Trucker safety has always been a hot bed issue. Over 4,000 people were killed in truck accidents between 2007 and 2009 and the numbers are not going down. Many safety advocates, including the Truck Safety Coalition, hold the trucking industry responsible as it pushes for progressively larger trucks and longer hours. And although safety organizations have been lobbying for years to create federal legislation regarding truck safety, it has been an uphill battle.

The truck safety movement got a recent shot in the arm with the involvement of the Teamsters union, and Senators Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, and Jim McGovern, D-Mass are sponsoring the Safe Highways and Infrastructure Protection Act before Congress. The purpose of the act is make the road ways safer by limiting truck size and keeping longer combination vehicles, or LCVs, and triple trailer trucks off the road.

Proposed federal regulations would impose tighter regulations on hours of service and record-keeping aboard trucks. The proposed legislation is designed to cut down on driver fatigue, a major contributor to truck accidents. Under current federal rules, drivers are limited to 77 hours of driving each week with no more than 11 consecutive hours at a time. As it stands now, drivers log their hours in paper logbooks that are easy to alter and falsify.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is working to reduce drive time to 10 consecutive hours of driving and require electronic on-board recorders, EOBRs, on trucks.

Metier Law Firm – Denver Accident Attorneys