Accidents involving large trucks are among the most serious and most deadly in the United States. Trucking companies are required to follow Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations concerning their equipment and their drivers hours of service. In Florida, the Department of Transportation is also in charge of adopting regulations regarding the safety of motor carriers. Fla. Stat. 316.302. One of the most common problems is driver fatigue, as hours of service regulations are routinely violated. Florida attempts to deal with this by imposing strict rules on the number of hours a driver can operate a large truck. Generally, any person who drives a commercial motor vehicle solely in intrastate commerce not transporting any hazardous material may not be on duty more than 72 hours in any period of 7 consecutive days. Fla. Stat. 316.302. Despite this rule, careful examination of records after an accident often shows serious and even fraudulent violations of those safety regulations. However, trucking companies are only required to maintain many of those records for six months so it may be difficult for the injured person or survivors to prove a trucking companys negligence in some cases. One out of eight traffic fatalities in 2005 resulted from a collision involving a large truck. In 2005, 442,000 large trucks (gross vehicle weight rating greater than 10,000 pounds) were involved in traffic crashes in the United States; 4,932 were involved in fatal crashes. A total of 5,212 people died (12 percent of all the traffic fatalities reported in 2005) and an additional 114,000 were injured in those crashes. In 2005, large trucks accounted for 8 percent of all vehicles involved in fatal crashes and 4 percent of all vehicles involved in injury and property damage only crashes. Large trucks were much more likely to be involved in a fatal multiple-vehicle crash as opposed to a fatal single-vehicle crash than were passenger vehicles (83 percent of all large trucks involved in fatal crashes, compared with 61 percent of all passenger vehicles). Most of the fatal crashes involving large trucks occurred in rural areas (61%), during the daytime (67%), and on weekdays (81%). The percentage of large-truck drivers involved in fatal crashes who had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or higher was 1 percent in 2005.  Related ContentPost a comment
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