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MORE IMPORTANT, THE LAWYER YOU EMAIL MAY ALREADY BE YOUR ADVERSARY'S ATTORNEY.
While Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. represents only injured persons, the circumstances of an accident may make someone as close as your spouse, your potential adversary.

Driver Fatigue
Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.

No where does the highway safety run more clearly afoul of short term profits than in the area of driver fatigue. It is easy to see how greed can induce truckers to drive longer hours, with shorter breaks, to increase their income. Yet fatigue not only involves the horrific prospect of a trucker falling asleep while behind the wheel of an 80,000 pound vehicle, but it is also slows reaction time, effects judgment and even effects vision. The tired driver is not a safe driver. Profits are not the only incentive, as truckers may push themselves beyond safe limits, for motivations as simple as getting home for the weekend or avoiding day time traffic problems.

Regulatory Scheme. It is with the understanding that the individual driver cannot be trusted to use his or her own judgment to know when to quit, that both federal and state regulations impose maximum hours that can be driven, between mandatory rest periods.

• Maximum Hours: The first requirement is to regulate the maximum amount of hours that can legally be driven.
• Driver Logs: The second is to require detailed logs of what hours are driven.
• Auditing of Logs: The third is to implement an auditing plan to assure that logs are kept accurately.
  

Should Truckers to Drive after Midnight?

Hours of Driving. (Subject to numerous exceptions)

Daily requirement: No driver can drive a motor vehicle for more than 11 cumulative hours, following 10 consecutive hours "off duty." or
For any period after the 14th hour after coming on duty.

7 day requirement. No driver can drive, if they have been on duty 60 hours in 7 consecutive days;

8 day requirement. No driver can drive, if they have been on duty 70 hours in 8 consecutive days.

Weekly Rest Period. In order to start a new 7/8 day period, the driver has to be off for at least 34 or more consecutive hours.

• Driving time means all time spent at the driving controls of a commercial motor vehicle in operation.
• On duty time means all time from the time a driver begins to work or is required to be in readiness to work until the time the driver is relieved from work and all responsibility for performing work.
  

NEXT: Driver Logs

Johnson Law Office
1-800-992-9447
email:
g@gordonjohnson.com

For a full treatment of the topic of brain injury, and recovering adequate compensation for those who have survived such injury, please visit our other pages:

tbilaw.com - a general treatment of all types of brain injury, including severe brain injury and concussion, with a special focus on the legal aspects of recovering full and adequate compensation for such injuries. tbilaw.com has been at the cornerstone of our web advocacy for brain injury since we went online in 1996.

waiting.com - a page designed to assist those with issues regarding coma, especially in the acute phase when the doctors are saying "I just don't know."

vestibulardisorder.com - Addressing vertigo and dizziness resulting from trauma as well as information and resources for vestibular disorders.