Fatigue among long-haul truck drivers has been recognized for years as a contributing factor in many commercial truck crashes. Drivers doze off momentarily behind the wheel and then veer out of their lane off the road or into incoming traffic. Our Houston truck accident injury lawyers realize that sometimes drivers wake in time to get the vehicle back on course. But not always.
Driver fatigue could be one possible cause behind Orland, California fiery crash of a FedEx truck into a chartered bus carrying high school students to visit a college. The tragic crash killed 10 people, including 5 students, and injured at least 30 others. The fire spread quickly and people were trapped in the wrecked motorcoach bus and unable to get out in time. The FedEx truck reportedly was pulling two trailers when it crossed the center median to collide with the bus.
The NTSB is investigating, and there are many possible causes they must consider including driver medical conditions, driver intoxication, driver distraction, and driver fatigue, as well as mechanical failure. The NTSB investigates major accidents to learn lessons it can apply nationwide by making safety recommendations intended to prevent similar accidents from happening in the future. (Richard Clough and James Nash, Bloomberg News Business Week, 4/11/14)
We point out that highway “rumble strips” are one measure designed to alert fatigued drivers that they’re heading off course. But not every highway has them. The Houston truck accident injury lawyers at Denena Points, PC note that generally only stretches of road considered at high risk of such accidents based on past crash data end up with the rumble strips. And heavily loaded trucks are tricky to quickly maneuver. An attempt to correct an errant course could end in a jackknifed trailer or a rollover crash.
With two trailers like the FedEx truck was hauling, the danger and the difficulty are doubled. The loaded truck is twice as heavy and much more difficult to maneuver. Quick turns or swerving motions could send the back trailer into a jackknife that might even strike the truck cab. But companies wanting to move freight rapidly to its destination are turning more frequently to double and even triple trailer combinations.
The FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) is the agency responsible for ensuring safe trucking practices. The agency says that each year truck driver fatigue directly accounts for over 750 deaths and 20,000 injuries. And about 98% of the victims of collisions with the commercial trucks are the occupants of the other vehicles.
In July, the FMCSA announced a new regulation long awaited by safety advocates: a law further limiting the number of hours long haul truckers may drive in a week. Some rules limiting driving hours have been in effect for years, but truck drivers have been known to fudge their log books and many trucks still don’t have automatic equipment that records the number of hours driven.
The new rules reduce the maximum average workweek for truck drivers from 82 to 70 hours, and allow those who reach the 70-hour maximum to begin driving once again after they have rested for 34 consecutive hours. That rest period must include two nights of sleep between the hours of 1 and 5 a.m. The rules also require drivers to take a 30-minute break during the first 8 hours of a shift, but do not change the prior 11-hour driving limit and 14 working hours limit per day. (The extra 3 hours in the 14 are so that the drivers can supervise proper loading and unloading of cargo.)
Truck drivers who continually work long daily and weekly hours have been linked to higher risks for crashes, chronic fatigue problems, and serious chronic health conditions, including obesity. Our Houston truck accident injury lawyers point out that the new safety rules are expected to save at least 19 lives and avoid 1,400 crashes and 500 injuries per year.
Truck drivers and trucking companies caught breaking the new rules could face maximum penalties on each offense. For instance, trucking companies and passenger carriers that let drivers exceed the new limits by over 3 hours might be fined $11,000 per violation. The individual truck drivers could be fined up to $2,750 per offense.
Unfortunately, history has shown that safety violators of all types don’t generally change their behavior until the costs of the risks impact their wallets. The new law doesn’t make as a big a change in actual truck driving practice as you might expect, and really only impacts the relatively small percentage of long haul truckers whose routes tend to keep them on the major highways most of the time. But for that small percentage, and the numbers of other drivers on the roads with them, the increased potential for safe driving could save their lives and help to avoid tragic, fiery crashes like the one that just happened in California between the FedEx truck and the bus carrying high school students.
Continue to the linked article to read about some safety gaps in motorcoach buses like the one involved in the fiery California FedEx truck collision.