Skirting trucking rules not limited to fudging HOS logs

 Posted on November 12,2015 in Firm News

It may be easy to muster some level of compassion for truckers. As we have noted before, commercial drivers face much stricter regulation of their activity than most people in Illinois may appreciate.

As we noted in a previous post in November last year, commercial drivers face restrictions on the hours they can be behind the wheel. They are also required to undergo special training to obtain their licenses. But as we also noted in that post, there are more than a few drivers and trucking companies willing to fudge numbers.

This is not good news for the general motoring public. Despite the complaints that truckers and their employers raise about how difficult the rules make it to be competitive, the regulations are there for a reason. The biggest being that when violations occur, they can lead to accidents that leave victims with debilitating injuries. Sometimes they are fatal.

Another area in which government has seen fit to exercise greater control on drivers relates to their overall health. Again, the reasoning is clear. A driver with some health issue that might cause sudden disability poses a danger to others. But as a recent story out of Georgia reflects, this too is an issue about which some drivers are willing to be less than truthful.

In this case, federal regulators determined that the driver had been involved in an accident on July 6, 2015. The cause was traced to an undisclosed medical issue. His truck and trailer veered across two lanes of highway, through a fence and crashed into a parked vehicle.

The driver apparently escaped injury, but a doctor who checked him out that day did declare him unqualified to drive and put a note in his record about a 2011 diagnosis that should also have disqualified him. Ultimately, the driver was let go by the company.

But regulators say that on July 7, 2015, the man applied for and got hired as a driver with another company. But they say the application falsified the concerning elements of his medical history.

He drove until the middle of September until being let go again. He's now considered an imminent hazard to public safety and is barred from interstate trucking. Will he obey?