Behemoths Bearing Down

Trucking accidents are on the rise — and dangerous trucking industry labor practices are one preventable cause

Justin Taylor, a 24-year-old aspiring professional football player, was driving on IH-35 in Austin during rush hour when he found himself sandwiched between two 18-wheelers. Suddenly, his Dodge Colt was rear-ended by the 70,000 pound semi behind him, going 55 m.p.h.

The impact crushed Justin’s car, smashing it under the tractor-trailer in front of him. Justin, our client, lost an arm in the wreck, and suffered a broken collarbone and other injuries. His chances for a football career were over.

Sadly, serious big-truck crashes like this are on the rise — by nearly 20% over the past decade — as more trucks are on the road. Last year, well over a million people were involved in large-truck crashes. Of those, over 5,000 were killed, and more than 140,000 were seriously injured. About a third of those injured suffered the loss of a limb or serious brain damage.

In Texas, the number of fatal large truck crashes increased fairly steadily over the past decade, ranging between 230 and 330 deaths annually. (A sharp jump occurred in 1996, when the highway speed limit was raised to 70 m.p.h.) In Travis County in 1999, just under 300 trucks were involved in crashes, four of them fatal.

Driver Errors

What causes crashes between trucks and passenger vehicles? The most common cause is driver error — on the part of both car drivers and truckers. Federal statistics show that the car driver is cited for an error in 71% of fatal car-truck accidents; truck drivers are cited for errors in 38% of accidents. (In some crashes, both parties are at fault.) The good news is that the average driver can greatly reduce his or her odds of being in an accident simply by driving well — and extra attentively.

A recently released draft study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found four risk factors that most frequently cause car drivers to crash with trucks: fatigue, weather conditions that obscure vision, following improperly, and improper lane changes. By taking the risk out of these factors — for example, driving when well rested, pulling off the road when visibility is poor, following at a generous distance, and signaling carefully before changing lanes — drivers of cars, vans, and light trucks can do a great deal to prevent crashes with 18-wheelers.

Yet because of the nature of our practice, we tend to see the other 38% of crashes — those caused by truck driver errors. For example, the driver who hit Justin Taylor was ticketed for following too closely and driving too fast for conditions.

A truck driver’s error also led to another recent case. Our client, Erin Dalton, had just started a career as an elementary school teacher. While driving to school one morning on U.S. 290, she was struck head-on by a 27-ton beer truck. The driver had crossed the double yellow center stripe. Despite extensive surgery and rehabilitation, our client’s mobility is permanently impaired. Her life was forever limited by a truck driver’s momentary lapse of judgment.

Dead Tired

Dangerous practices endemic to the nation’s commercial trucking system, and weak government regulation of the trucking industry, are also contributing factors. Because trucks weigh tens of thousands of pounds, travel at high speeds, and can inflict so much damage, transport companies have a special obligation to protect the public safety. Yet many follow poor maintenance practices and send trucks out on the road with faulty equipment. Equally troubling, many trucking companies allow — and even implicitly require — their drivers to work long hours without sufficient sleep.

Driver fatigue is thought to be a contributing cause in about 30% of large truck crashes. To drive safely, drivers need about eight hours of sleep in a single block each night. The common practice of “split sleep,” in which truck drivers sleep for just a few hours at a time, is believed to impair performance and increase accidents. The pressure on truck drivers to work extreme hours also leads to the abuse of amphetamines and other stimulant drugs.

How can truck drivers get more adequate sleep? Parents Against Tired Truckers (P.A.T.T.), a group dedicated to reducing trucking accidents, advocates greater government control of the trucking industry. Interestingly, the group has become an advocate for the truckers themselves, who are at the mercy of industry labor practices but fear speaking out. Because truckers often are paid by the load and work many more hours than they are paid for — commonly 80 to 100 hours each week — they are especially prone to exhaustion, drowsiness, and falling asleep momentarily at the wheel.

Regulation Needed

To date, government supervision and regulation of the trucking industry has been weak. P.A.T.T. believes that thousands of lives could be saved, and injuries prevented, each year with one simple change: repeal laws that exempt trucking companies from paying overtime to their drivers. Until the companies are required to pay overtime, they have little motivation to stop overworking their drivers. While drivers have whistleblower protection, many do not realize that their employers are in violation of the law, or they are afraid to report them.

Unfortunately, the trucking industry has lobbied heavily and effectively to resist governmental regulations — even those designed to decrease accidents and deaths. Advocates — such as the newly organized Truck Safety Coalition (TSC) in Washington D.C. — point out that both the government and the trucking industry must make changes.

Problems cited include:
• Weak federal regulation of the trucking industry
• Weak state-to-state licensing standards, which let drivers hide traffic violations, among other problems
• Lack of federal requirements for formal truck driver training and instruction
• Lack of a standard national training and safety program, conducted by trucking operators for their drivers
• Lack of restrictions on trucks from Mexico, which have been unregulated.

In this lax environment, civil litigation represents a critical way to hold trucking companies accountable. Every preventable injury or death should carry a price that motivates trucking companies to operate safely — to actively reduce injuries and deaths caused by their fleets.

Good Truckers, Bad Truckers

While many trucking operators have good safety records, given their fleet size and hours on the road, other companies continue to be responsible for troubling numbers of injuries and deaths. For comparison, in 1999:

• Wal-Mart Stores, despite a relatively small fleet (3,700 trucks) had 79 crashes with 7 fatalities.

• Schneider National Carriers, with a fleet of 12,000 trucks out of Green Bay, Wisconsin, led the list of accident-prone carriers, with 470 crashes, 16 of them fatal.