In Florida a car is a “dangerous instrumentality. Florida common law holds that owners of motor vehicles may be held liable for damages suffered by third parties as the result of negligent operation of their vehicles when the vehicle is driven with their knowledge and consent. The theory behind this common law is that motor vehicles are dangerous by their very use and, as such, are inherently hazardous, having the potential to cause serious personal injuries if negligently operated. See Southern Cotton Oil Co. v. Anderson, 80 Fla. 441, 469 [Fla. 1920].

With the ownership or operation of a motor vehicle comes great responsibility. There are precautions and rules that everyone behind the wheel should acknowledge and follow, in order for all of us to remain as safe as possible on public roadways.

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There are common themes that have become the mainstays of truck accident litigation for decades:

• Driving too fast for conditions.
• Logging too many hours without taking appropriate breaks.
• Shoddy vehicle maintenance.
• Inadequate training.
• Driver inattention.

While these potential root causes will always need to be thoroughly evaluated in any trucking accident case, new tools need to be employed in attempting to establish why a crash involving a big rig occurred. One thing that has not changed, however, is the need to deploy these new techniques as quickly as possible after an accident before the data is lost or destroyed, either accidentally or intentionally.

Perhaps the most critical piece of data in examining the root cause of a trucking accident that needs to be explored is a download of the involved tractor’s “black box.” The black box, or electronic data recorders (“EDR”), is essentially a computer module that monitors and records critical data points when certain circumstances occur, including a sudden and unexpected loss of the semi’s velocity. Although the universe of data that is captured by the EDR varies according to the engine’s manufacturer, typical information includes throttle, clutch, and brake application; in addition to vehicle speed; and whether or not the cruise control was engaged. Rather than just covering a few fleeting seconds before an event occurs, the EDR can capture almost two minutes of data before a crash occurs. The captured data can then be downloaded by a trained technician and can provide powerful evidence as to what a truck driver and the semi itself were doing immediately before the crash, providing the backbone for the accident’s reconstruction.

Some commercial semis are also equipped with technology that can actually help a truck driver avoid a collision. Using sensitive radars, the accident avoidance system can alert drivers to another vehicle in their blind spot or even slowing ahead. In the event of a crash, the data from the accident avoidance system can also be downloaded in an effort to recreate precisely what information was being communicated to the driver immediately before the crash occurred.

In the modern transportation age, semis are often dispatched electronically to their next destination. Electronic dispatch records are often integrated with global positioning systems which precisely track an individual tractor trailer’s location, movement, and speed.

Unfortunately, and often with tragic consequences, drivers of commercial motor vehicles sometimes make the dangerous choice of texting while driving or allowing themselves to become distracted by engaging in conversations on a cell phone. A truck drivers cell phone records, whether provided by the trucker’s employer or a personal cell, can provide powerful evidence about the possibility of driver inattention due to cell phone usage.

This data, however, will not live forever. In the days and weeks following a crash, the involved tractor can be repaired and put back into service, risking the potential for the data being written over or erased. If the crash was violent enough and the semi is incapable of being repaired, it can be sold for scrap, and in the process, destroying the critical data before it can be accessed. Digital and hardcopy files are often discarded or recycled. Similar to skid marks and witnesses’ memories, the passage of time can result in the loss of data that is critically important in performing a thorough accident investigation and recreation of a crash involving a tractor trailer.

Accordingly, if you or someone you love has been injured in a crash involving a tractor trailer, it is important that you secure legal representation as soon as possible to ensure that the available data and information is appropriately secured.

Truck vs passenger car accidents always end in a disaster in which the people in the car are the losers. The crashes are disasters, which almost always cause catastrophic death and destruction.

There was a time I remember when truck drivers were called the “knights of the road”? They had a reputation for safety and for helping those stranded on lonely roadways. In those days, the truck drivers served a romantic notion of the open road while on their long journeys; carrying the freight of America from East, West, North and South. I still remember driving by trucks and reaching out the window to give the motion of pulling down on an imaginary cord, just to hear the trucker respond with that wonderful air-horn.

Then trains began increasing competition with trucking companies for freight transfer. The piggyback system ate into the profits of the long haul truckers. Why pay a driver benefits with gas and insurance when you could simply drive your trailer to a train, load it on and deliver by having a tractor meet it at the destination for delivery. Competition quickly became, and still is, the name of the game and public safety has increasingly become its casualty.

Why does there seem to be an increase in trucking crashes?

The obvious two factors are increasing competition and the fact that there are more truck drivers on the road and this results in the human risks to increase proportionally.

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I used to feel safe when I would see a commercial truck traveling next to me on the road. After reading some statistics comparing airline pilots to truck drivers, I am not so sure I feel that way now.

In your mind imagine a truck tractor with two trailers attached to it, sitting next to an airliner. Not a great deal of difference between the two in size. Granted the 747, for example, weighs over a whopping 735,000 pounds at take off; compared to a meager weight of around 150,000 pounds for a tractor trailer.

On the other hand, the traffic in the air has not yet gotten as congested as the roadways and 747’s do not regularly drive amongst 4000 pound passenger vehicles.

So, I was shocked when I saw the comparison between airline pilots and truck drivers when it comes to suitability:

Number of Pilots: 590,000

Number of Truck Drivers: 10,000,000

Number of commercial planes: 222,000

Number of commercial trucks: 8,000,000

Pilot age limits: 65

Trucker age limits: None

Airline Industry prohibition re: narcotics: yes

Trucking Industry prohibition re: narcotics: No

Flying hours limitations: 30/week; 100/month; 1000/year

Driving hours limitations: 77/week; 88/8 days; 330/month; 4000/year

Flying hours tracked?: yes — electronic tracking

Driving hours tracked?: yes — driver kept log

Federal Regulatory budget for airlines: $14,600,000,000

Federal Regulatory budget for trucks: $500,000,000

Sobering numbers as we drive our little 4000 pound vehicles next to those 80,000 to 140,000 pound trucks, at 70+ miles per hour; after the trucker has been driving — -how many hours?

If we add to the mix of driving distractions for truckers the following: texting, using laptops, cell phones, eating, and fatigue; we have a recipe for potential trouble. Truck operational problems further aggravate the situation: braking malfunctions and tire over wear, for example. Finally, road conditions: vehicles driven by other distracted drivers; ice, rain, Florida “black ice”; and escalating vehicle population. Taking these factors into consideration, together with the above statistics, best illustrates how dangerous it really is on our roadways.

So, don’t text; don’t speed, don’t drive after drinking; and BE CAREFUL out there!

The European and the British people are warned about aging tires. They are warned that old tires can be dangerous. The European and the British people are educated that a brand new tire, fresh from the store shelves, might not be brand new. The European and the British people are educated to check tire age and to be cognizant of the dangers associated with it.

The American public is not warned about aging tires; that old tires can be dangerous; or that “brand new” tires on the store shelves may be 2, 3, or 6 years old when they are sold and put on our car.

A recent article posted by a colleague at Injury Board, Mike Bryant, provides some very useful links to an older 20/20 report that I have to confess I had completely forgotten about.

In Florida, apparently the heat fosters more than just mosquitoes, humidity and hurricanes. Down here in Florida, the heat also causes tires to wear at a higher rate; something that tire manufacturers have known for some time.

If the higher ambient temperatures subject tires to a higher failure rate, the age of the tire also figures importantly into the failures. Again, something tire manufacturers have known and have apparently been waiting patiently for years to be regulated about, well, by someone.

When you buy a “brand new” tire from a retailer you expect, well, a “brand new” tire. You may not get what you expect. Apparently tires can sit on shelves for 2, 3, 6 or more years before being sold. All that time, the tires are being exposed to the air, drying the rubber out and aging while they sit there on the shelf. They still look brand new; they still have great tread depth; and they still smell new; but they have been degrading the whole time.

So, how can you tell the age of your tires? Not easy with many tire manufacturers. The special coding used on many tires can only be found by crawling under the car and looking at the inside of the tire. The codes will give you tire size, location of manufacture, and the date of manufacture. The date is the important part.

Everyone should pay close attention to tire health and age, but clearly, based on studies by the National Highway Safety Administration, people in states where the ambient temperatures remain warm to hot all year should pay special attention:

• When you purchase tires ask the retailer to show you the date of manufacture.
• Do not purchase tires, which are already 3 to 6 years old.
• Check tire pressure often.
• Maintain manufacturer recommended levels of tire pressure.
• Return to the tire dealer anytime you have repeated loss of pressure in tires.
• Avoid petroleum based tire “cleaners”.
• Inspect your tires, both the exterior and interior, for wear or damage.
• If you hit something while motoring down the road, inspect your tires at your next opportunity to verify any damage.

“More than 76,000 Americans have been killed walking or crossing the street in the past 15 years, and pedestrian deaths account for about 11.8% of all traffic fatalities;” that published in a joint report by groups Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership entitled ‘Dangerous by Design: Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Deaths (and Making Great Neighborhoods). And according the recent USA Today article ‘Communities try to prevent pedestrian traffic deaths,’ (USA Today, November 10, 2009, 5A) those groups are lobbying Congress in an effort to require states to spend their share of federal funds on road projects to address the needs of pedestrians. This comprehensive report includes the most dangerous cities for pedestrians and provides safety rankings for each of the 50 states.

However, regardless of Congressional action or future state cooperation in making pedestrian safety a priority, the fact that pedestrians account for approximately 1 in 10 traffic deaths nationwide is staggering.

Every time a pedestrian takes to the street, whether it be walking, jogging or biking, you should recall this statistic and:

• Be defensive;
• Assume that drivers do not see you;
• Assume drivers do not understand pedestrian traffic laws;
• Assume drivers are preoccupied with whatever drama unfolded in their lives that day;
• Assume drivers are late to wherever they are headed;
• Assume drivers are distracted, using a cell phone, reading a newspaper or magazine as they drive;
• Assume drivers are driving a vehicle with defective brakes;
• Assume there will be drivers who have been drinking,

For Floridians, pay particular attention in these “top rated” cities:

1) Orlando.

2) Tampa-St. Petersburg.

3) Miami-Ft. Lauderdale.

4) Jacksonville.

Being outside nearly year round is a perk enjoyed by few, Floridians luckily included. When doing so on bike paths and sidewalks near roads, always be on guard.

Many of you reading this blog may have never heard the song ‘Walking in Memphis,’by singer-songwriter Marc Cohn. This was an early ‘90’s homage to the land of the Delta Blues, influential Beale Street, Elvis, and countless other subtle rock music references by singer-songwriter Marc Cohn. This was an early ‘90’s homage to the land of the Delta Blues, influential Beale Street, Elvis, and countless other subtle rock music references. Evidently additional lyrics are suitable, something to the effect of: “well I was walking in Memphis, but I was hit by a car and was killed.”

Gruesome, but realistic, since Memphis is tabbed as the 5th most dangerous city for pedestrians by the aforementioned report.

This is a story about Bill and Helen. They were not famous people; they did not live an extravagant life; and they loved life as much as any of us. I imagine they were two nice, kind people who, after many years of marital union, still loved each other quite completely. They very likely went about their lives just like the rest of us: they woke; they ate; they worked; and they try to enjoy this finite thing called life. They are two people that, sadly, I only nearly met on Highway 27 near Sebring, Florida.

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We have all been there. When you begin to pass a tractor trailer on the highway, you speed up just a little bit in an effort to get quickly clear or you slow down and simply refuse to take the chance. If passing, you are all the while holding your breath and engaging in an internal monologue that involves begging the particular truck not to drift into your lane.  Or that when seeing such a truck up ahead, I have unsettling visions similar to that portrayed in this video:

If I am alone in this regard, then I have just outed myself as an anxious, neurotic, pessimist.  However, when I see a story like this one reported on WLTX in Columbia, SC, I am reminded that accidents like these do not always happen to the “other guy” because one of us is always going to be that “other guy”. They are a tragic reality on the asphalt arteries dominated by tractor trailers whose bodies are unwieldy, loads can be dangerous and drivers are sometimes fatigued.  Such a combination poses a constant threat to other vehicles and often yields devastating consequences.

On October 5, 2005, a University of Washington professor was killed when an overloaded logging truck lost its load.  This preventable death was one of over 5,000 attributable to tractor trailers in that year alone, not to mention over 100,000 injuries attributable to same.

Federal laws regulating commercial vehicles exist.  For example, there are length and width limitations, all commercial vehicles are required to pass annual safety inspections, and all owners and operators are subject to fitness tests, to name a few.
Compartmental regulations are all well and good, but the one thing that is beyond regulation is the final product.  For example, one knows the makeup and ingredients of a single shot of Patron gold tequila, and likewise any other individual liquors; such can be measured, quantified, inspected.  But when that tequila is mixed with other known quantities of vodka, gin, rum and triple sec, the result is a drastically different mixture whose effect on the imbiber is far more potent and dangerous than that of a single shot of any of the above-named.  The combination and the effect cannot be measured, anticipated, quantified, regulated.  And like the morning-after effects of Long Island Iced Tea, the loaded to maximum capacity, maximum length, maximum width commercial vehicle, that sets out on the road in the early pre-dawn hours, with an operator who has not slept in 48 hours is a potentially lethal, unable to be regulated until it is to late menace to our highways with every RPM.

As it currently stands, the maximum weight of a commercial vehicle is 80,000 pounds.  At an average highway speed of 60 mph (I am, at 70 plus mph on the interstate, routinely passed), it neither takes an expert in physics to understand the damage this could, and does, cause, nor to envision how difficult it would be for an operator (even a well-rested, fresh operator) to stay in control of such a beast.  However, knowing this is the case, there are efforts underway to convince federal lawmakers to increase the maximum weight to 97,000 pounds. Can you imagine any scenario in which a nearly 50 ton vehicle going 70 plus mph would not be a juggernaut of destruction?

When will senseless and preventable deaths at the hands of overloaded tractor trailers dwindle … when companies put public safety before private gain.

This is a problem, but there are solutions!  Visit such websites as www.roadsafeamerica.org or stopbigtrucks.org to learn more.

When you suffer an injury your first thought is not who can I sue; or, it certainly should not be that thought. What most people think about are their injuries, how to obtain treatment and how to put their lives back together. As a result of attending to these essential things, valuable time is often lost in the event compensation is due from a negligent party for your injuries.

Whether you know you have a claim or whether you want to pursue a claim in the event you have one is not the only basis for seeking legal representation. The initial reason to timely seek legal representation is to preserve evidence, witness knowledge, and examine your legal rights. Attorneys can only advise clients what their legal rights are and make recommendations on whether and how to pursue those cases having merit. Ultimately, the decision to pursue a legal claim is solely yours.

If, however, too much time passes between the occurrence of an injury and the beginning of an investigation, evidence may be lost and the recollection of witnesses (including you) may grow dim. So, gathering facts can be crucial to preserving your legal rights.
If you are involved in any accident, there are some basic things you or someone on your behalf can do:
Obtain the names, addresses, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers of any witnesses;

• Obtain the name(s), addresses. E-mail addresses, and telephone numbers of anyone who may be responsible for your injuries. In an automobile accident, that may be the person who rear ended you, but if, for example, the other driver pulled out in front of you because “the bushes were blocking my view”, an additional potentially responsible party may be the property owner of the bushes.
• Record the type of vehicles; including the make, model, license tag number, and the type of damage to each vehicle.
• If your vehicle is inoperable, try to determine the location to which it is being towed.
• Take photographs. Nearly every cell telephone has the capacity to take basic photographs of the scene of any accident. In an automobile accident, photograph all the vehicles; photograph the damages to each vehicle; photograph the scene by standing out of traffic and shooting a series of pictures moving from the left to the right of the entire scene. Photograph skid marks.
• If you can, sketch the scene and include the relative location of vehicles when they ultimately came to rest.
• Obtain investigating officers names and telephone numbers.

Any time you are injured, the very first priority needs to be your injuries and getting them attended. Never place yourself in a position of peril in attempting to obtain evidence. If people are unwilling to volunteer information, do not try to force them. When an accident occurs, emotions are often high. Your goal, or someone acting on your behalf, is not to take the place of skilled police officers or investigators.

If you are unable to do any of this at the scene because you are injured, ask a friend, spouse, or other person to do it for you to the extent that is possible.

Call an attorney to determine your rights.

Driving is serious business.  Every time we drive on the highways we need to be sure we are paying attention to the traffic signs, road signs, and the other drivers on the road and we need to make sure the vehicles we are driving are safe.  Just because you buy new tires it does not mean that those tires were recently manufactured.  If you look closely on the tire it will have the date the tire was made. 

Some tires are defective and without warning the tread can separate causing a terrible crash.  When a tire blows or separates suddenly there is a good chance that your vehicle will roll over resulting in serious injuries and/or death.  The likelihood of a crash and injuries or fatalities from such a crash, is far greater when the tread separation occurs on a SUV compared to if the tread separation occurs on a sedan or large pickup truck instead.

There have been several tire recalls involving Bridgestone, Continental Tire, Cooper Tire, Firestone Tire, Goodyear Tire, Kelly Springfield Tire and Yokohama Tire. 

This type of crash could happen to anyone.  Inspect your tires on a regular basis, check the date they were manufactured, check the internet and be aware of publicized recalls. If you or a loved one is involved in a crash that could be the result of faulty tires, be advised that there is a legal remedy available and do not hesitate to seek justice.

See the hyperlinks below for additional information:

http://www.recalls.gov/nhtsa.html
http://usgovinfo.about.com/blfirestone.htm