[GRAPHIC: Driver Fatigue]
STEVEN GORDON: Driver fatigue is a pet issue of mine because I believe a truck driver is kind of in a--what I call between a rock and a hard place. He or she--I'm just going to say he if you don't mind. He has got to make his route. He's got to make his deliveries on time. He's got to get from Point A to Point B. And the company expects him to do it in a certain time.
Now there are federal regulations you can read on our site which govern how much time a trucker can, can drive. A long haul trucker has a cab in the back and they are supposed to, after a certain amount of hours, get off duty rest and sleep. Now, more, more times than you can even imagine, the trucker has driven more than he should and that his fatigue has caused his responses to be slow. And when that happens, there are people that are injured and worse yet killed.
I, I think a trucker is an expert. They have a commercial driver's license. This is the field they have chosen to do for their career. They have a duty, being an expert, to do their job right, just like a lawyer. We can't take a case and just halfway work on it or do it a little bit, and a trucker shouldn't either. So when a driver has driver fatigue and that causes an accident, the depositions of that trucker don't--they're not pretty.
And there are driver's logs that you can look at. And some drivers even go as far as to falsify those logs. And when that happens, that is not only a crime, but it upsets a jury very much and high awards are seen in driver falsification log issues cases.
So you have two things. You have the trucking company making these unreasonable demands on the truck driver. And you have the truck driver instead of saying, hey wait, I cannot do it within this time frame because the law requires me to get rest. You have the truck driver making the second mistake and then you have the accident. So clearly when it's driver fatigue issues, the trucking company and the driver are usually at fault.
[GRAPHIC: Gordon, Elias & Seely, L.L.P. Truck Accident Attorneys at Law Call Toll Free 1-800-773-6770 www.TruckAccidentLaw.org]
