Chicago Personal Injury Law Blog

The Associated Press released an article recently detailing the numbers of truck drivers who are medically unfit to drive large commercial vehicles, but have obtained medical certificates which permit them to drive.

Regulations issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration require that truck drivers obtain a medical certificate showing their fitness to operate a truck. The purpose of the regulations is to limit the chances that the truck driver will have a medical emergency while behind the wheel of a heavy, powerful vehicle and will lose control of the truck. In other words, the making sure that the truck driver is healthy is intended to protect the motoring public.

Unfortunately, many of the physicals are cursory, and there is no mechanism in place to prevent potential truck drivers from going from doctor to doctor until one certifies the driver, i.e., doctor shopping.

The upshot of this hole in the regulatory scheme is that there have been a number of serious truck accidents where the truck driver has fallen asleep at the wheel, had seizures, or had a heart attack, and later investigation showed that the driver's health issues were a substantial cause of the truck crash. These truck accidents have resulted in several accidental wrongful deaths and severe injuries such as hip fractures or brain injuries.

There have been a number of proposed safety regulations pending since 2001 which were intended to tighten the medical qualifications of truck drivers and to end doctor shopping, but the Bush Administration has failed to act on them. These regulations would help assure public safety, and should be enacted.

Labels: truck accidents