Table of Contents

Our Florida Truck Accident Attorneys Explain the Main Causes of Tractor Trailer Crashes

Here are examples of how the FMCSA categorizes “critical” or causative reasons assigned to truck drivers:

• Non-performance: Driver fell asleep, disabled by heart attack or seizure, or disabled for another reason.
• Recognition: Driver inattention, distracted by inside or outside factors, failed to observe the situation.
• Decision: Driving too fast for conditions, misjudged speed of other vehicles, followed too closely.
• Performance: Driver panicked, overcompensated, or exercised poor directional control.

Statistics of Truck Drivers Involved in Crashes 

Like all accidents, truck crashes can be caused by a variety of factors and circumstances. If you or a loved one were involved in a crash with a large commercial truck or vehicle, our Florida truck accident attorneys can help. According to trucking accident statistics:

• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and other federal agencies that monitor these statistics report that truck accident fatalities increased by almost 1% in 2018, reaching their highest level in 45 years and accounting for 11% of total motor vehicle accident deaths. On contrast, overall motor vehicle fatalities in 2018 declined by 2.4% from the previous year.  

• Truck drivers may make poor decisions about, for example, changing lanes, yielding the right of way, following too closely, or exceeding the speed limit. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) says that speeding remains the number one cause of fatal truck crashes, even though truckers who speed are getting ticketed more often.

• The same poor decisions may be made by passenger car drivers and other motorists on the road. Some NHTSA studies indicate that in as many as 80% of car-truck collisions, blame was assigned to passenger vehicle drivers. (In 10% of the accidents studied, fault was attributed to both car and truck drivers.) In January 2020, the FMCSA announced its launch of an updated Large Truck Crash Causation Study, its first since 2006.

• While drunk driving can be a factor in large truck crashes, the NHTSA reports that, in 2018, only 3% of truck drivers involved in fatal crashes had a blood alcohol concentration level beyond the legal limit of .08 grams per deciliter. Alcohol impairment accounted for 28% of all motor vehicle fatalities that year.

• In contrast, looking at other kinds of vehicles involved in fatal crashes that year, the percentage of drivers over the legal blood alcohol limit was 21% for drivers of passenger cars, 19% for drivers of light trucks, and 25% for motorcyclists.

Our Florida Truck Accidents Attorneys Identify Common Causes of Wrecks

The NHTSA and the FMCSA recognize that all motor vehicle crashes are complex events, usually involving two or more vehicles, and influenced by such elements as driver training and experience, vehicle design and manufacture, adherence to safety and maintenance recommendations, and road and weather conditions. Below are some of the most common causes of truck wrecks that our Florida truck accident attorneys handle. 

Unsafe Lane Changes

On I-10, I-95 and other major highways throughout Florida, commercial truck accidents are a routine occurrence. Many of these accidents are the result of unsafe lane changes, with truck drivers merging suddenly and unexpectedly in front of (or into) other vehicles.

These unsafe maneuvers often leave other drivers with no place to go. In many cases, they force other drivers to slam on their brakes or swerve out of the way, but even these efforts will often not be enough to avoid a dangerous collision. As a result, drivers and passengers routinely suffer serious injuries in these types of accidents, and many endure a lifetime of pain and suffering.

Brake Failure, Tires and Other Vehicle Problems

Brake failure, blown tires, and other mechanical or parts breakdowns that contribute to large truck crashes most often happen because big trucking companies fail to follow federal safety rules for regular truck inspection, repair and maintenance. Trucking companies must keep meticulous records of the dates and nature of these inspections.

Vehicle-related factors were coded for 5% of the large trucks involved in fatal crashes in a 2017 study, compared with 3% of the passenger vehicles involved in fatal crashes. “Other Working Vehicle” (2%) and “Tires” (1%) were the most common vehicle-related factors for large trucks in fatal crashes.

In addition, trucks transporting hazardous materials onboard can play a large role in catastrophic accidents, spilling toxic and flammable materials that may not have been loaded and secured safely. In June 2017, in 3,282 U.S. inspections by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, the top five violations related to cargo securement were:

1. No or improper load securement (423)
2. Failure to secure vehicle equipment (379)
3. Leaking, spilling, blowing, falling cargo (281)
4. Insufficient tiedowns to prevent forward movement for load not blocked by header board, bulkhead or cargo (256)
5. Failure to secure load (178)

Truck safety advocates recommend that truck companies purchase new trucks that are equipped with antilock braking systems and load-proportioning brake valves. There is substantial evidence that antilock brakes prevent wheel lockup and skidding, as well as directional control. But CVSA inspections have found that warning lights for antilock brake malfunctions often fail.

And even with good brakes, it takes a large truck 40% longer to stop than an average car: about 335 feet – or a little longer than a football field.

Traffic Flow

The kind of traffic congestion found on Interstate 95 in Florida is a good example of how a previous accident or traffic jam can become a recipe for disaster for trucks and passenger cars, especially when traffic must be diverted to another lane or gawkers slow to see what happened.

When traffic is stopped suddenly, rear-end collisions are rampant. In the 2017 NHTSA analysis of large truck crashes, trucks were struck in the rear about three times as often as were other vehicles (22% compared to 7%).  Other perils of traffic flow included unsafe passing, failure to merge safely, changing lanes suddenly, and misjudgment of a truck’s speed or a trucker’s reaction time.

Another factor that affects traffic flow is day of week and time of day, when different patterns of speed and congestion are present. About 35% of all fatal truck crashes in 2017 occurred at night, between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. when visibility may have been hampered.  The majority of fatal truck crashes (83%) in 2017 occurred on weekdays, when streets and highways across the country must be shared with cars transporting people to work or school or other daily activities.

 

Prescription and Over-the-Counter Drug Use

While a truck driver under the influence of alcohol is rare in a large truck crash, prescription and over-the-counter drugs are major causes of tragic trucking accidents. One study indicates that prescription drug use is an “associated factor” in 28.7% of truck crashes, even though federal regulations for drivers of commercial motor vehicles prohibit use of anti-seizure medications, methadone, amphetamines, and narcotic and other habit-forming drugs.

Large truck drivers involved in fatal crashes rarely have high blood alcohol concentrations (BACs). Truck drivers are subject to strict government regulations concerning drinking and driving. Three percent of fatally injured large truck drivers in 2018 had BACs at or above 0.08 percent, down from 17 percent in 1982. In comparison, 19 percent of passenger vehicle drivers in 2018 fatal crashes had BACs at or above 0.08 percent, down from 51 percent in 1982.

One of the challenges in identifying drug use in truck crashes and enforcing rules is that medications used for depression or anxiety, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, and many other common conditions have unanticipated side effects that can have a disastrous impact on a driver’s performance. The FMCSA continues to propose ways to prevent drivers on drugs or alcohol from taking the wheel of a commercial vehicle.  In February 2014, new rules were published in the Federal Register that, subject to public comment, would establish a federal database of truck drivers who refuse or fail to take drug and alcohol tests.

Current rules require truck drivers to take regular random drug tests, and recent analysis of 150,000 urine tests by the Alliance for Driver Safety and Security found that 94% of the truck drivers tested were drug free. However, in June 2019 the group testified before a U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Highways and Transit that use of amphetamines and cocaine continues, opioid use is on the rise, and marijuana is becoming increasingly popular as states legalize its use.

Roadway Problems

According to the Truck Safety Coalition, more than a fourth of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, and a third of our major roads are in desperate need of repair. Poor road conditions cost motorists billions of dollars a year in repairs and operating costs. Worse, uneven pavements, potholes, sharp curves, unmarked intersections and confusing signage can offer high crash potential for an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer traveling at high speed.

NHTSA analyses of 2018 truck crashes indicate that about 57% of all fatal crashes occurred in rural areas, where road conditions are not always optimal.  Twenty-six percent of these fatal truck crashes occurred on interstates and freeways and 5 percent. 

The Challenges of Making a Safe Self-Driving Truck

Cross-country and local trucking drives industry in this country. Flying is too expensive, and trains don’t start and stop exactly where and when you need them to. So, nearly every bite of food we take, every car we drive, every TV we watch, and every computer we use came to us at some point on a large commercial truck.

The big trucks that carry all of our “stuff” are inhibited by only one thing: humans. This is a serious limitation because federal and state law restricts how many hours truck drivers can drive in a 24-hour period, along with a plethora of other trucking rules and regulations. Also, large commercial trucks on the highways can be dangerous, causing thousands of truck accidents and personal injuries every year. One solution that the trucking industry is considering is to remove the human element and create self-driving trucks. Unfortunately, without drivers, there is a question as to whether self-driving trucks will be safe enough on the nation’s highways, especially considering they weigh in at about 80,000 lbs.

If you’ve been involved in an accident with any kind of truck, contact an experienced Florida truck accident lawyer at Searcy Denney for help recovering all of the financial compensation you’re entitled to.

What Exactly Are the Challenges of Developing Self-Driving Trucks?

As you can imagine, there are a number of technical and practical issues involved in developing a self-driving truck. Some of the most common include:

Driving Requires Many Complicated Social Interactions

This is still hard for robots. Driving is a complex social process that often involves intricate interactions with other drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Humans instinctively rely on common sense and deeply-ingrained intelligence that robots simply do not have. What’s the fun of giving a robot the finger? This simple gesture also serves an important communication function: “You’re not driving well.”

Much of the research and testing has involved “training” the trucks’ software to recognize various difficult situations that come up on the roads. For example, claims have been made that self-driving vehicles can now recognize cyclists and interpret their hand signals, such as right or left turns. Think of all the various driving situations that involve subtle communications like e navigating four-way intersections, dealing with simultaneous arrivals at a turn, or a construction worker waving cars around an accident scene. Easy for us, hard for a robot. Common thinking is that self-driving cars will ultimately need to be adept at a minimum of four key tasks:

• Understanding the environment around them
• Understanding why the people are behaving the way they are
• Deciding how to respond 
• Communicating with other people

Bad Weather

Compounding the challenges faced by self-driving truck developers is that weather still poses a major challenge. As with our own eyes, car sensors don’t work as well in fog, rain or snow. This technology is almost certainly going to come out incrementally, starting with places where the weather is good and the roads are easy to drive, and moving on to more challenging locations.

Knowledge of Safety

Before self-driving cars can take to the roads, lawmakers are going to have to approve them for use. They will surely want to know: How safe are these trucks? The tricky part is, we probably won’t know until after they are allowed on the roadways; sort of a catch-22. We can’t regulate without knowing the dangers, we can’t know the dangers until they’re allowed on the roadways, and we can’t let them onto the roadways until laws are put into place.

Cybersecurity

Stated simply, how do you make sure these cars can’t be hacked? As vehicles become smarter and more connected, there are more ways to get into them and disrupt what they’re doing. This may have exceptionally serious consequences. Fortunately, engineers are not starting from scratch here; cybersecurity is well along and is considered the easiest problem to fix.

Social Change

Clearly, social change, or more accurately, a social revolution, will be needed in a society where people feel more comfortable driving themselves rather than having robots controlling large aspects of the national infrastructure. One serious accident with a driverless truck will shake up the country’s foundation, even though there are thousands of accidents involving large trucks with human drivers every year. 

However, there are already many aspects of travel that are controlled by computers. Cruise control on vehicles and auto-pilot systems in airplanes have become accepted as commonplace. But social change has traditionally been required with high-impact introductions of ground-breaking technology.

Legal Liability

One sidebar-type issue that trucking and insurance companies will have to sort through before self-driving trucks become common is legal liability. Who will be held responsible when an autonomous tractor-trailer is inevitably involved in an accident? With traditional truck accidents, if the driver was negligent and caused the accident, injured victims may be able to sue any number of parties, including:

• Third-party independent contractors
• The trucking company
• The truck manufacturer
• The truck driver
• The truck owner
• The truck maintenance company
• If the truck is leased, whoever leased the truck from the owner
• The shipping or loading company

But what happens when the driver is removed? Who will be held responsible? If the cause of the collision was the truck itself, would the manufacturer of the truck be responsible under product liability law? What about the company that developed the software that controls the truck? Autonomous truck litigation would instantly become even more complicated than standard truck litigation, which is already among the most complex accident litigation there is. It may take a series of new statutes by Congress, who would have no idea about how the technology involved works.

Let the Florida Truck Wreck Attorneys at Searcy Law Manage Your Claim

If you were injured in a commercial truck accident, you may be entitled to compensation for accident-related losses. This compensation may include the damage to your vehicle, a portion of your outstanding medical bills, and/or future medical expenses, as well as loss of income, pain and suffering, and various other financial and non-financial losses. Contact our firm today and learn how we can help.