› $150,000,000 verdict in personal injury case
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has announced its final rule on hours-of-service (HOS) regulations that govern work and rest periods for commercial truck drivers. Trucking companies and drivers have until July 1, 2013, to comply with the rule changes, which Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said “will help prevent fatigue-related truck crashes and save lives.”
A report in Monday’s Baltimore Sun exposes how easy it is for some motor carriers with a long history of safety violations and crashes to reincarnate under a new name and business license after authorities shut them down. These are the companies that repeatedly demonstrate a blaring disregard for the law, take advantage of regulatory loopholes, and give the trucking industry an undeservedly bad reputation.
Considering all the efforts the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is giving to restricting hours-of-service rules and drivers with sleep apnea in the name of safety, the loopholes in federal laws that allow unsafe commercial drivers with a history of violations to stay behind the wheel seem all the more outrageous.
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.
Throughout the Midwest, farmers are harvesting their final crops of the season, which means more large farm trucks laden with grain are out on the roads, hauling their produce to suppliers. Here in the Deep South, the story is much the same; big rigs carrying tons of cotton and other harvests to market share the roads with other motorists.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood sent a letter last week to Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire asking her not to obstruct his agency’s proposed hours-of-service rule changes. Secretary LaHood, himself a Republican, has been a strong advocate for better motor carrier safety and strongly endorses the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposed HOS changes, which are aimed at further reducing the number of fatigue-related commercial vehicle crashes and deaths on U.S. roads and highways.
An independent analysis of the CSA safety enforcement system, which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gradually phased in to replace the old SafeStat model, has found the new system to be a highly effective system overall, but says it still needs improvements in some parts.
A commercial truck driver lost control of his five-axle dump truck on a U.S. highway in North Carolina Wednesday and crashed into a ditch. Authorities responding to the scene told Eastern North Carolina’s ENCToday.com that the 53-year-old driver, who received some minor injuries in the crash, dozed off behind the wheel and drove off the right shoulder of U.S. 70 in La Grange, NC. Fortunately, no other vehicles were involved, but the driver was cited for reckless driving.
Proposed Hours of Service (HOS) rules that restrict the number of consecutive driving hours for commercial drivers and increase their required periods of rest are being met with staunch opposition from some key Republican lawmakers. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) expects to issue the new rules by the end of October.
The federal rule requiring electronic onboard recorders (EOBRs), devices designed to simplify hours of service (HOS) record-keeping for commercial trucks, has created a new set of problems that Truckinginfo.com describes as “complex and messy.”
