Articles Posted in Trucking Rules

I have written several times this year about proposals for toll lanes for trucks on metro Atlanta interstate highways.  An article this week shows another reason why this may become a necessity. The Georgia Department of Transportation expects to spend $160 billion on road construction projects between 2005 and 2035. But revenues from the motor…

In 1953, the United States Supreme Court described motor carriers’ use of independent owner-operators who lacked adequate insurance in order to avoid financial responsibility to injured members of the public as “evils that had grown up” in the industry. American Trucking Ass’ns v. United States, 344 U.S. 298, 301 (1953).  More recently, one court described…

An article in today’s Dallas Morning News explains the obvious: “Trucking companies sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to avoid admitting fault in fatal accidents. They purge onboard computers, falsify records and destroy documents that federal law requires them to keep.” We’ve seen it too often.  The Shigley Law Firm  represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and…

Last month there was a news story about the New Jersey Committee on Attorney Advertising, a panel appointed by the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruling that attorney advertisements that tout listings such as the “Super Lawyers” listings violate professional responsibility rules against ads that compare lawyers’ services or create an “unjustified expectation about results.” …

On July 31, President Bush announced his intention to nominate Susan Dudley as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. Through an obscure executive order which has never been authorized by Congress, all federal regulations deemed economically or otherwise significant, as determined by OIRA, require the…

The Large Truck Crash Causation Study announced by U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration this past spring is now available to the public. LTCCS is the first-ever national study to attempt to determine the critical events and associated factors that contribute to serious large truck crashes allowing the DOT and others to implement effective countermeasures…

In my native state of Alabama, two areas of trucking safety are making news. First, recurring problems with heavy steel coils coming loose and dropping onto highways pose threats to both public safety and damage to roads. The Birmingham News reports that “Steel coils weighing tens of thousands of pounds falling off trucks with enough…

No statistics are available, but I’m beginning to suspect that the new hours of service rules adopted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration may be helping to reduce the incidence of fatigue related truck crashes.  This is just an impressionistic hunch and extremely preliminary, but there may be a trend. For nearly a year…

Washington State Patrol troopers say that a recent rash of intoxicated truck drivers hauling heavy loads down Washington highways has them stepping up efforts to get impaired truckers off the road. One truck driver was hauling a 140,000 pound load (limit is 80,000 pounds) and hisbreath test registered over .08 , which is more than…

The U. S.  House Appropriations Committee has directed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to report by March 1, 2007, on how it will revise the compliance review process to improve detection of motor carriers with poor safety practices and shut them down. The request was included in the committee report (House Report 109-495) accompanying…