Driven to Destruction: How Economic Factors Have Compromised Safety in the Trucking Industry
Many lawyers prosecuting claims involving trucking accidents assume that once the carrier admits that its driver was acting in the course and scope of employment, the liability case can and should focus solely on the facts surrounding the collision. In many cases, this is a mistake, as the lawyer who digs deeper will sometimes find evidence that the employer’s hiring, training, safety compliance, and supervision policies played an important contributing role in the accident.
The purpose of this article is to introduce trial lawyers to the economic factors which have, in many cases, compromised safety in the trucking industry, and to provide some ideas concerning areas for discovery against the motor carriers.
Here is how bad it has gotten for some interstate trucking companies: I handled a case against a major Utah trucking company which hired a driver with a record of many violent felonies and no commercial driving experience. The driver was asked to falsify his application for employment since the company’s hiring policies prohibited hiring repeat felons. The new driver was sent out for training with a company instructor who subsequently advised the carrier that the driver was mentally unstable, lacked suitable driving skills, and should be fired.
The carrier ignored the trainer’s advice and hired the driver.
In his first thirty days on the job, the driver had three property damage accidents, and a motorist called the company to report that the driver had changed lanes without signaling and had run him off the freeway. The carrier still left the driver on the road and a few weeks later, the driver was observed driving erratically and at a very high speed in Price Canyon when he overturned his truck, killing two motorists and leaving an eight-year-old boy with catastrophic brain damage.
Why would a large and well-known trucking company leave this driver on the road?
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This article was written by Jeff Eisenberg, for more information please click here.
