The US Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last month reaffirmed a change made in January 2004, allowing drivers to work 11 hours a day, up from the 10-hour limit that had applied for 60 years.
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University analysed data from three national trucking companies for 12 months after the change and found drivers were three times more likely to crash in the 11th hour than in the first. For the first six hours of driving, the risk of crashing remained relatively low, rising steadily over the next two hours and peaking in the 9th, 10th and 11th hours.

The pattern of increased crash risk associated with the number of hours driven that the Penn State team observed is contrary to the results of field studies conducted by others in the 1990s. However, the pattern is consistent with more recent Penn State observational studies. For example, using data on an estimated 16 million vehicle miles of actual long haul truck travel by professional drivers collected during 1984 and 1985, the Penn State researchers found recently that the 10th hour of driving had a crash risk 2.1 times the first hour of driving. Those results were reported at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, D. C. last year and are scheduled to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of the Transportation Research Board.
The findings, using data from 2004 and from the 1980s, establish a consistent pattern of increased crash risk with hours driving, particularly in the 9th, 10th and 11th hours.
See report.

Trucking is essential to the national economy. Virtually every product sold is transported by truck. But with its economic importance comes accountability, as trucking is also a major highway safety hazard.
Truck drivers, overworked and underpaid, are the heroes of country music ballads. Popular culture holds them up as rough-hewn “knights of the road,” and many are. However, many are the overworked serfs of the road, and as with any occupation – including lawyers – a small percentage are rogues of the road. With the trucking industry facing both a shortage of qualified drivers and mounting fuel prices, the problems of trucking safety may increase over the next few years.
As a hub of transportation in the Southeast, Georgia ranks among the top five states in the nation in the number of fatalities due to crashes of large trucks, ranking just behind California, Texas and Florida. In 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, there were 233 fatalities in large truck crashes in Georgia, accounting for 14.25 percent of the 1,634 traffic fatalities in our state. The Georgia experience is fairly typical. In the same year, one out of nine traffic fatalities in the United States involved large trucks, as 457,000 large trucks were involved in traffic crashes in the United States and 4,669 were involved in fatal crashes. A total of 4,986 people died (12 percent of all the traffic fatalities) and an additional 122,000 were injured. Certainly many of these were not the fault of truckers or trucking companies, but many were.
Any lawyer who assumes that a large truck wreck is just a bigger car wreck is dangerously naive. Investigation, discovery, technology and law involved in the crashes of large commercial trucks are substantially different from other motor vehicle accident cases. Counsel must be familiar with a national body of trucking law based primarily on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, technology in the trucking industry, trucking insurance coverage issues, multistate discovery practice, and other aspects of investigation and discovery peculiar to trucking litigation. Lawyers who are not prepared to invest the time required to master the intricacies involved should consider the ethical duty to associate other counsel.
The danger of large trucks on the highways was recognized in the enactment of the Motor Carrier Act in 1935, creating the Interstate Commerce Commission which in turn developed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSR), which are designed to protect public safety. The purpose of the FMCSR is to “help reduce or prevent truck and bus accidents, fatalities, and injuries by requiring drivers to have a single commercial motor vehicle driver’s license and by disqualifying drivers who operate commercial motor vehicles in an unsafe manner.”

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations apply to commercial motor vehicles, which are defined as any self-propelled or towed motor vehicle used on a highway in interstate commerce to transport passengers or property when the vehicle: (1) has a gross vehicle weight of 10,001 pounds or more, whichever is greater; or (2) is designed or used to transport more than 8 passengers, including the driver, for compensation; or (3) is designed or used to transport more than 15 passengers, including the driver, whether or not it is used to transport passengers for compensation; or (4) is used in transporting material classified as hazardous. “Interstate commerce” is defined as trade, traffic or transportation across a State line, including international boundaries, or wholly within one State as part of a through movement that originates or terminates in another State or country. “Intrastate commerce” is any trade, traffic or transportation in any State that is not described in the term “interstate commerce.” 49 C.F.R. § 390.3.