Illinois Truck Accident Lawyer Blog

A trucking safety coalition hopes to have the hours of service that truck drivers can drive in a day reduced by 27 percent, in accordance with the new hours of service law that has recently gone into effect. According to The Trucker, the document filed by the Truck Safety Coalition argues that there should be no more that eight hours of consecutive driving per shift and cites information that after this threshold is when most trucking accidents occur. Additionally, the Coalition suggests that the maximum driving hours per seven day week be 40, and the maximum number of on-duty hours per seven day week be 60. The document also suggest that their be at least 48 hours of off-duty time between each five day stretch of working. This document was filed in connection with the recent hours of services rule, and the people proposing the rule say that the newer law calls for these restrictions in trucking driving hours. To read more about the new hours of service law and what it requires of trucking companies and drivers, please click on this link.

The reason that limiting the number of hours that a trucker may drive consecutively, and how many days in a row drivers may drive, is because without any restrictions many trucking companies encourage, or truck drivers themselves choose to, drive when they are exhausted and when it is not safe for the drivers to still be on the road. Illinois accident attorneys ask trucking companies to take this into consideration and to follow the new rule setting out hours of service in order to hopefully help reduce the number of trucking accidents that occur each year due to driver fatigue.

More and more states are joining the fight against distracted driving by making texting while driving illegal for all drivers including truck drivers in order to try to reduce the number of automobile accidents. At this point 28 states, plus Washington DC, all have anti-texting laws for all drivers on their books. As many as 32 states have included a distracted driving section in their driver license education manuals, showing that even more states realize the importance of educating drivers about the dangers of distracted driving. According to Trucking Info's website, 35 states are working with state agencies and other companies within the state to help address the problem of distracted driving and to try and reduce the number of car and trucking accidents that occur as a result of this problem. For example, the state of Illinois has created the Distracted Drivers Task Force which was created in order to learn more about the growing issue of distracted driving and to try to find a solution to this problem. To read more about the efforts that different states are making to try to make a difference in the number of trucking accidents that occur each year by addressing the distracted driving accident problem, please click on this link.

Distracted driving does not only mean texting while driving but also any other form of using a cell phone, eating or drinking, talking to other passengers, reading a map, changing the radio, or doing anything else that takes your eyes and focus off of the road while you are driving. According to the government's statistics on driver distraction close to 6,000 people were killed in accidents caused by distracted drivers in 2008, with the percentage rising significantly from several years before, and the most common driver in these types of accidents were inexperienced drivers under the age of twenty years old. Illinois accident attorneys hope all drivers realize the prevalence of this problem and take it upon themselves to always pay attention to the road and not allow distractions while driving, so everyone gets where they are going safely!

Recently, federal laws have gone into effect limiting the number of hours that truck drivers can be on the road consecutively. The goal of these new laws is to try to make the trucking industry safer for the drivers and other people on the road, by reducing the amount of overtired and fatigued drivers and hopefully reducing the overall number of trucking accidents that occur every year. These new regulations place certain restrictions on the number of hours a truck driver can drive at a time, and depend on the type of vehicle, on how many consecutive hours and days the driver has worked, and require a certain number of hours to be taken in the sleeper berth. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, these new regulations were determined after in-depth studies and analysis to help ensure that the new laws would improve trucking safety as much as possible. To read more about these hours of service federal laws to help reduce the number of trucking crashes, please click on this link.

The American Transportation Research Institute was recently hired to conduct a study to see how effective these new hours of service trucking rules were and if they were actually resulting in a reduction in trucking crashes. The recent study used data from 2003 and 2004 to see if any significant changes were present compared to the recent accident statistics. The study looked at both the overall number of accidents, as well as in what hour of driving the accidents occurred. The study indicated that the overall collision rate had decreased close to twelve percent and that preventable accident rate had decreased over thirty percent. This study seems to show that the new hours of service rules are making strides in making the trucking industry safer and that these new federal laws are successful in what they are aiming to do.

The truck involved in a tragic trucking accident that occurred in March of this year and resulted in the death of the driver and of 10 other people was found to have had no electronic recorder on board at the time the tragic trucking accident occurred. According to The Courier Journal, the reason this is significant is because these recorders are a way of determining how long a driver was on the road, letting investigators know if a violation occurred. This driver kept a handwritten log which was unfortunately destroyed in the fatal accident. To read more about this tragic trucking accident, please click on this link. Electronic recorders are not required but there is a big push for them to help regulate and control truck and driver safety, because they create a better way to ensure that drivers do not go over the required amount of hours that the law sets out as safe. According to Trucking Info, a new requirement was just recently enacted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Commission which will require that trucking companies who have been found to be in violation of the hour requirement at least ten percent of the time will be required to install electronic monitoring systems. Chicago accident attorneys remind trucking companies that this law will not go into effect until June 1, 2012 allowing the nearly 5,700 trucking companies that are affected to comply with this new law. The goal behind this new law is to increase safety by making it much more difficult for trucking companies that may lie about or be unclear about their driver’s hours to do this. An electronic recording system, as opposed to a handwritten system is much more precise and does not leave room for driver or trucking companies to change their actual hours.

A truck crash where a truck driver slid out of his lane and crashed into 22 cars that were waiting at the Chicago Skyway Toll Plaza was found to be the result of the driver falling asleep at the wheel. According to My Fox Chicago, toxicology tests revealed that the driver tested positive for having cocaine in his system at the time the trucking accident occurred. To read more about this trucking accident, please click on this link.

After reading this report, we felt it was necessary to address the issue of substance abuse among truck drivers. A recent study by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration suggests that some truck drivers depend on drugs to help them stay awake and cope with the stress of the long trips on their own. Many trucking companies are beginning to take steps to combat this problem by requiring drivers to submit to drug-testing before getting behind the wheel.

Unfortunately, not all trucking companies have drug-testing currently in place. The company that employed the driver involved in the previously mentioned crash is one of the 120 Illinois trucking companies that have been found to fail to conduct these required drug tests. In addition to the 120 that fail to comply with mandatory drug testing for truck drivers, 55 other trucking companies failed to test new drivers before sending them out onto the road. A study which looked at 120,000 large trucking crashed between 2001-2003, identified about 3,000 crashes caused by truckers using illegal drugs and about 1,000 caused by truckers who had been drinking when the trucking accident occurred. Our Chicago accident attorneys hope that more companies in Illinois and throughout the country will take steps to implement mandatory drug-testing for drivers. These tests will help to protect the lives of truckers and passenger-vehicle drivers alike.

The Comprehensive Safety Analysis (CSA 2010) is a new federal truck safety program that will be introduced nationally this summer. The new program aims to use trucking safety data in a more productive way that will hopefully improve safety regulations in trucking companies throughout the country. This new change has been in the works for several years, with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration creating a system that will make safety regulations more streamlined and effective, hopefully reducing the number of trucking accidents. The way that safety regulations for truckers currently works, and the reason this new system is needed, is that compliance reviews which are the main component to truck safety systems are being done in a way that allow only less than two percent of all trucking carriers to be tested each year. Given this small percentage of carriers that can be checked each year, and the importance of maintaining safety standards among trucking companies on a federal level, a new system and more effective way of regulating trucking companies was definitely necessary.

According to Trucking Info.com, this new program has been tested in several states prior to the introduction of the program this summer. The reason for this early testing is to understand how the program will actually work and how effective it can be. So far the test states have reported that the truck drivers involved in the test programs have been getting prepared and are using the new program as a way to increase driver safety awareness. No test state has said that there has been any negative feedback so far and those involved feel that this program is definitely a positive thing and will hopefully reduce truck crashes nationally. To read more about this new trucking safety program, please click on this hyperlink.

The recent federal proposal to make it illegal for truckers to text message while driving has stirred up a lot of issues and opinions on both sides of the argument. On one side people in opposition to the possible ban argue that truckers save time and money on long cross country trips by being able to communicate quickly with dispatchers. According to New York Times Blogs, many trucks are equipped with onboard touch screen computers which function very similarly to text messaging on a cell phone and which have cost the trucking industry a great deal of money to install and put into use. Advocates of the potential ban acknowledge the slight positive, but feel the overall danger and risk of trucking accidents caused by texting while driving is so great that this ban is exactly what is needed to increase safety on the roads. At this stage both sides of the argument are being heard and further research is being conducted to determine if this ban should go into effect. To read more about the pros of banning texting for truckers in order to avoid trucking accidents and the cons of drivers not being able to use the onboard computers, please click on the link.

Illinois has recently enacted a statewide ban on text messaging while driving. Many states have taken the texting problem on and found a solution on their own, instead of waiting to hear if the federal government places a ban on the action. Driver distraction is a huge problem and many car and trucking crashes each year are caused by this avoidable issue, and often times it is found to be the result of texting while driving. Illinois chose to ban all texting while driving, including truckers. The Illinois legislature decided that any benefits to being able to text while driving, even for truckers, was greatly outweighed by the danger that was caused and that the practice must be banned in the state completely. To read more about how Illinois chose to combat traffic accidents caused by distracted drivers, please click on this link.

Given the danger of truckers driving too many hours without enough rest, and the number of semi-truck accidents that occur each year and could easily be avoided, the federal legislature is introducing a law that will require trucking companies that have had issues with time limits to have tracking devices in their trucks. Many horrific accidents have occurred when truck drivers are overly tired and fatigued and cannot focus on the road leading to an accident. Several weeks ago, a particularly awful trucking accident occurred in which a truck crossed the center line of the highway and crashed into a van heading in the opposite direction, killing eleven people. To read more about this horrible trucking accident, please click on this link. While losing control or falling asleep at the wheel is dangerous in any situation, it can be exceptionally dangerous when it involves a tractor-trailer truck.
This new law will only affect trucking companies and truck drivers that have previously been found to not comply with the limit on number of work hours, and in turn will only affect about 1-2% of all trucking companies. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration website, lays out the hour limit for drivers for all different situations. The trucking company involved in the tragic accident a couple weeks ago was one of the companies that have received a deficient rating when undergoing a safety check, and this new law would be aimed at targeting companies of this sort. The law will not go into effect until mid-2012 in order to allow time for the electronic monitoring system to be fully developed and tested. To read more about this new monitoring system enacted to try to prevent fataltruck crashes, please click on the link.

A rule in which truck drivers are allowed to drive up to 11 hours straight is being reconsidered, in response to the outcry by safety advocates who worry that this extended length of driving time may be the cause of many trucking accidents. The rule is relatively recent and added an hour of driving time to what was previously the maximum, as well as cut down on the minimum rest time at the end of each week. According to Google, the Transportation Department has agreed to try and develop a rule that maximizes safety. For more information on where the current rule stands and what the proposed changed for the rule to try and minimize trucking accidents, click here.