Truck Driver Behavior Blamed as a Top Cause of Serious Tractor-trailer Accidents Resulting in Injury and Death
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released its first Behavioral Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC) in the Comprehensive Safety Analysis for 2010. The FMCSA states that driver behavior is a substantial contributing cause to most 18 wheeler tractor-trailer crashes that result in serious bodily injury and death. Starting in 2010, the FMCSA will begin closely monitoring roadside inspections that result in traffic violations issued to truck drivers and trucking companies in an effort to predict and rate commercial motor carriers safety performance. BASIC can predict and gauge performance based upon serious safety violations including improper passing or lane change, following too close, speeding, and a host of others.
The BASIC data system will rate roadside inspection violations based upon their severity, one being the least severe and 10 being the most severe. The higher the severity of the violation, the more likely that violation could have, or did cause, a serious tractor-trailer accident. This data is compiled for each motor carrier and then compared to other motor carriers based upon similar fleet sizes (number of power units). The thought behind implementation of this new rating service is to identify problem carriers and dangerous drivers before they cause a fatal truck accident. It is suspected that the insurance companies that offer commercial liability insurance policies to motor carriers will have a keen interest in this data prior to underwriting, as well as throughout the term of the policy to monitor risk exposure.
80,000 pound tractor-trailers can become deadly when careless truck drivers are placed behind the wheel. It is important to note that not all drivers are dangerous. Often times it is the trucking company itself that was a major cause of the crash, usually due to improper training and screening of drivers. Contact a Missouri truck crash injury lawyer to discuss whether truck driver behavior is to blame in your truck crash injury claim.
The BASIC data system will rate roadside inspection violations based upon their severity, one being the least severe and 10 being the most severe. The higher the severity of the violation, the more likely that violation could have, or did cause, a serious tractor-trailer accident. This data is compiled for each motor carrier and then compared to other motor carriers based upon similar fleet sizes (number of power units). The thought behind implementation of this new rating service is to identify problem carriers and dangerous drivers before they cause a fatal truck accident. It is suspected that the insurance companies that offer commercial liability insurance policies to motor carriers will have a keen interest in this data prior to underwriting, as well as throughout the term of the policy to monitor risk exposure.
80,000 pound tractor-trailers can become deadly when careless truck drivers are placed behind the wheel. It is important to note that not all drivers are dangerous. Often times it is the trucking company itself that was a major cause of the crash, usually due to improper training and screening of drivers. Contact a Missouri truck crash injury lawyer to discuss whether truck driver behavior is to blame in your truck crash injury claim.
