Florida Injury Attorney Blog

In October of 2005, a semi truck driver apparently fell asleep while driving his semi truck and crashed into a bus carrying high school students.  Five people were killed and many were injured.  Investigators determined that the semi truck driver likely fell asleep at the wheel prior to the crash. 

As we have discussed several times on this blog, fatigue is a major cause of, and contributor to, motor vehicle accidents involving semi trucks.  As a result, semi truck drivers are regulated by federal regulations in the number of hours they can drive without a rest.  One way for police and inspectors to determine how many hours a semi truck driver has been driving is to look at the driver's logs which are supposed to show time driving, on duty hours and off duty hours.  The problem with using driver's logs as the measure of number of driving and on duty hours is that they are prepared by the drivers themselves and can easily be falsified.  There are ways to check the information in a driver's logs, i.e. by comparing them with fuel receipts, inspection reports and GPS data, but that information is not always readily available to an officer or inspector who is checking a driver's logs.  Trucking companies are also supposed to monitor a driver's log books to make sure their drivers are keeping accurate logs and are not exceeding the regulated hours of service and driving while fatigued.

According to a newspaper in Wisconsin, the semi truck driver who caused the injury and fatal accident described above falsified his driving logs at least 12 times in the two months prior to the crash.  He did this to make it look like he took sufficient off duty hours to be well rested while driving.  As a result of these allegations, federal officials are charging him criminally, and if he is convicted, he faces up to 60 years in prison.