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.
