Attorney Chris DiBella Discusses Commercial Vehicle Accidents

Hey guys, today I wanted to talk with you about the trucking industry and trucking accidents. More specifically, the trucking industry is very highly regulated. It’s highly regulated because they’re semi trucks, there’s 18-wheelers and other commercial trucks on the road, and they pose a much more serious risk to everyday motorists. When a large truck’s out of control, the result is going to be a disaster for innocent drivers and passengers.

We share the roadway with commercial trucks, and they’re dangerous due to their size and the weight that they carry. They can be up to 80,000 pounds when they’re fully loaded, and this has led to a staggering amount of fatalities on the road. So much so that it’s an epidemic in the United States. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issues yearly reports, and those reports recently have cited 14 deadly crashes every day.

Additionally, the National Safety Council has indicated in their reports that there’s almost 300 injuries sustained in accidents with trucks on a daily basis. Truck crashes have skyrocketed just in the last decade — they’re up 27 percent from 2010 to 2020.

And there’s certain factors that play into this increase in issues with safety and trucks on the road. One is the regulation of their hours of service. The trucking industry, as I said, is very highly regulated, and they do that because they want to monitor and make sure that these truck drivers are well rested. But there’s a lot of pressures on these truck drivers put on them by their very own companies to make deliveries on time.

Oftentimes, their pay is derived directly from the amount of deliveries they can make. In addition to that, you know, truck drivers — when they’re tired — have less time and ability to react. They’re more prone to make deadly mistakes, and that’s why the regulations sometimes are violated — because they’re more concerned with getting things on time than they are the safety of others around them.

Another major issue that the trucks have that cause some of these fatalities are that they fail to maintain these trucks safely. Commercial trucks travel hundreds and thousands of miles a day, and they require ongoing maintenance. Unlike our regular motor vehicles, trucking firms may need to — and they may fail to — perform the necessary required maintenance to keep them in a safe condition.

Semi trucks have brake pads that have to be replaced every 30,000 miles. They have air brakes that have many components that require constant maintenance and replacement, and they need to be made sure that they’re in good working order on a regular basis.

In addition to the tired driver and the required maintenance, there’s a lot of other causes to truck accidents. And those are distracted drivers — people that are eating or texting; they’re impaired drivers — people that are under the influence of drugs or alcohol; speeding — as in regular collisions, but these are due to the demanding delivery schedules.

And sometimes there are unsafe weather conditions, and they’re still traveling beyond the required speed limits. There’s also accidents that are as a result of uneven loaded cargo in the truck. There’s faulty and defective parts. There’s truck drivers’ errors in merging and changing lanes due to blind spots that are created by the massive size of some of these vehicles.

Sometimes there’s illegal maneuvers that these truck drivers engage in, and sometimes those are to create shortcuts and try and get to their destination in a more quick, time-efficient manner. And quite frankly, sometimes it’s just improper training of the employees — of these truck drivers.

And a lot of questions that I’ll often get is: how do I show that a truck driver is not properly trained? And trucking companies are responsible for these — hiring of properly trained drivers who have valid CDL licenses and are properly trained on these vehicles that they’re going to be driving.

In addition, these companies are required to maintain records and logbooks of their drivers, so those are things that we can obtain in discovery to compare — was the proper training done in this particular case? Was the proper rest achieved with this particular driver?

We get those logbooks so that we can make sure that if any of those factors were present, we can see if they contributed to the cause of the accident.

Also, another question we get is: how do we prove that a driver was tired? And again, federal regulations provide that these drivers have to track — through entries in their logbook — the time that they’re driving, the time that they’re resting. And those are things, again, that we can discover to prove whether or not they were operating in violation of the existing regulations.

And importantly, a question I get is: who do I sue? Do I sue the trucking company? Do I sue the truck driver? Do I sue who loaded the truck? And there could be instances where you sue all three parties.

There’s a legal doctrine in Massachusetts called vicarious liability, and that means that you can hold the employer liable for the careless acts of the employee that are committed during the scope of their work. So, for example, if a truck driver fails to secure a load properly and an accident ensues because there’s falling debris, that trucking company can be held liable for the negligence of their employee.

That’s all I have.