety standards of commercial passenger bus companies, which some critics say are too lax.
