The idea is that semi-trucks and other heavy commercial vehicles shouldn't be able to speed on U.S. roads and highways. In August, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration jointly proposed that all new trucks, buses, and commercial passenger vehicles that weigh more than 26,000 pounds have speed limiting devices [...]
Last month, a semi-truck struck and killed a man near his disabled car on I-84 in Idaho. The truck driver was investigated by FMCSA: last year, a motor carrier fired that trucker for failing a random drug test. After the failed drug test, the driver didn't comply with the required substance abuse assessment. He was [...]
On the evening of November 9th, 2016 a semi-truck struck an Oregon man on I-84 in Idaho. The State Police reported that 24-year-old Matthew Martin, of Ontario, Oregon, had hit a guardrail. His Toyota ended up in the center lane. He exited the car and was hit by a semi-truck. Martin later died in an [...]
Truckers and other commercial vehicle drivers are required by law to keep track of the number of hours they spend behind the wheel. Some drivers still use paper logs to record these metrics. After years of study, the FMCSA is requiring commercial truck drivers to switch from paper logs to an Electronic Logging Device (ELD), [...]
There are no national standards for training new semi-truck drivers. Here's why that's a problem. Several years ago, I represented Angelah, a young girl with a mild traumatic brain injury. She had been in a terrible crash. Her mother was driving. The afternoon was rainy, and the road was wet. A truck driver failed to [...]
We have updated the language on TruckingWatchdog.com and Coluccio-Law.com to use the word "crash" instead of "accident". Here’s why we want to use crash, not accident. There is a public health crisis on the roads. More than 35,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the U.S. last year. 35,000 is the entire population of [...]
Fatalities in crashes involving large trucks rose 4.1% from 2014 to 2015. Specifically, 4,067 people lost their lives in large truck-related crashes. This is the highest number of truck crash deaths since 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). We also saw a sharp rise in overall traffic deaths in 2015. Our [...]
It was early evening on a sunny May day in Washington. A young man was driving his Subaru to hockey practice. A couple in a pickup truck was headed out on a camping trip. A pilot car driver was talking to her husband on the phone. Then, a semi truck’s oversize load struck the Skagit [...]
This meme was posted on the Facebook page for a Texas trucking company, Stevens Transport, last week. Is this the message that trucking companies send to tired truck drivers? Don't comply with federal laws. Don't concern yourself with anyone's safety. A Texas trucking company posted a meme telling drivers: "Don't stop when you are [...]
A couple of years ago, a Walmart truck rear-ended a limo van at a ridiculously high rate of speed. One man was killed, and several others seriously injured—including actor Tracy Morgan. That crash was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). This slide from the NTSB’s presentation shows the crushed interior of the limo [...]
