Chattanooga-based U.S. Express has announced that it is now equipping its trucks with “smart cruise.” According to an article in The Chattanoogan, this technology automatically keeps other drivers at a safe distance because it is able to detect vehicles in front of the truck. When a truck driver comes too close to a car, it is supposed to alert the driver to slow down and automatically decelerate the engine when necessary. According U.S. Express, this system acts as a “behavioral device” by changing “drivers’ habits.”
Hopefully, the alarm is loud enough and early enough to alert a tired driver who is drifting into “microsleep,” decelerate the truck and prevent impact.
If it works as described, this technology would have prevented two of the truck wreck cases we are working on now, in which tired trucks southbound on I-75 in the middle of the night, en route from the Midwest to Florida, ran right over smaller vehicles. In one of those crashes a 16-year-old boy was killed. It might also have saved the life of my daughter’s friend who was killed when a tractor trailer plowed into the rear of her family’s vehicle on I-20 in Alabama.

The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a “SuperLawyer” in Atlanta Magazine and one of the “Legal Elite” in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, Chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck wrecks and accidents (tractor trailers truck wrecks, semi truck wrecks,18 wheeler truck wrecks, big rig truck wrecks, log truck wrecks, dump truck wrecks).