Jose Duran was driving his truck on the Cross Bronx expressway when a manhole cover crashed through his windshield striking him in the head. He lost control of his vehicle and crashed into another tractor trailer. No one else was hurt. Duran was declared dead upon his arrival at the hospital.
Read more in the New York Daily News
A MTA bus crashed into a truck this morning on Bruckner Blvd at Bryant Ave injuring 8 people, 2 of them seriously. The city bus was crossing left to right when it crashed into the bus which had stopped in the right lane. Read more in the New York Daily News
Bus accidents are on the rise in 2014: from January to March 2014 there were 1832 bus accidents in NYC compare to 1418 in the first 3 months of 2013.
After her son Jeff was killed in a truck accident 20 years ago, Daphne Izer started Parents Against Tired Truckers. She dedicated herself to protect others from becoming casualties of fatigued truck drivers and created a national standard for the use of Electronic Logging Devices. A few days ago Daphne was honored as a “Champion of Change” by the White House and the US Department of Transportation.
Read more here
Photo: Courtesy FMCSA
Truck accidents are more likely to happen when truck drivers are being harassed or coerced to drive in unsafe conditions. For years, unscrupulous dispatchers have been threatening truck drivers with economic penalties such as the loss of their job for refusing to operate under illegal conditions. Often drivers are being pressured to work past the limits of the hours of service rules or to drive trucks with mechanical problems. The new Coercion Rule proposed by the FMCSA prohibits carriers and others from coercing a driver to violate the commercial regulations. The proposal also includes procedures for drivers to report coercion. The penalty for violating the Rule can go up to $11,000 per occurrence. Carriers and brokers can also have their authorities revoked.
The Rule was posted in the federal register and the public has 90 days to comment on this Rule.
Read more in Go By Truck News
Crashes involving trucks from drilling projects are on the rise. An Associated Press analysis of traffic deaths and U.S. census data in six drilling states shows that in some places, fatalities have more than quadrupled since 2004 – a period when most American roads have become much safer even as the population has grown.
Read the complete article here
An accident between a truck and a dirt bike lead to the death of the motorcycle operator yesterday in East Harlem. 28 year old Shamel Jefferson was riding on an unregistered and uninsured dirt bike in the left lane on third Ave when a truck cut in front of him and struck him causing his death.
Read more in the New York Daily News
A new rule proposed by the FMCSA would allow commercial carriers to use an electronic signature and to store their documents electronically. This new rule would apply to documents that trucking and bus companies are legally obligated to retain but not to forms and documents that have to be submitted directly to the FMCSA. This proposed rule responds in part to the President’s January 2011 Regulatory
Review and Reform initiative and would implement the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN).
Read the complete rule proposal
With the actual growing shortage of qualified truck drivers, trucking companies may be tempted to lower their hiring standards to avoid turning down jobs. These companies should keep in mind that by scarifying safety for profit they put themselves at the mercy of a negligent hiring lawsuit.
Trucks are dangerous vehicles and motor carriers are responsible for any accident caused by their drivers. Therefore if the company was negligent in its hiring process in addition to the usual negligent driving claims it can also be held responsible for the personal injury, the death and the property damage resulting from an accident caused by its driver on a separate cause of action alleging negligent hiring. In some states based upon the driver’s record at the time of hiring punitive damages may be recoverable.
In his article “Negligent Driver Hiring Can Bite You in the Butt” , Don Jerrel, Associate Vice President at HNI, explains how hiring, training and keeping qualified and successful truck drivers will protect commercial carriers from expensive lawsuits and improve safety on the road by reducing truck accidents.
To reduce personal injury and deaths related to tractor-trailer truck accidents the National Transportation Safety Board sent a letter last week to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration urging the agency to take the following actions:
Address Blind Spots
Blind spots are a major cause of accidents between large trucks and other motor vehicles as well as more vulnerable road users such as motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. The rate of fatal accidents is particularly high among vulnerable road users. Research from the NTSB show that 16% of pedestrians and bicyclists involved in a truck accident will die. This ratio is of 12% for motorcyclists, 1% for passenger vehicle occupants and 0,2% for the tractor-trailer occupants.
Blind spots for large trucks are much bigger than blind spots for regular cars and exist in the front, in the back and on both sides of the truck. According to the study “Prioritizing Improvements to Truck Driver Vision” by Matthew P. Reed, Daniel Blower and Michael J. Flannagan from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute , the blind spot on the right of the cab of the truck is the most dangerous. During a lane change, most collisions with another motor vehicle happen in this spot. It is also the spot where most pedestrians and bicyclists are struck during start-up and right turn crashes.
Countermeasures to mitigate blind spots include enhanced mirror systems as well as more advanced technologies such as sensors to detect vehicles and vulnerable road users in blind spots.
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Several pedestrians were injured in an accident during which a van crashed into an MTA bus sending both vehicles into a group of a dozen pedestrians at a bus stop and ending their course in a pizza parlor. The bus accident happened in NYC in Washington Heights, on Broadway and 155th Street.
Both the bus – which had no passengers – and the van were heading north when the van side-swiped the bus causing it to lose control and plowing through about a dozen people waiting at an M4 stop, city officials said.
Read more in DNA Info New York
New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog