Why Fatal Truck Accidents Continue to Occur

Zach Cahalan: Don’t assume that things are safe in the large trucking industry. There’s no reason to think that. Whether you’re someone who’s already suffered a tragedy in this space, you know someone who has—you could be the person in the wrong place at the wrong time the next time a tragedy happens. They’re happening with increasing frequency.

David Craig – Host: I’m Attorney David Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of Craig, Kelley & Faultless. For over 35 years, I’ve dedicated my career to helping individuals and families who have been seriously injured or lost loved ones in devastating semi-truck, large truck, and other commercial motor vehicle accidents.

When tragedy strikes, life can feel chaotic, overwhelming, and uncertain. Many people don’t even know where to begin or what questions to ask. That’s why I created After the Crash, a podcast designed to empower you with the knowledge and resources you need to navigate these challenging times. In each episode, I sit down with experts, professionals, victims, and others involved in truck wreck cases to give you insight, guidance, and practical advice. Together we’ll help you understand your rights, protect your family, and move forward. This is After the Crash.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of After the Crash. Today we have Zach Cahalan, who is the director, executive director, of the Truck Safety Coalition, which is an advocacy group that sticks up and fights for the victims of truck wrecks and the folks that are injured in semi-truck and commercial motor vehicle wrecks throughout this country. Zach, welcome to this episode.

Zach Cahalan: Outstanding. Thanks so much for having me, David.

David Craig – Host: And so, you guys are the voice of the victims of truck wrecks. Talk a little bit about that and what your group does and where you’re located at.

Zach Cahalan: Sure. Yeah, you got it. Well, we’re based here in Washington D.C. At the end of the day, we’ve been around 30-plus years, have a lot of, if you will, successes to our name that we’re very proud of, if you will, skins on the wall. But we exist to provide compassionate support to victims and survivors of truck crashes, those who survive a crash, all the impacted family members who lost a loved one.

And a portion of those folks want to make a difference. They want to make sure that that pain, that preventable tragedy does not happen to someone else. For some, it’s a way to cope with their grief. For some, it’s just a way to give back. Whatever the motivation may be, we help them do that. We help them tell that story. We help make sure that that crash, that tragedy is never forgotten.

But specifically, we’re going to help them to tell that skillfully to members of the media, to regulators of the industry, to policymakers. As you and I both know, there is no shortage of opportunities that one could look at. If safety was truly the top priority, there’s many, many ways we could be doing better.

David Craig – Host: Unfortunately, as you and I both know, the safety on our highways, as it relates to semis and commercial motor vehicles, is getting worse, not better. We’re seeing that and I’m dealing with it, you’re dealing with it, and you’re speaking up for these victims. I’m like you. I mean I’ve been doing this for 38 years, and I’ve never had a client come to me and say, “How much money is my family going to get?” They always come to me saying, “Why in the world did this happen? How did this happen? How could this have happened? What could be done to change it so that another family doesn’t have to go through what I’ve gone through?”

I love the fact that you guys are their voice in Washington. I know, like, for example, I just read an article in The Washington Post that interviewed you publicly. You’re out there talking and explaining why things are dangerous, how things could be made safer, how we all could be protected.

Quite frankly, as we get, this is being shot and filmed on a holiday weekend, unfortunately, there’s going to be more fatalities this weekend. There’s going to be more people on the roadway. The more people are on the roadway, unfortunately, the more likely they are to run into a dangerous, a bad truck driver or trucking company. I mean I think the last statistics I saw like in 2022, over 6,000 fatalities. Does that sound right?

Zach Cahalan: Yeah. Just over 6,000 in ’22. The ’23 figures are out. They did go down a bit. We’re at nearly 5,500 deaths, 150,000 injuries. And so, well, of course you’re encouraged to see a dip, but we have to recognize that we were at record highs prior to this ’23 data coming out.

Truck crash fatalities have increased 62% since 2009. Almost any state we’re doing this, as we’re helping victims talk to their policymakers, you’re seeing some states had an increase of 226%, even using the most recent data available. So it happens far more frequently than one might think.

It’s one of those deals that I don’t think most people, myself included, until you get involved in this work, you never think about. Why would you? It is rarely in the spotlight. There are times, and when those times happen, we have to try to educate, to your point that you were saying earlier. But it is far more common than people realize, and, again, there’s much to be done to make a difference.

David Craig – Host: Well, we’re a supporter of Truck Safety Coalition. We have supported you for the last couple of years. We’ll continue to support you in the future, because anything that can be done that brings awareness to these issues is critically important, I believe.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah, no doubt about it. We like to tell folks, for folks who support us—and thank you, of course, for your continued support—the life you save might be your own. I mean you really don’t know. For most of the people I’m sure that you’ve worked with, that we see in our community—we’ve got over 300, close to 400 folks a part of our, if you will, truck crash victim and survivor community—their only sin was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’re no different than me. They just were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That could have been me. That could have been my family member. There’s nothing that makes me special to have avoided this fate, and that is very motivating.

David Craig – Host: Absolutely. Well, and for people who are in this industry—I get hired almost weekly from folks who’ve been involved in commercial motor vehicle wrecks, and for you, because you’re seeing what the effects are—but to so many people, they don’t realize. I get nervous that the equipment that we’re seeing on the road, the drivers that we’re seeing on the road, the trucking companies that we’re seeing on the road, they’re getting worse. I guess not all. Some companies are really good—

Zach Cahalan: Sure, yup.

David Craig – Host: … and there are good companies that care, that follow, that are advocates for safety and pushing for a variety of the same things you and I might be pushing for.

Zach Cahalan: Sure.

David Craig – Host: But on the other hand, what I find are the bad ones are getting worse.

Zach Cahalan: I think that’s fair, and I think, to your point, and we’re not going to paint with a broad brush here, that there truly are top-notch companies out there who do their best to do right by safety, and that needs to be applauded.

I do think that’s the exception, not the rule. When we look at the quantity of carriers, you’ve got almost a million carriers out there. While, yes, there are a lot of regulations that exist, we refer to them as Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations—the FMCSRs, for the uninitiated—there’s very little that pushes people toward compliance. You and I both know we don’t just want compliance. Compliance is the floor. You want a safety culture. You want to be one of those exceptions, those great companies that really pursue safety regardless of the cost.

That is definitely the exception. That much I think we can agree on. But, we developed a little quiz on our website at trucksafety.org that folks can look at, and we asked some basic questions that typically surprise people. If you don’t mind, I’ll go through a couple of them that’d give people an idea, again the uninitiated, of just how terrified you should be because we’re really not safe on our roads.

One is—and I know you know the answer to this, but I’d like to ask folks—how many hours do you think you need, are required to drive by law, by federal statute, to obtain a Class A CDL to drive one of those big rigs? How many hours? I routinely get a 100, 200, 80, 50. They range, but typically it’s 50 and above are the guesses I’m going to get. Which, if you think about it, 50 is two, roughly, full 24-hour days, and that’s the low guess.

The correct answer is zero. Zero is required. The requirement is you take your skills test from an examiner who may or may not be on the up and up, and whatever time it took you to take that skills test is the practice you got driving a rig. There’s also a knowledge exam that you have to take, so I’ll mention that. But that’s ludicrous. That is absurd. The idea …

There was even, and I won’t name names, but big industry went through a lot of work to make sure that was the case. Which should shock you, it should anger you, because any reasonable human acknowledges that driving an 80,000-pound truck requires specialized training. They better practice before they drive next to my family on Memorial Day weekend. That’s nuts.

David Craig – Host: The sad thing is with that, there are some companies who have their own schools or assist their drivers. It’s already easy, but some of them just rubber stamp it in order to get drivers on the road.

Zach Cahalan: Certainly. Not all do, obviously, but some certainly do. They have a perverse incentive, a conflict of interest here to pass their own students. We always advocate for having independent, both knowledge and skills test, administrators. Seems to be commonsense, at least to us.

But the other one I’ll throw out there, to start a business, and maybe we will or won’t get to insurance, but you’ve got to have to prove you’ve got the minimum insurance coverage. You fill out some paperwork from the Department of Transportation. You sign something; you self-attest that you have read all the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, and they send you a DOT motor carrier number back and you’re good to go. You can put a driver in a truck. They have no idea if you know any of the rules, if you’re going to use the drug and alcohol clearing house, if you have a truck that’s even able to be roadworthy.

It’s so stupid simple. We have people in our coalition who have suffered because of that very thing, of people who had no clue what they were doing, didn’t have ELDTs in the rig. They hired this kid, they started the company two weeks ago. Now they’re driving down mountain roads in Texas and killing five people and injuring over 10, whatever the case may be. It’s crazy.

I mean in this community, and I think it’s true in most places, if you want to be a home contractor, or just to remodel bathrooms, you’ve got to take a test to show that you know the codes for wherever you happen to live. If you go in a different state, you have to have to prove you know their codes, at least one person in the company has to. But to put people behind 80,000-pound trucks and run them across the country, crisscross the country, whatever route they need to go on, you don’t have to prove anything?

David Craig – Host: Yeah.

Zach Cahalan: It’s crazy.

David Craig – Host: That’s scary. Well, and I’ve taken the deposition of, I mean, tons of truck drivers, and there are so many that when you ask them rig, their knowledge about a rig, they have no knowledge. You ask them about something in the CDL manual, they have no knowledge. Then you ask them what their rule, “Well, what’s your rule of thumb?” They give you some rule that makes no sense.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah.

David Craig – Host: And so, it’s like every bad wreck or significant wreck, you have to wonder, does the driver even know what the rules are? Unfortunately, so many times they don’t.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah, oftentimes they don’t. I mean even I was thinking about it this morning, preparing for our time together, Boeing was in the news. Whatever people feel about Boeing, they had a special arrangement where they were self-validating parts of their airplane installation on that, I think it was the 737 Boeing Max. Obviously they had all sorts of issues and things weren’t going well, and we all know what happened there, but that was the exception in the airline industry, that you were able to self-validate.

The actual rule … And people were up in arms. They were like, “How could you let Boeing self-validate? That’s got to be independent.” Well, by law, by the way things are written down for trucking, as you probably well know, you have to have an annual inspection of all your trucks in your fleet, whether you have 1 or you’ve got 500.

You can have a guy, or a gal, get certified in doing these inspections, keep them on your payroll. And so, you have someone literally on your payroll inspecting your trucks for roadworthiness as part of annual inspection and you just have to keep them on file for three years in case someone asks for them.

David Craig – Host: Yeah.

Zach Cahalan: No one has any clue, I mean, A, if you’ve even done it, unless you have a roadside inspection. But, B, how could it ever be a good idea to have someone on your payroll who is motivated to keep the wheels moving by management? We wouldn’t accept this anywhere else, but we do in trucking, and it’s absurd.

David Craig – Host: Yeah, and I’ve seen the same thing as well. To be a truck driver, you have to be physically fit and capable of driving the truck. And so, they have to have a medical exam.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah.

David Craig – Host: I’ve seen some trucking companies who have special relationships with the healthcare providers that are coming out doing the exam. They’ll even come to their property, the trucking company’s property, and run them through. It’s scary. I’ve had trucking companies who knew … I had a person who was epileptic—

Zach Cahalan: Wow.

David Craig – Host: … and he was taken off the road because he was not treated. He was epileptic. Trucking company got in a pinch and they called him and said, “Hey, we need you back driving this truck.” The guy’s like, “Well, as you know, I don’t qualify.” They said, “Well, we’ll send you to a different doctor.” They sent him to another doctor who was past his prime, who really had not much of an operation, a practice left, but he was rubber stamping his CDL. I mean I took his deposition. And this guy then crashes through a building, with his truck.

Zach Cahalan: Jeez.

David Craig – Host: And so, it is scary that the bad companies that are looking to try to figure out how to put dangerous truckers on the road or dangerous equipment on the road are doing it. They’re figuring ways to do it.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah, and it’s a sort of deal. Well, actually on that point, they just caught two chiropractors. I thought they were in Illinois, Indiana, one of those Midwestern states. They had issued like 15,000 fraudulent exams, I feel like, in a year and a half. It was nuts. In 18 months’ time.

David Craig – Host: Some people don’t even realize chiropractors can do that. A chiropractor.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah. That’s wild. That’s a different—

David Craig – Host: Yeah, it’s a whole different subject, but I mean most people would probably be shocked that they would probably think that a medical doctor, I mean if you’re going to drive 40 tons, that you would have to have a medical doctor certify that you’re healthy enough to do that. But, in fact, there are exceptions, and a chiropractor is one of them.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah. I was just talking, there was a person in, I think it was in Illinois, she’s doing a fellowship with a major media outlet. She’s going to be doing a special story on trucking specific to Illinois, and she’s learning a lot by fire hose just about the industry in general.

One of the comments I ended up making to her that I would stand by and stand on is with, again, the number of carriers that exist, if you need someone who’s willing to cut corners and circumvent the rules in order to meet the rate, the low freight rate—whether you’re a broker or just ship refining it yourself—you can find someone. It is not hard to find someone willing to break the rules when you have this many bad apples, is the term I use because there’s very little, we’ve talked about the barriers to entry, they really don’t exist.

So, when you have no barriers to entry and that many either intentionally bad apples or just ignorant, they don’t know, that’s not a defense, but you’ve got a lot of bad options to choose from, and we see the results every day.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. And brokers. So a broker for those people, there’s somebody who puts a load with a company to deliver the load. And so, they use these boards and they’re monitoring and they’re putting …, they make a cut off of that.

Zach Cahalan: Sure.

David Craig – Host: If you want to be scared, if you’re listening to this and you want to be scared, go on to YouTube and Google how do I become a broker? Because it’s hardly … You think it’s bad. It’s easy to become a trucking company or a truck driver.

Zach Cahalan: That’s true.

David Craig – Host: It’s even easier to become a broker. These brokers, their incentive is to try to save money off of the amount that you’re shipping. So they’re looking for the cheapest motor carrier they can, and they don’t necessarily … Not all of them, but some of them don’t care whether that truck driver is any good or safe. They just want to get them cheap and make a cut off of that amount that they’re paying the merchandise.

It’s scary. They have very little insurance. They don’t have to be even a real, I mean some of them are working out of their homes or their trailer or wherever. But go on YouTube and look how do I become a broker, and you’ll be shocked.

Zach Cahalan: I might be getting the title wrong, but it’s in my Amazon cart. I just became aware. I think it’s been out for a year or two years, but Confessions of a Freight Broker. It’s a fictionalized book that exposes all of these terribly shady, definitely fully aware that they are brokering loads to highly disreputable carriers without a second thought.

David Craig – Host: Yeah.

Zach Cahalan: It’s the Wild West. Again, because it’s so niche and you don’t see it every day.. I mean most folks don’t even realize that brokers even exist. It’s so frightening the state of affairs right now in commercial trucking. Again, that is why we’re here. Certainly we can be doing better to make sure more people are educated about the issues because, again, I don’t think most people would stand for it. Some of the things we already mentioned, I think the average American assumes, “Oh no, of course they’re practicing before they drive a truck. Why would anyone let that happen? That’s insane.”

I’ll bring another issue up for you. You’ve got, particularly corporate trucking, they’re big on trying to get their hands on teen truckers. I mean we won’t dig into the nuance right now, but just on the surface, without going into any data, which it exists, who in their right mind wants an 18-year-old driving your family minivan, let alone an 80,000-pound truck? Are you insane? But that’s what they’re doing because they can’t keep drivers.

David Craig – Host: Well, and they want to pay a low rate. That’s a way to pay, you can get drivers that aren’t going to charge you as much as some of the more experienced drivers. And so, they’re looking to do it as cheaply as possible, and that’s a recipe for disaster.

Zach Cahalan: It sure is.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Then one of the things that really scares me is, I mean I’m scared enough to be on the highways, but a lot of clients, I think, have a misconception, well, there is these Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations and there are a CDL manual. These drivers do have to pass a test at least. They have to be physically fit, and the equipment has to be in a certain good condition, safe condition.

And so, the federal government and the state, the federal regs and the state laws, I feel safe because there’s regulations out there and there are people enforcing the regulations. But, unfortunately, as you and I both know, that enforcement of the regulations isn’t necessarily—it doesn’t make us sleep well at night.

Zach Cahalan: No, even in the best of times. And really that’s not a fault. At its core, I think we muddled through in history to get to this point. I don’t think anyone ever expected the scope of this many carriers to regulate back when deregulation happened back in 1980, essentially. This was not probably on the radar.

So, when you look at, and we hear it every year, practically every state has a budget deficit when they go to put their annual budget together, and they’re trying to make a Sophie’s choice decision on how many cops can we continue to employ, and paid fire personnel, and road repair. I mean I’m from Michigan. Yeah, road repair. I mean that actually has a lot to do with the trucks, if we’re being honest.

But they’re cutting a lot of things people want, and they have to. It’s not an easy choice. And so, you pair that with a reduced enforcement capability just in terms of state and local law enforcement. That’s what FMCSA largely is relying on, is state and local law enforcement to enforce the regs that exist on the books.

So, you reduce that and then you drastically search the number of registered carriers on the road, and you’re able to not get a whole lot by way of enforcement. Because it’s also not terribly intelligent, and that’s not an insult at law enforcement. But there’s not yet … There’s ways pending to have electronic IDs and this and that where you can more smartly, to make up a word, identify, “Oh, this is an unsafe carrier. Their logs are over, this and that. We should choose them for roadside inspection instead of this truck over here.”

Because right now it is largely random. You’re doing a roadside inspection and kind of, I mean you hope everything’s on the up and up. But I would imagine if you’re doing same-day enforcement, you want to catch the bad actors. But there’s not really an intelligent way to do that at this point.

So, you’re playing Russian roulette with how you pull them over in the first place, which doesn’t really help catching, if you will, the bad actors on the front end. A lot of what happens, which, again, should frighten folks, is you find out the bad carriers after the crash and you just hope it’s not a crash that caused injury or loss of life.

David Craig – Host: Yeah, I mean enforcement is, there’s just no way that there’s the resources available for that at the state and local level to properly enforce the rules that we do have.

Zach Cahalan: That’s right.

David Craig – Host: And so, when you’re on the roadway, and then—I don’t know how many times I’ve taken a deposition of a bad trucker—and they will avoid weigh stations.

Zach Cahalan: Oh yeah.

David Craig – Host: They’ll encourage their drivers to look for ways that they become even less likely to be stopped or checked. So if you’re on the roadway, you cannot assume that the truck that’s riding next to you is safe because we have these rules.

Zach Cahalan: Oh gosh, don’t get me started. So two things on that. So, one, just on the enforcement, I saw that New York City had put some automatic scales in on some of their bridges. I don’t recall which ones. They’re going to expand the program to all the bridges. They were finding that large trucks—and I don’t want to be making up the statistic—I thought it was roughly 90%, but I’ll just say 70 to 90%, I’d have to find the story, were overweight. Particularly, that’s obviously increasingly bad for bridges, but I wouldn’t be shocked if most trucks are overweight on the road, regardless of if they have an actual exemption.

But the thing that also drives me nuts, to your point, we’re talking about the truck next to you on the road. Are they going to be likely to be safe or not? The industry average, based on the inspection data we do have is, one in five is going to be not okay. It should be placed out of service, meaning it’s got a critical safety issue, usually brakes, that need to be addressed for it to be roadworthy.

David Craig – Host: Yeah.

Zach Cahalan: That’s considered acceptable. So if you have a fleet, if 20% of your trucks shouldn’t be on the road, but are—because typically, I mean, that’s the whole point of inspection; you do the inspection, “Oh, you shouldn’t be on the road”—is considered okay. Again, it just blows my mind. It’s another example of how we’ve let the industry, I would argue, set the terms of the debate, the terms of the framework. We go out there, we do this work, and, oh, we got inspected. So I guess 1 in 20 is the okay rate. Now if you’re above 1 in 20, oh, you’re a bad carrier. If you’re below, you’re great.

As opposed to the regulator saying, “This is what right should look like, maybe 10%.” I don’t know. Pick something. I mean obviously zeroes is preferred, but the idea that one in five is okay? Just next time you’re on the road, just drive for an hour and tell me how many trucks you count. You’re going to see probably more than five, statistically, that shouldn’t be on the road, and they’re right there next to you.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well, and when I drive, and my family and my people I work with, I mean I assume—this is sad—I assume that the trucks that I’m near are not in good working condition. I assume that that truck driver might be fatigued, may be distracted, may be impaired. I make those assumptions and I stay away from trucks.

This time of year, if you’re listening to this, once that weather turns warm in the states that you start having road construction, every year … I mean I’ve already been hired twice already this year, and it’s just now starting to get warm here in Indiana, and I’ve gotten two construction zone cases where semis have plowed into the back end of cars going into a construction zone.

I can’t even think of a year recently that I haven’t been hired by somebody that got hit in a construction zone by a semi. Because if you have bad equipment, if you have bad brakes, if you have a bad driver, if you have a fatigued, impaired, distracted, then that combined with a construction zone is extraordinarily dangerous.

Zach Cahalan: Oh yeah.

David Craig – Host: Because they’re not going to be able to stop, they’re not going to be able to slow, they’re going to be looking away. They’re going to be not paying attention, sleeping. And so, when I go into a construction zone, I make sure I’m not in the back of a construction zone. Once I start seeing signs, I make sure I get up and I’m surrounded by cars, not a semi. That’s sad.

Zach Cahalan: David, I mean I do the same thing. Then that happened within a few months of when I first started working at the Truck Safety Coalition, because I mean that is what you see. I’d say roughly 70% of the stories of people in our group are folks, whether it was stopped traffic, construction, a wreck up ahead, they get hit full speed or close to full speed, usually never braking, though. It’s typically no braking action has occurred when you do the diagnostics in the crash reconstruction, and they just get hit full speed by a semi. And rarely, rarely, rarely, rarely survive an event like that, although it can happen.

Yeah. Also, large trucks are overrepresented in construction zone deaths as well. And so, specific to that issue, and it’s timely and relevant that you bring it up, in the last, I think it was popularly called the infrastructure bill, which is the bill that reauthorized interstate commerce. Every five years or so, this typically is going to happen. There was a requirement that all newly manufactured trucks be equipped with automatic emergency braking.

Then we got the proposed rule, not the final rule. When I say they, FMCSA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are more than two years behind on promulgating the final rule. There’s real concern now with the current administration and the cuts to NHTSA and just a perceived lack of priority on highway safety or anything that could potentially add cost to the trucking industry.

Now this rule might not even get done in the next four years. This is a game-changer. Again, as you well know, it’s as consequential as seat belts were to passenger vehicles applied to the large truck crash scene. 60% of all truck crash fatalities occur from a large truck impacting the rear of a passenger vehicle. The stats show you can prevent completely or reduce the severity upwards of 50% of these crashes. I mean it’s remarkable. It’s yet another example. I mean all the things you mentioned aside for why a driver could not be paying attention, we want to address those issues. But, man, it’d be nice to have a fail-safe.

David Craig – Host: Yeah, absolutely.

Zach Cahalan: And it doesn’t appear to be much of a priority of our federal government right now.

David Craig – Host: Yeah, the automatic emergency braking, I mean a lot of people now who get new cars, they have that technology in their cars. It’s available on the new tractors. I just had a case over in Illinois where as a new freight liner, it certainly had the ability to have … You can get the equipment, and the trucking company chose not to have that equipment added on because it saves some money.

Zach Cahalan: It’s all marginal, too.

David Craig – Host: Allegedly save money. Now I would argue that it doesn’t. But they knock it off the sticker so that they can sell more trucks. And so, this trucking company doesn’t have this equipment and that there’s no question from my experts that that would have saved a life, had it had the equipment.

Zach Cahalan: Right.

David Craig – Host: It’s there, it’s available. I mean it’s not that expensive to add.

Zach Cahalan: It’s not. You’re right. Particularly on new trucks now, because it is coming at scale, it is not expensive. What they saved was so marginal. Then even if … Because, again, most of the trucks on the road are older. You can get an aftermarket … Not even AEB, which is better, because it actively prevents. That’s the difference. It actively will take action. It’s not a passive system.

Forward collision warning is a passive system, and it’s the equivalent of something just making noise at you that you’re approaching something that’s fixed in your vehicle and you should do something. There is very strong data that suggests simply having forward collision warning is enough to prevent the severity of the crash being as bad as it otherwise would be, because again, whatever the reason why that driver may not be paying attention, it kicks them into gear a little bit to at least begin to apply the braking action before point of impact.

David Craig – Host: Yeah.

Zach Cahalan: That’s also cheap.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. We thought we were going to have it. We thought the trucks were going to come out with the AEB, and now we don’t know.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah, I know. It’s funny, I’ve had a number of—you’ll enjoy this—a number of officials and companies come, I’ll say, to the Truck Safety Coalition and organizations saying, “Hey, you should get behind some bill.” I can’t remember what they call it. Basically it’s to get rid of the excise tax on newly sold semis. They think it’s unfair, yada, yada, yada. Sure, it’s high. They call it, it’s something, the Safe Trucking Bill. It’s got the word safe in the title.

And so, I spoke with these folks and said, “Hey, well, what makes it safe?” When you’re saying in writing—again if it’s not in writing, it doesn’t happen—what kind of newly manufactured trucks qualify as safe? Are they going to have automatic emergency braking, advanced driver assistance systems like lane departure prevention? What are the things, or at least warning, that are going to help deter crashes? The answer I got back was, “Oh, well, just new trucks come with it anyway, so we’re not going to write it in.” I said, “Oh, well, I guess we can’t get behind it.”

David Craig – Host: Well, another thing people don’t realize is that, I mean there are speed limiters that have been available to the trucking industry for years. In Canada, I think that they’re required. And so, some trucking companies have speed limiters. A speed limiter will limit the maximum speed of a truck.

But at the same time I see that technology is available, it’s not being used by the majority of truckers. Not only that, I mean so we see the faster the truck’s going, the harder it is to stop it, and the worse the wreck is. I mean it’s kind of commonsense. And so, everybody should understand that concept. And so, let’s limit the speed of the truck so that we can save lives.

Well, here in Indiana, not only are we not requiring speed limiters, but we’re going to raise the speed limits now. And so, now speed, for years, I’ve seen speed limits coming down, trucking speed limits come down, but now we’re raising the speed limits, and that’s just going to cause more people, in my opinion, to get killed as a result of speeding.

Zach Cahalan: Oh no, you’re spot on. I mean 20% of all fatal crashes occur at speeds 70-plus miles an hour. That’s the data. FMCSA, as you know, took an effort to propose—did they ever get to the proposal stage? I think, it doesn’t matter. The technicalities don’t matter. But they started going down the road of a renewed effort at speed limit rulemaking during the last Biden administration. Never took really meaningful steps to get it done.

But I say that to say when you propose something like that, even to say, “Hey, we have this idea. We would like to seek public input,” you have to justify why you have the idea. And so, by FMCSA’s own calculations, this would save thousands of lives, and yet when I say we as a government, as a, I won’t say society, I’ll say as a government, a choice is made not to pursue that. I’ve heard it said unofficially that, well, it would be too onerous and unfair to owner-operators. I understand that I don’t understand the argument.

Another side story, I’ll loop back. We can talk autonomous trucking too. But I was talking to someone who was doing a pilot route. It’s now gone bigger in Texas, like everything in Texas. But when they were initially doing some of these pilot routes with AV trucks, they’re designed to only go the speed limit. The partner they were working with had severe doubt that this was going to work, because how were they going to get their goods on time if the truck wasn’t speeding?

Because that’s how the routes are actually designed, is that you’re probably going to have to speed to make it on time. Which is just, again, ridiculous and goes to show how little safety is prioritized in the first place when it comes to the trucking sector.

But, yes, speed limiter is an incredible opportunity. We know it would save lives, and yet there are officials at FMCSA who view their job as keeping everything balanced. “We can’t let the owner-operators and the large carriers get too much of an advantage, competitive advantage, over each other. We’ve got to try to keep the playing field equal,” and, “Oh yeah, victims, we got to make sure the victim, got to throw a little bit to the victim. We just got to keep the system stable,” as if the system is optimized for safety in the first place, which it’s not.

That’s, again, why we need families to be telling their stories, why we need them coming with us to our … We’ve got a big training coming up at the end of the month in September. You can learn more on our website at trucksafety.org, at the special events section, where we’re going to train victim families on how to tell their stories, go visit their policymakers. Some of them will visit regulators as well and explain, quite movingly, why this matters.

This isn’t a game where we’re trying to keep everyone equally upset. That is not at all the game. It is not even a game. We’re trying to save lives. In theory, that’s your mission too, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, but you don’t seem to share it.

David Craig – Host: No, and we see it day in and day out. That’s why I think it’s important, if you’re watching this and you happen to be a victim, to reach out to Truck Safety Coalition. Certainly I’ve taken a different view than I used to in the sense that it was my client’s business. But we’re now being more aggressive and finding that more of our clients have an interest in advocating for change and at least talking to people about that in the beginning. I tend to wait till cases are over. I don’t want anything to happen that would adversely affect my client’s case.

But typically, we’re starting the process earlier where we’re talking to them that, “Hey, there is this option available and you may want to explore this,” because it is just sad. I mean, I had a client here just recently who’s agreed to start doing that, and they lost the father, the husband, and his medical expenses were half a million dollars. The company had, I mean minimum insurance is 750,000, but they had a million-dollar policy. But a million-dollar policy wasn’t even adequate to take care of the special damage, because there was another vehicle involved. There was two other people hurt.

And so, here they lost the person who was the main provider for the household, and they had this half a million dollars’ worth of medical expenses. They had a totaled vehicle. They had all this stuff, the loss of love and affection, guidance that this man—he had his own business, so the employees—I mean it’s just horrible. That insurance level, as you know, hasn’t changed since 1980.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah, no, it’s insane and absurd that it hasn’t. What I always tell folks, because we do have folks who will come on and they go, “Oh, well, our attorney doesn’t want us to say this, that, or the other thing.” I say, look, that’s fine. We’re not going to get in the way of you and whatever your representation advises you. That is not the nature of this relationship.

But I always encourage them to instead of, because the laziest—and I’m not suggesting you’re lazy or anything—but the laziest response to someone who wants to be involved in becoming an advocate early is to say, “Just don’t say anything. Just wait till all this is finished.” It could be, what, two to three years? Maybe more? That’s a very unsatisfying answer to most victims who do want to get involved.

And so, I always advise that they ask, “Hey, how can I talk about this without jeopardizing anything in my case? Give me the guardrails. Give me the parameters. Give me the don’ts,” because you can certainly in most cases say, “Hey, I was involved in this terrible crash,” you don’t mention the company. This loved one died or was injured. X countermeasure would’ve prevented it. That’s a clean way for most that they can be engaged and feel like they’re making a difference.

David Craig – Host: Sure, absolutely. I mean some of my cases that I enjoy working on the most are, I mean I’ve had clients who demanded changes within a company. And they said, “Well, look, we will not settle unless there are these changes made.” You think, “Well, gosh … ” Back when I was a younger attorney, I would say, “Well, that’s just not going to happen.” As I’d gotten more experience and older, I realized that, you know what, it does happen. It only happens, though, for those people who are brave enough, and those law firms that are brave enough, to say, “We’re not going to accept this offer without—”

Zach Cahalan: Right. You want me to sign that NDA? Is that right? Well, I’m not doing it unless this happens.

David Craig – Host: I’ve had clients, and we had one that changed their sleep policy for the whole company. I know as a result—and it was confidential. We couldn’t disclose who it was—but I know for a fact that these changes that were made probably are saving lives throughout the United States because they’re that big.

Zach Cahalan: Yeah. Yeah, no.

David Craig – Host: So, it’s just fighting for things. Not only the awareness, not only the lobbying efforts, but also just fighting for changes within the industry when you have a chance to, when you have the power.

Zach Cahalan: It makes a difference. I don’t know if you watched the most recent NTSB board meeting. They’ve covered that motor coach crash in Illinois, where the bus hit a number of parked semis on an exit ramp. It was a Greyhound. Yeah, everyone knows it was Greyhound, was the motor coach. But I didn’t know this. Apparently they got sold in the past few years. There was all this transition.

Allegedly, they used to have policies that supported better sleep beyond compliance. Essentially, they didn’t have their drivers on a variable sleep schedule, where every day they’re basically going to bed at a different time of day and not getting consistent restorative sleep as a body clock sleep scientists would recommend.

It’s no surprise that this particular driver, they determined fatigue again, which is typically, NTSB sites as a causal factor in most every crash, large truck or motor coach, was a significant factor.

I don’t want to say I’m thankful, but to your point, when it’s a large company, when you get exposed in that way … I mean this is public hearing; all this stuff is on the public record … for putting the largest bus carrier … And I know we focus on trucks, but the same rule of thumb applies to CMV drivers. You got them going to bed at a different time of day every day for a month, you’re going to have a problem. Having that exposed is going to create significant change, at least at Greyhound. It’s a similar story to what you were sharing there with your client’s company.

David Craig – Host: You see, so much—I mean I’ve had cases where clients had, the driver clearly had sleep—I mean the wreck appeared to have been caused by either distraction or sleep and a tired driver. And so … Because there’s no explanation. Cruise control is on, plows into the back of people and construction zone and kills a whole bunch of people.

I hire experts, and my expert, one of them, was the medical examiner. He looks at this guy, he looks at the medical records and said, “Man, I bet this guy has sleep apnea.” Well, it’s undiagnosed sleep apnea. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of drivers who don’t even realize they can drive with sleep apnea if it’s treated. And so, they’re afraid to go in to disclose it. This one happened to be a place where they just rubber stamped. But you look at this guy and you’re like, he had all the signs.

And so, I had to get a court order to have him examined and, sure enough, I found out he has sleep apnea. This guy’s driving nights and his route is alternated. It’s like, what did you expect to happen?

Zach Cahalan: Well, I mean it’s not surprising, I’ll say, hearing you say that. The history on that a little bit as far as legislation is concerned, I believe it was the FAST Act, which is the same version of that reauthorization bill back in 2015. Elements of industry got it put into law that FMCSA cannot require a sleep apnea screening as part of their medical exam, despite the fact they had two different groups. Two different scientific advisory councils at FMCSA were, in writing, approving …

When I say screening, I don’t mean the actual test. It’s the screening like, hey, you meet, whatever the threshold is. You have 7 of 10 or 12 risk factors, you need to be referred for a formal sleep apnea study/screening to determine what’s going on. They saw the writing on the wall and got Congress to prevent FMCSA from taking action.

Now I would like to point out without getting too, again, into the weeds that the same Department of Transportation, that includes the FAA. Do you think pilots are allowed to drive a plane without ever being screened for sleep apnea?

David Craig – Host: No.

Zach Cahalan: I’m sure you already know the answer. What do you think, David?

David Craig – Host: No.

Zach Cahalan: Hell no.

David Craig – Host: No.

Zach Cahalan: Are you insane?

David Craig – Host: No.

Zach Cahalan: And yet we allow it again for drivers in large trucks who, again, several studies, we don’t really know, several studies suggest that the rate of undiagnosed sleep apneas … In fact, on our fact sheet, if you want to go to our website, get educated in fact sheets on the driver fatigue, the second page is all about sleep apnea. I don’t have it in front of me, but it’s anywhere from 70%-plus drivers likely have undiagnosed sleep apnea.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Scary.

Zach Cahalan: To your point, they can drive with it. You just have to have it treated.

David Craig – Host: Right. Well, Zach, I really appreciate it. What other areas that I haven’t covered that you think is important for people to know or understand? Again, where can they find you and your website?

Zach Cahalan: Yeah, most definitely. I mean I think the meta point is don’t assume that things are safe in the large trucking industry. There’s no reason to think that. Whether you’re someone who’s already suffered a tragedy in this space, you know someone who has, or whatever, you’ve never gotten a speeding ticket, you’ve got no reason to be concerned, to the point I made earlier, with all due respect, there’s nothing special about you. You could be the person in the wrong place at the wrong time the next time a tragedy happens, and they’re happening with increasing frequency.

So we do need to do better. We do need to make a difference. We do need to have enough people, I would argue, beyond the primarily impacted. We need a larger group of folks willing to say, regardless of party affiliation, “Hey, safety is bipartisan. Safety is a priority. We can’t tolerate clearly preventable deaths and injuries just to get cheap goods from Amazon or Walmart.”

That’s not a worthy trade off. It’s not a sacrifice I want to make or wish on anyone, and we would ask you to join us in that fight.

And so, you can learn more about us at trucksafety.org. A lot of information there. I encourage folks to go through it. But we would love to have your engagement, your volunteerism. You can sign up for our newsletter. We issue action alerts to contact people when something hot is happening. You might receive those, too. I’m not sure. I think sometimes we send them to supporters as well.

If you’re so moved, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask for your financial support. We don’t get a lot. We need a lot more. We stretch every dime we get for maximum impact. We’ve got two staff members. We rely on a lot of volunteers. Like I said before, we have a lot of skins on the wall, and there’s already been a lot of successes we’ve had this year in terms of raising awareness, getting bad bills pulled that folks are never going to really know about. But if not for us, things would definitely be a lot worse.

David Craig – Host: I agree 100%. Thanks, Zach. Appreciate you taking the time to be with us today.

Zach Cahalan: I appreciate the invite. It was a pleasure, David.

David Craig – Host: 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, Semitruck 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.