NTSB Recommends Data Recorders on All Semi Trucks
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is a federal agency that investigates transportation related accidents and promotes transportation safety. That purpose includes investigating the causes of fatal and injury accidents involving semi trucks and recommending measures that can help prevent such accidents. The NTSB recently issued a report recommending that all semi trucks have on-board electronic data recorders that can accurately record certain information about the semi truck such as hours of service and characteristics of a vehicle crash such as speed and braking. Regarding the hours of service issue, it is well known in the trucking industry that semi truck drivers who are fatigued because they have driven too many hours without a break are often unsafe and involved in serious accidents. Federal regulations exist that limit the number of hours a semi truck driver can legally drive before he/she needs to take a break. Part of the problem is that it is difficult for a law enforcement officer or inspector to determine how many hours a particular semi truck driver has been driving at any given time. Semi truck drivers are required to keep driver's logs which document the time that driver has been driving, was otherwise on-duty or was off-duty. However, these records are only required to be made manually by the driver and are often either ignored or falsified with no recourse.
Requiring semi trucks to have on-board electronic recording devices would give law enforcement, as well as plaintiffs' lawyers for those people injured in an accident caused by a semi truck driver, an objective means of determining if a semi truck driver was driving over hours (and likely fatigued) as well as other information about the accident. As the NTSB notes, the current regulations dealing with hours of service for semi truck drivers do not include the necessary incentives to ensure that semi truck drivers keep accurate driving records and follow the regulations. Accidents caused by fatigued semi truck drivers on the highways are often the result.
