Trucking Company's Safety Violations

In truck accident cases, we continue to be amazed how frequently large trucking companies fail to adequately monitor their fleet of drivers. The classic situation that comes up too often is a driver who has multiple moving violations, often speeding tickets yet they continue to be put out on the road by the trucking company. In many of these cases, the trucking company has an employee handbook or safety manual that says drivers are supposed to be re-trained or “pulled” if they have a certain number of violations, but often that never occurs.

We had a case recently where the safety director of a large trucking company did not even know how many violations were in the company’s personnel file on the driver involved in a serious accident on Interstate 80. The company had a policy where drivers were supposed to be sent for re-training after a few violations and then taken off the road after more violations. There was never any re-training done, and this driver ended up being involved in a fatal accident that led to a wrongful death claim on behalf of a young, recently married woman.