Trucking Accident Lawyer Blog

Police believe a truck crash on Maryland’s Interstate I-695 in late July was the result of a truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel. According to news reports, the accident was so severe that Maryland State Police had to shut down the entire inner loop during the morning commute. As a Baltimore trucking accident attorney and personal injury lawyer, I know that drowsy driving is one of the major causes of commercial truck crashes.

A semi tractor-trailer rig is a formidable piece of machinery when compared to even the largest sport utility vehicle or light truck. Passenger cars have little chance of escaping serious damage when hit by an 18-wheeler that is out of control. Even a fully loaded box truck can cause serious property damage and bodily injury if it hits another, smaller vehicle.

According to news accounts, 23-year-old Michael Angel Ocasio was driving a white 2006 GMC box truck along the beltway, a short distance south of the Baltimore National Pike. Authorities said the driver apparently fell asleep and ran into the back of a flat bed trailer around 6am in the morning.

Emergency crews from Baltimore County Fire and Emergency Services working at the crash scene had to extract the truck driver from the wreckage. Ocasio was treated and then transported to Maryland Shock Trauma where doctors provided medical care for the driver’s severe leg injuries.

The driver of the flat bed trailer was taken to Northwest Hospital with non-life threatening injuries. At the time of the article, Maryland State Police police were still investigating the accident.

Police believe I-695 accident this morning was caused by driver who fell asleep, ABC2news.com, July 20, 2010

There are many different causes of trucking-related traffic accidents. From poorly maintained or badly designed vehicle equipment, to poor road conditions and driver error, most highway tractor-trailer accidents are hardly ever that… accidents. As Maryland truck accident attorneys, my office knows what to look for when it comes to injuries caused by the negligence of a truck driver or trucking company.

One cause of commercial truck crashes that is frequently in the news is that of driver fatigue. Government regulation limit trucker to a maximum number of hours behind the wheel, which ideally means that the driver then gets sufficient rest before the next day’s driving shift. What the law can’t easily address is how well truckers sleep and whether or not they are fully rested as a result.

Enter the problem of sleep apnea. A common problem with the general public, this affliction can cause loss of concentration and has been known to result in motorists falling asleep at the wheel. But for the average office worker, sleep apnea is more likely to get him chewed out at work than cause him to crash his automobile into a family of five on the interstate.

Unfortunately for the driving public, sleep apnea in truck drivers is a serious and potentially deadly condition, especially since these individuals not only drive eight to 10 hours a day, but their “office” is a 25-ton 18-wheeler traveling at close to 70mph on the expressway.

Apparently the trucking industry is taking this problem seriously as well. According to a recent news report, a recent gathering in Baltimore — the Sleep Apnea & Trucking Conference — where industry leaders, medical sleep professionals, regulators and vendors came together to address sleep apnea in trucking.

It is acknowledged by the industry, in general, that sleep apnea among truckers is a public health concern and that drivers, who admittedly have an already difficult job, can also suffer from multiple health problems. One researcher, Dr. Martin R. Walker, pointed out to attendees that the prevalence of sleep apnea in commercial truck drivers may be greater than most people know — a 2002 study determined that nearly one-third of commercial drivers have mild to severe obstructive sleep apnea.

One interesting item that came out of the conference was a statement by a legal expert who said until that now sleep apnea has not been a “major player” in trucking accident litigation, however it will likely become part of the “legal landscape” sooner rather than later.

Sleep apnea problems discussed, eTrucker.com, May 13, 2010

As a Maryland Trucking Accident lawyer, I know the unfortunate correlation between sleep deprivation and driver negligence, especially as it pertains to professional truck drivers and the sometimes careless operation of 18-wheeled tractor-trailer rigs. While not every over-the-road trucker pushes the limits of physical stamina, a percentage of semi drivers have been known to put in too many hours behind the wheel without sufficient sleep.

The results of sleep-related trucking wrecks can be serious, as news reports often depict. According to a recent article, a tractor-trailer accident caused apparently by an over-tired driver blocked a portion of Interstate 81 near Hagerstown, MD on a Monday afternoon last month. The accident occurred south of Showalter Road where Maryland State Police say the truck driver fell asleep, causing the rig with its 48,000-pound load of paper rolls to drift off the northbound lanes of the interstate, ending up on its side.

This is not an uncommon happening here in Maryland and across the rest of the country. A poll conducted last year by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) found that nearly 1.9 million drivers are involved in drowsy driving traffic accidents or near misses each and every year. Sadly, most drivers ignore the dangers that sleepiness can present when it comes to trucking and automobile accidents.

The NSF says that while drivers may quite good at recognizing when they are tired, this doesn’t always stop them from taking the wheel of a car or truck and hitting the road in a drowsy condition. Unfortunately, drivers many times can mistakenly believe that they can “will” themselves from falling asleep, which doesn’t necessarily work. And because a single moment of “reduced awareness” can cause a trucking accident, this kind of thinking can be very deadly.

In the case of the recent I-81 crash, the 76-year-old driver, Augustine Christian had reportedly been driving since 5am, according to state police on the scene. The driver’s tractor-trailer rig drove off the interstate just before 5pm and overturned on the right shoulder, state police said. Witnesses at the scene told police that tractor-trailer continued straight instead of following a curve in that stretch of roadway.

Fortunately, no one was seriously injured in the accident, which closed one of the northbound lanes for several hours as workers cleared the truck and trailer from the area. The trucker, who was charged with negligent driving, was taken to Washington County Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Tractor-trailer accident blocks portion of I-81, Herald-Mail.com, May 17. 2010

Sometime ago, the Maryland truck accident attorneys at Lebowitz & Mzhen, LLC published a post concerning a government program that allowed foreign truck drivers access to American roads. The original program, included under the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”), granted foreign truckers narrow access to the United States’ roadways. The Bush administration widened the program and allowed foreign drivers broader access to the roads throughout this country’s border states.

American truckers and their lobbyists unsuccessfully pressured the Bush administration to reduce the breadth of foreign trucker’s use of this country’s highways, claiming that the presence of foreign drivers on interior roadways put Americans at an increased risk of injuries from truck accidents. Now, American truckers could get their wish.

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a $410 billion dollar budget bill that included a provision that would end cross border trucking. The passage of this legislation may have addressed the concerns of American truckers, but the move has angered other NAFTA signatories who claim that this bill violates America’s treaty obligations and sends a dangerous economic signal.

Our attorneys will continue to track this story as it develops and as the bill heads to the White House for signature.

With Christmas and New Year’s just past, I spent a lot of time driving up and down Interstate 95, mostly along stretches of the highway that pass through the central and northern parts of Maryland, from Baltimore City up through and beyond Harford County. Not surprisingly, I encountered hundreds of tractor trailers along the way.

For a few miles, I followed one tractor trailer that was being driven in a somewhat erratic manner. I had time on my hand, and so I thought about why this driver may have been unable to drive in a completely straight fashion. Some obvious reasons came to me fast: the driver was drunk, or at least not completely sober; the driver was distracted by speaking on a cell phone; the truck operator was inexperienced.

Lastly, I thought about the one factor that is perhaps the most obvious, but often overlooked: driver fatigue. In 1990, The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted a study to determine the cause of 182 heavy truck accidents that resulted in the death of the truck driver. Interestingly, the study’s primary purpose was to “assess the role of alcohol and drugs in the accidents.”

The study found, however, that the most commonly cited cause of the fatal truck accidents was fatigue. The NTSB concluded, “the 31-percent incidence of fatigue in fatal-to-the-truck driver accidents found in the 1990 study represents a valid estimate of the portion of fatal-to-the-driver heavy truck accidents that are fatigue-related.”

When Maryland truck accident attorneys represent victims and the victims’ families in truck accident cases, one of the first things we investigate is whether fatigue played a role in causing the collision.

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