When Truckers Take to the Road Do They Look Out for Your Safety?

You’ve probably noticed drivers who are texting, talking on their phones, applying makeup, eating, or any number of other activities which distract them from driving and put other drivers and passengers at risk. Now, imagine that person who is not paying attention to the road is a truck driver. When you consider that a fully loaded truck needs the length of a football field to come to a complete stop—assuming it is traveling 60 mph on a totally dry road--you can see that when a truck driver is distracted, even for a moment, a tragic accident can result. The most recent federal regulations mandate shorter braking distances for commercial trucks however don’t affect existing 18-wheelers, only newly manufactured trucks.

While all drivers should avoid distractions which can lead to accidents, there is a large disparity between a crash between passenger vehicles and a crash involving a commercial truck and a passenger vehicle. A fully loaded truck is 20-30 times as heavy as a passenger vehicle and in a collision between the two the passengers in the smaller vehicle rarely fare well. Of the half a million trucking accidents in the United States each year approximately 5,000 of those will result in fatalities and a large percentage of the remainder will result in very serious injury to those in the passenger vehicle. Truck drivers are constantly under pressure to get their loads delivered; both from their employers and even from their own family members as their paycheck depends on the time they spend behind the wheel of the truck.

When Truck Drivers Talk and Text 

While most people have heard just how dangerous texting and talking on the phone are while driving, many people disregard the risks. Car and Driver Magazine compared the time it took a sober driver to hit their brakes as compared with a driver considered legally drunk with a “0.08” blood alcohol content. Next, they tested subjects who were either sending or reading a text. The legally drunk driver took four extra feet to come to a complete stop as compared to the unimpaired driver who was neither texting nor reading a text. The driver reading the text required 36 additional feet to come to a stop over the legally drunk driver and the driver sending a text required 70 additional feet to come to a stop. The texting driver added nine whole car lengths to the stopping distance of a drunk driver.

Further, the study showed that it took four times as long for the texting driver to apply the brakes at all. The Department of Transportation wants people to understand that texting is an activity which involves three separate forms of distraction – visual, manual and cognitive. While no driver should put others at risk by texting while driving, imagine the driver of a huge commercial truck—which already takes a football field length to stop—engaging in texting or reading texts as they go down the road. Federal laws ban commercial truck drivers from texting while driving; however some states fail to follow through with these mandates, Texas being one of them. In the state of Texas only inexperienced drivers are prohibited from texting while driving even though the DOT will fine the truck driver who is caught texting as well as suspending the driver’s CDL license for a minimum of four months.

Fatigued Drivers

Truck drivers often drive while exhausted and many times logbooks are altered to allow drivers to continue to drive for longer amounts of time than the eleven hours allowed under federal law. Trucking companies are only legally required to maintain logbook records for six months, so assuming there were no accidents involved during that time period the records can be destroyed and no one will ever be wiser. If you have been the victim of a distracted or fatigued truck driver on the Texas roadways, you need skilled legal representation. An experienced truck accident lawyer who has an extensive background in Texas trucking accidents can be your advocate, fighting for you to receive compensation for medical expenses, lost wages, property damage and pain and suffering. Too many times victims of trucking accidents wait before calling a truck accident attorney, hoping the insurance company will do the right thing. This almost never works out for the victim’s benefit. Procuring aggressive legal representation in the aftermath of a truck accident may guard against this.