Ep. 82 - Truck Driver Vision Survey Reveals Shocking Results

Episode 82: Truck Driver Vision Survey Reveals Shocking Results: A Conversation with Ashley Napier

David Craig: When you’re in a car and you’re driving and you have vision issues or traction, snow or ice or fog or glare, sun or whatever, and you’re around a semi, you need to be very careful. You also need to take in consideration that not all truckers are going to be doing the right thing and not all car drivers are going to be doing the right thing. And I would seriously consider, myself, not driving in those conditions. I’m attorney Dave Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelley & Faultless. I’ve represented people who have been seriously injured or who have had a family member killed in a semi or other big truck wreck for over 30 years. Following the wreck, their lives are chaos. Often they don’t even know enough about the process to ask the right questions. It is my goal to empower you by providing you with the information you need to protect yourself and your family. In each and every episode, I will interview top experts and professionals that are involved in truck wreck cases. In the Ask David episodes of After the Crash, we switch things up. Instead of me asking questions, I answer the questions. Nothing’s off limits, and they ask me about truck safety, about truck accidents, about semi-truck litigation, about commercial motor vehicle wrecks. You name it, I talk about it. This is After the Crash.

Ashley Napier: Welcome to another episode of After the Crash Podcast, Ask David version, where your host, me, Ashley Napier, litigation supervisor here at Craig, Kelly & Faultless. We are going to be interviewing David again today. Welcome, David.

David Craig: Thank you. It’s always good to be back on my own podcast.

Ashley Napier: Yeah. Thanks for letting me continue to take over monthly. I’ve grown to love it. So I wanted to talk with you a little bit about … So last month in March, you gave a presentation at ATAA [Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys] talking to attorneys around the country about some really important things, including visibility for truck drivers. And in preparing for that presentation, you did something kind of interesting and unique. You interviewed, or I guess you surveyed a hundred truck drivers. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

David Craig: Yeah, so thanks, Ashley. So I did, I spoke at the ATAA Conference in North Carolina, Charlotte. And I think for you folks that are listening to this that don’t know what ATAA is, it’s the biggest national truck accident group of attorneys in the country. And so there are lawyers who are focused on representing the victims of semi and commercial motor vehicle accidents. And I happen to be on the Board of Regents with my partner, Scott Faultless, in that group. I’ve been on that Board of Regents from the very beginning of that group. And I’m board-certified, which everybody on the Board of Regents is board-certified. And so, it’s a group where we teach other lawyers and speak on how to handle truck wreck cases. And so I was asked to speak on visibility issues. How does fog and rain and sleet and smoke and glare and torrential rain, how do those things affect truck drivers? Because we see those truck drivers use those as excuses a lot. And so I was preparing for that and I thought, you know what would be helpful would be for me to survey truck drivers, truckers from all over the country that have commercial motor vehicle licenses and get their opinion on some of these issues with visibility. And so we did that so that we kind of have a perspective, their perspective, see how they’re thinking, what they think of these issues, what they’re doing about these issues, how supportive are the trucking companies that they work for. And just, I always like an opportunity to learn. And I think it helps you as a plaintiff lawyer, as a personal injury lawyer that does trucking cases, is to try to understand the perspective of the truck driver.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, certainly. I mean, I think that visibility, there’s nothing that you can really point to to fix it. I mean, I guess there are certain things that we learned in your survey, but I mean, you’re always going to have to combat the sun. Weather changes. So is there anything that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations point to that a truck driver should do if they encounter some sort of visibility issues when they’re on their route?

David Craig: Yeah. So the first thing you have to remember is that, I mean, driving a truck is not like driving a car. And oftentimes I’ll have truckers say, “Well, car drivers have to be careful.” Well, that’s true. I mean, everybody has a duty of reasonable care. So if you’re driving a car, you have a duty to operate your car in a reasonable manner. Now, the problem is though, when you’re driving 40 tons, a vehicle that weighs up to 40 tons, that’s 80,000 pounds. That vehicle can do a lot more harm than most cars. And so just like flying a plane, if you fly a plane, you have to have a license, you got to get a permit, you have to get experience, knowledge, and you have to get a pilot’s license. Well, it’s the same is true. I can’t go just hop in a semi and drive it across the country without a commercial motor vehicle driver’s license, a CDL. And so your commercial driver’s license enables you to do that. Well, if you’re going to drive a truck, if you’re going to drive commercially, if you’re going to drive a semi across this country, then you have to have the knowledge and the skill to do that. And that knowledge and skill is different than what it is to drive a car. And the rules are tougher and the rules require more. And I think what’s really important is that truck drivers, they promise when they get that CDL, they promise, “Okay, I will follow the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. I will follow those rules. I will follow those procedures.” And they are tested on the CDL, which is more specific guidance of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. And they’re required to look at those and know those and they’re tested on them. So when a truck driver drives a truck on our highways, they have different standards, different rules than those people who drive cars. That doesn’t mean people who drive cars can be careless, but they don’t have to use the same rules that truck drivers do. And that’s good because we want safe truckers. When they’re driving that heavy of equipment, we want only the best out there on the roadway. We all want the people who have the skill, who have the knowledge, who know the rules to operate those vehicles. And for the most part, I would say, I bet you it’s 90% of the people out there that are driving trucks are those safe, careful, prudent people who have the knowledge and the skill to drive trucks. I’ve talked with tons of truckers who’ve driven their entire career without ever having a wreck or an accident. Unfortunately, there are some out there who are really bad, and those bad ones give everybody a bad name. But I think even good truckers would say, “Well, we want good truckers on the roadway, not bad ones, and we would like to get the bad ones out of trucks and out of the trucking industry.” But to answer your question, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, Section 392.14 is probably the preeminent rule. So when you’re dealing with things that affect your vision, such as glare, fog, torrential rain, snowstorms, dust storms, glare of the sun, all those type of things that can affect your visibility, or in some respects, sometimes affect your traction, then truckers are required to use extreme caution. They’re required to slow down and use extreme caution. And that rule is something that only the truckers have and they have to follow. And then the CDL manual gives them guidance on what that means. So, for example, if you’re driving on wet pavement, so let’s say you can’t see and the roads are wet, you have to decrease your speed by a third. If you’re driving on packed snow, 50%, and then if it’s ice, you’re supposed to get off the road as soon as you can safely do that. But there’s rules in the CDL manual that talks about you have to keep distance. And so basically you want to follow a vehicle in front of you and you want to be far enough back that you can always stop your semi without hitting them if the vehicle in front of you stops. And the problem is that the faster you’re going, then the more distance you’ve got to give yourself. On the other hand, if you can’t see very far in front of you, then you have to slow down to be able to stop your vehicle in that distance. And so there’s definitely rules that are required to be followed and truckers are required to follow them, and we want that to be true. We want those truckers following those rules.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, I certainly do. I mean, I think that I look at it as [Interstate] 70 runs directly across our state. And I think that everything that you’ve listed vision-wise, glare, rainstorms, snow, fog, all of those things, smoke, they can encounter on 70. There’s not really a clear cut like, what do we do? Put down your visor for sun. I think the top answer was put on sunglasses, kind of scary because you could adjust your route, can you not? Can you know the sunset and the sun rise depending on if you’re going east or west, and you could adjust your route accordingly, correct?

David Craig: Absolutely. So a trucking company has an obligation to try to help their drivers and to do that. And so if you’re running dedicated routes or you’re running certain routes and you’re driving into the sunset or you’re driving into sunrise, then if you deviate your route by a little bit of time, then you can avoid the worst part of that glare. I’ve had cases where there was snowstorms or torrential rainstorms, and the trucking company did nothing to help the driver avoid that. And so the driver’s out on the roadway and these folks had trucks all over the country. And so dispatch, I deposed the dispatcher and he did nothing to help the truck drivers determine the weather and to reroute them so they could avoid that. And unfortunately, this guy slid on ice and caused a brain injury. So yeah, so trucking companies have a responsibility to make sure, first of all, that their truck drivers are trained properly, and then also to try to assist them in trying to avoid these extreme weather conditions. And they do that in a variety of ways. I mean, what’s kind of cool was part of the survey, I asked them, “Did your trucking companies, did your employer assist you and help you?” And if so, how did they do that? And certainly some of the trucking companies were very proactive. They actually didn’t punish the drivers for pulling off and stopping when extreme weather was there. So whether it was fog or glare or rain or snow or sleet, they were encouraged to pull off the roadway if visibility got bad or the road conditions were bad and they lost traction. And they would pay them for being stopped. But unfortunately, there are other trucking companies that will not pay their drivers. And so if a driver stops, they don’t get paid. So they’re sitting there waiting for the storm to pass and they’re losing money. So they’re only getting paid for the load to be delivered. And so those folks are encouraged to get there as fast as they can and because otherwise they’re losing money. And so we saw that. And so some of the trucking companies are helping their drivers. But some small percentage had dispatch that would proactively guide their drivers. Some of them had equipment and were giving them updates in their truck in real time as far as weather conditions, temperature, those type of things. But probably the scariest thing to me was glare and fog. I mean, those are things that we run into, glare we run into all the time. And I was really shocked at some of the outcome. And I will tell you that, I mean, it’s very controversial because every one of us has driven in hard rain or been in a car. Every one of us has been in the fog. Every one of us has been in a snowstorm and everybody has a different threshold or comfort level to be on the roadway in those terrible conditions. When I was a kid, my dad, who was a Marine, we would drive back and forth between Richmond, Indiana and Plainfield, Indiana, and we would go on I-70. And I can remember we would go regularly. My great-grandmother owned a small grocery store over in Richmond and we’d go visit her and my grandma at least every other week, if not every week. And I can remember driving home riding out in the backseat with my sister, and I can remember the storms being so bad or the fog being so bad, either one, where you couldn’t see anything in front of you. Usually it was rain. And I can remember my mom in tears asking my dad to pull off, and my dad absolutely refused to pull off. He thought it was like a sign of weakness or something to pull off. And by God, we were going through no matter what. And fortunately, we always made it through. But I can just remember, my dad, his standard was completely different than my mom’s standard or my standard today having represented victims of truck cases. And so everybody has different standards. And so what you want though is you want truck drivers to use extreme caution to protect all of us on the roadway when they’re faced with these horrible conditions.

Ashley Napier: Certainly. I mean, I think my threshold is definitely different. The thing that I take comfort in is that there are regulations in place that truck drivers do have to follow. What was the one thing that kind of stood out to you from the survey? Anything that you didn’t expect?

David Craig: The glare was the worst. So glare, it can actually blind you, so you cannot see very far in front of you. And right now we have two cases that I can think of, and we probably have more, but two of them that we’re currently working on. And one of them, a truck driver was driving on 70 and he was driving into the sun set. And so it was a glare and he had a dash cam so we could see what he was seeing. And his visor’s down, but still the glare was so bad, you couldn’t see very far in front of you, not much past the hood of his tractor. And all of a sudden, you see him rear end our client’s vehicle and knock it underneath another semi because traffic had stopped because of a construction or slowed down for some one reason or another. And so this semi-driver, he had not slowed at all. He was going full speed, highway speed, and he plowed into the back of our client and nearly killed her and really injured her badly. I had another one where the glare, a semi-driver’s in the left-hand lane of the interstate, and he’s driving into the sunrise, and there was a construction zone, and there were cones closing down the left lane, and it’s two lanes, and he couldn’t see the cones because of the glare. And so as he’s driving still highway speed, all of a sudden the cones are there and he sees them at little too late and swerves to the right and hits, in this case, hit another semi-driver, who we represent the semi-driver. So glare is something that is a huge problem because if you can’t see and you continue to travel highway speed, then everything in front of you or beside you is in danger. And I was shocked when I surveyed the hundred drivers that, and I’ll read it, the results were only 3% of the drivers said they slow down. So 3% slow down and 3% or 2% said they don’t deal with it at all. And so 3% pull over. So you have basically 6% who either pull over or slow down and the rest of the folks either don’t deal with it or don’t slow down. And that’s scary when you think about it.

Ashley Napier: Oh, absolutely. As somebody that travels I-70 frequently after work to go to Columbus, Ohio to visit my family or to come back to Indianapolis, usually Sundays at sunset, that’s terrifying to know that 94 out of, what, a hundred drivers will just keep on going.

David Craig: And same thing with fog. And fog is another one. I mean, when it’s foggy, you can’t … I mean, literally sometimes you can’t see hardly a car length ahead of you. And I was shocked again at how many said that they didn’t slow down. I mean, it was more, but many didn’t. And the thing about it was that … So when there’s fog, the CDL manual tells you that you should use your low beams. And so truck drivers are trained, if they go to truck driving school, to use low beams. There were several who said they use high beams. So even though they were trained to do it one way, they were doing it another way. Several of them were not slowing down because of the fog. And it just struck me, as I look at the survey results, how bad it is. When it’s snow or ice, I saw most of them said that … 35% said they would slow down. 26% said they’d be cautious or alert. 19 said they’d pull over. So they would turn their hazard lights on. I mean, so I saw when there’s snow and ice, I was surprised that most truckers were trying to do things differently, but the ones that … And rain was kind of very similar to the statistic. 44% said they would slow down, 20% said they would pull over. So more than half, 16 said they were more cautious than normal. I mean, so you actually saw in rain and snow and sleeve and ice, more truckers being careful, not all of them, unfortunately, but the majority were. But with fog and glare, just the trucking companies weren’t doing anything and the truck drivers weren’t doing anything, and that was scary to me.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that it has anything to do with the fact that the snowy conditions, icy conditions, wet conditions are all specifically laid out in the regulations? Or do you think that that probably has nothing to do with it? I don’t know.

David Craig: Yeah. I mean, but the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations specifically say that when you have these vision issues, that you have to slow down and you have to use extreme caution. And they mentioned fog, they mentioned glare. And then the CDL manual deals with those issues as well, and keeping a safe distance behind, watching, keeping a lookout. And most industry standards and most companies do it. I just don’t know with glare, I don’t know what it is. It’d be interesting to ask these truckers follow-up questions as to why do you feel like you can continue to drive fast with glare or fog? I don’t know. I mean, those typically don’t affect traction. They affect vision. Snow and ice and wet pavement affect both vision and traction. So maybe that’s something, but what’s scary is that it’s just there’s obviously not consistent training on folks on how to use the safety to pull off and just be careful. I mean, if you can’t see in front of you, regardless of why, you need to get off the highway.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think sunrise, sunset, glare, that’s something that you encounter. I mean, unless it’s a cloudy day, you’re going to encounter that more times than you do snow, rain, along your route. So I think it’s definitely something that maybe we can dive a little deeper with some more surveys.

David Craig: And truckers, I mean, we talk to truckers, and so hopefully if there’s truckers listening to this, hopefully they’ll call in or email us and ask us. I was on my way to this seminar, I was driving through the mountains of North Carolina and it was weird because we were getting a heavy snowstorm and it wasn’t causing much snow to go on the ground, but it was definitely affecting visibility. And in the mountains, I was noticing that truckers were, most of them had their flashers on, had decreased their speed and were driving single file and very carefully. And I would argue that they were using extreme caution. But then for every 20, 50 trucks that were doing the right thing, there’d be one or two that were doing 60 miles an hour, flying by in the left lane or the passing lane and not slowing down at all, even though they couldn’t see more than a car length ahead of them. So I mean, I saw it in my own eyes as I drove to North Carolina, and all too often you see those trucks jackknifed down the road, they’re the ones that caused the wrecks. It’s not the majority of the truckers who are using extreme caution, who are being careful. It’s that small percent that endangers all of us.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that for anybody listening, if you do have any follow-up, we would love to hear from you. Like David said, call in, email us. I know we’ll be putting out more things in specifics regarding visibility on our blog and stuff like that later on this month. I think that’s all the questions I had for you, at least right now, David, until next month, that is. Do you have anything else to add regarding visibility?

David Craig: No, I just think that folks be careful out there. When you’re in a car and you’re driving and you have vision issues or traction, snow or ice or fog or glare, sun or whatever, and you’re around a semi, you need to be very careful. You also need to take in consideration that not all truckers are going to be doing the right thing and not all car drivers are going to be doing the right thing. And I would seriously consider myself not driving in those conditions. I’m not going to take a chance with my family, my grandkids, my kids. And if there’s really bad glare, if there’s really bad fog, pull off and wait it out, take the time, be careful and be safe out there.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, certainly. And to those 6% of truck drivers or the other 40% thank you for doing what you’re doing, you are the gold standard, so to speak. And we thank you for keeping America running. But that’s all I have this week. Thank you all for tuning into another episode of After The Crash Podcast with Ask David Edition.

David Craig: This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After the Crash. If you’d like more information about me or my law firm, please go to our website, ckflaw.com. Or if you’d like to talk to me, you can call 1-800-Ask-David. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, then pick up my book, Semi-Truck Wreck, A Guide for Victims and Their Families, which is available on Amazon, or you can download it for free on our website, ckflaw.com.