Enhancing the Safety of American Highways:

Using Tort Law and Regulatory Devices to Reduce Trucking-Related Accidents

I. Introduction—Protecting American Highways

Every day millions of American families use the country’s highway system to commute to work, travel to vacation destinations, and visit friends and families. Indeed, the Interstate Highway System is the backbone of America. But while highways facilitate fun and opportunity for Americans, they also can also be scenes of devastation and loss for unsuspecting drivers. Due to their massive size and lax regulatory controls, semi-trucks pose a uniquely dangerous threat to the average American driver. To reduce the tragically high number of semi-truck accidents that befall American drivers, this essay offers several recommendations that promise to protect Americans by strengthening the trucking regulatory scheme.

II. Assessing the Scope of the Problem

But before analyzing how to reduce trucking-related accidents, it is important to fully understand just how costly these types of accidents are. In 2009 alone, large trucks were involved in almost 300,000 documented crashes, over 3,000 of which resulted in at least one fatality. In fact, 3,436 Americans lost their lives in semi-truck crashes in 2009. And while these statistics alone are shocking, they still do not account for the full impact of large truck accidents—98 percent of the fatalities are suffered by individuals in passenger vehicles, leaving semi-truck drivers unscathed the vast majority of the time.

Of course, fatalities are not the only deleterious effects of semi collisions. Those are survive can suffer a whole range of debilitating injuries from broken bones to severed spines. Some victims even require life-long care which can saddle their families and friends with millions of dollars of debt. And in addition to physical injuries, these accidents also inflict emotional and economic pain since survivors are often unable to work and must live with the emotional scars of a horrific wreck for the rest of their lives.

Its clear that semi-truck accidents impose huge costs on victims and their families, but what causes the accidents in the first place? Sadly, 9 out of 10 accidents can be traced to human error, often that of the driver of a five ton semi-truck. There are several different types of trucker error that most commonly lead to accidents.

One of the most significant factors that contributes to semi-truck collisions is driver fatigue. Since drivers are usually paid by the mile, trucking companies have created a system that incentivizes drivers to take as few breaks as possible while travelling as far as they can for as long as possible. As a result of this misaligned incentive structure, drivers often travel well above the legal speed limit, fail to observe passenger vehicles when changing lanes, and rarely get enough sleep or rest. Although the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (“FMCSA”) has promulgated a variety of regulations—like mandatory rest periods and caps on driving hours—the Government Accountability Office notes that few of FMCSA’s scarce resources are devoted to ensuring compliance which allows drivers and trucking companies to skirt federal regulations.

Unsafe equipment and vehicles are another major cause of commercial trucking accidents. Although weigh stations exist to deter trucking companies from overloading vehicles, trucks, they are an imperfect enforcement device since they are often closed and truckers can sometimes bypass them. Trucking companies even encourage their drivers to overload their vehicles because it allows the companies to transport more goods at a lower cost, generating greater profit. Unfortunately, overloaded vehicles are far more likely end up in a dangerous accident because the extra weight stresses semi-trucks’ brake systems and an overloaded truck will cause more damage in the event of a collision. In addition to overloading trucks, companies sometimes replace their trucks’ equipment with second-rate replacements or skip regular maintenance altogether, all in an attempt to pad their bottom-line. And most trucks lack important equipment that can substantially reduce accident rates like sleep warning systems and devices that impose top-end speed restrictions.

III. Fixing the Problem

Although there are a variety of ways to reduce semi-truck accidents and protect drivers of passenger vehicles, two reforms are likely to be the most effective. The most obvious approach is preserve a robust tort regime. In the status quo, the current tort law regime is under threat as “tort reform” advocates push for damage caps for victims and stronger mechanisms to screen out certain types of lawsuits. While there is some merit to the claims of those seeking the modify the tort law system, over-vigorous reform threatens to deny victims just compensation while simultaneously insulating corporations from the effects of their negligence. These issues are especially prevalent in the context of trucking accidents as the overwhelming majority of those injured are innocent drivers of passenger vehicles. A potent tort regime ensures full redress for innocent victims, deters negligence on the part of trucking companies and drivers, and helps create safer road conditions for all Americans.

Crafting an enhanced regulatory scheme for truckers and trucking companies is another way to help protect American drivers. Recent FMCSA regulations, released in 2013, are a promising step in the right direction. Chief among the new rules the FMCSA promulgated are cutting the maximum driver workweek from 82 hours to 70 hours and mandating a 30-minute rest break within the first eight hours of a trucking trip. By curbing the hours truckers can spend on the road and instituting compulsory rest periods, the federal government is helping to ensure drivers receive sufficient rest and breaks so that they stay alert and aware of their surroundings.

But while this new bevy of federal regulations certainly represents a step in the right direction, there is more that can be done to decrease trucking-related accidents. Perhaps the most important regulatory move is to increase emphasis on enforcement efforts; a 2011 Government Accountability Office report observed that the FMCSA dedicates a relatively small number of its resources to enforcement and that the agency believes it needs “significantly more resources to fully implement its regulatory charge. No matter how well-designed an administrative scheme is, it will fail unless it receives adequate funding and attention to compliance efforts. Thus, an important next step is to prioritize FMCSA funding and add teeth to the agency’s enforcement program so that truckers and trucking companies cannot skirt FMCSA regulations with impunity.

A final promising regulatory enhancement would be to require trucking companies to outfit their rigs with more efficacious safety devices. One such requirement should be installation of powerful sleep-warning systems—an FMCSA sponsored study found that nearly one-third of commercial truck drivers suffer from sleep apnea, putting them at increased risk of falling asleep at the wheel. An effective sleep-warning system would alert drivers when they begin to nod off and direct them to a rest station where they can rest. Speed-control systems are another common-sense technology requirement that would limit the top speed commercial truck drivers could engage in, decreasing the likelihood of a truck being unable to break or causing a particularly dangerous high-speed wreck. Not only would these safety devices reduce the number of fatalities and injuries to innocent drivers, but they would also save trucking companies money in the long-run by decreasing the number of accidents their drivers generate.

IV. Conclusion

Despite several promising developments in the field of semi-truck safety, there are still far too many fatalities and severe injuries caused by negligent truck-drivers, the costs of which are overwhelmingly borne by drivers of two-ton passenger vehicles instead of the drivers of big-rigs that can weigh more than fifteen tons. So that Americans can feel safer sharing the roads with semi-trucks, the availability of strong tort remedies needs to be preserved and governmental authorities should strengthen the existing regulatory environment