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Truck Driver Fatigue Kills and Injures Thousands of People

Posted by: at 7:05 AM on May 8th, 2018

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that truck driver fatigue is a factor in 30 to 40 percent of accidents involving large commercial vehicles, such as tractor-trailers, flatbed semis, delivery trucks and coal trucks. In many of those crashes, the driver was not merely drowsy, but actually fell asleep at the wheel.

Fatigued drivers operating 40-ton tractor-trailers are a menace to themselves and everyone else on the road: drifting over the center line, sideswiping cars in the next lane, blowing through intersections and rear-ending other vehicles at high speed. Many times, the sleepy driver does not even hit the brakes or swerve. The result is horrible fatalities and major injuries that are even worse than the typical semi truck accident.

For all these reasons, the federal Department of Transportation limits over-the-road truckers to 11 consecutive hours on the road. Drivers must also rest for 10 hours between shifts. While many experts believe these rules should be even stricter, thousands of truckers already violate the Hours of Service rules. Then, usually with the employer’s consent, they falsify their logbooks.

If all truck drivers actually followed these rules, perhaps your loved one would still be alive or would not have suffered serious injury. At LDM Law, we automatically investigate driver fatigue as a primary cause of or contributing factor in truck crashes. We are dedicated to holding sleepy truckers and their employers fully accountable for the tragedies inflicted on our personal injury and wrongful death clients.

Our Milwaukee based firm has obtained substantial verdicts and settlements in truck accident lawsuits across Wisconsin, including cases of truck driver fatigue.  Our knowledgeable attorneys act promptly to obtain drivers’ logbooks, dispatch records, GPS tracking data, “black box