Update: As of October 16, there has been 798 semi truck crashes* in Washington State. At the same time last year, there had been 661. Just in the last few weeks, there have been several major collisions that caused severe injuries—and kept thousands stuck in traffic for hours. June 9: Three semi trucks collided in Blaine, Washington, just south [...]
Recently, I reviewed a Police Report where the truck driver admitted he only had 3 hours of sleep the night before he caused a serious crash.* For many of us, losing a couple hours of sleep at night just means we’re a little less productive the next day. When your job is driving—especially if you’re [...]
Last week, a big truck hauling 50,000 of carrots collided with a Nissan Maxima on a California freeway. The car wedged under the truck. The driver didn't stop, his semi-truck dragging a car down the road. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. But the resulting video, shot from another vehicle, is incredible. https://youtu.be/9jvycogHJhk What's wrong with this picture? It's [...]
Preliminary statistics for 2016 indicated that there was a 7-8% increase in fatalities in crashes involving trucks and buses. It’s easy to focus on the multitude of available safety systems for commercial truck fleets. But, there is much more to safe trucking than an electronic logging device and a crash mitigation system. The key element [...]
This past week, a semi-truck flipped over on I-405 in Bellevue around 5 a.m. Amazingly, no one was seriously injured … but traffic was backed up for hours, at one point stretching 7 miles down the highway. The Washington State Patrol (WSP) later cited the trucker for driving too fast for rainy conditions. At 4 [...]
What is FCAM? We throw around a lot of trucking safety terms. The talk can get very technical. For example: NHTSA identifies forward collision avoidance and mitigation technology (FCAM) technologies as the systems that combine forward collision warning alert signals with collision mitigation braking. There's a much easier explanation. 1) Radar detects a pending crash; and 2) Automatic braking prevent it. [...]
Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), wrote an op-ed on Trucks.com this week. Why Lower Speed Limits and Truck Speed Limiters Will Save Lives. Our research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has found that 33,000 deaths between 1993 and 2013 can be attributed to speed limit increases. Traffic deaths [...]
For more than 30 years, I have represented those injured or the families of those killed by preventable crashes on our highways. Many of these claims have involved semi-trucks and trucking companies. I read an article in Transport Topics expressing the importance of trucking. This op-ed was written by Garner Berry, a lawyer whose law firm defends [...]
In his first week in office, President Trump issued orders to executive agencies that affect trucking safety. Here's what we know, so far. President Trump on Trucking Safety: Week 1 Shortly after his inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order freezing all pending federal regulations now in process. Any regulation signed by President Obama in his final [...]
A "blind spot" is an area around the vehicle that the driver can't see in the mirrors. All vehicles have them, but semi-trucks have 4 big blind spots. Here a truck’s blind spots, or "no-zones": Left side, under the cab mirror; Right side, under the cab mirror and extending out; In front of the truck [...]
