Ep. 87 - The $200 Safety Part Trucking Companies Delete From Semis

Episode 87: The $200 Safety Part Trucking Companies Delete from Semis: A Conversation with J. Kent Emison

J. Kent Emison: The most important thing is to get a good attorney involved as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the bigger the risk that the evidence is going to disappear and you’re not going to be able to have the things you need, or your attorney needs, to pursue the claims and find out who contributed to cause that crash.

David Craig – Host: I’m David Craig, a board-certified truck accident attorney who’s dedicated over 40 years to helping the victims of devastating semi-truck, large truck, and other commercial motor vehicle wrecks. When the stakes are high, you need the information to make the right decision. After tragedy strikes, many people don’t know where to begin or what questions to ask. It is my goal to empower you with the knowledge and resources you need to help you understand your rights, and to protect you and your family. This is After the Crash.

All right, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of After the Crash. Today, I’m excited to have Kent Emison on here. Kent is from the law firm of Langdon & Emison. He’s a great trial lawyer. He’s been Super Lawyers, US Best Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell highly ranked. He’s one of the top national lawyers. The thing I love most about Kent is that he’s a trial lawyer. Kent actually tries cases and he’s gotten some great verdicts, and he’s tried cases and he’s handled cases all across this country. So Kent, welcome to this episode of After the Crash.

J. Kent Emison: Thank you. Appreciate it. Nice to be here.

David Craig – Host: Kent, he’s a frequent speaker, and one of the challenges is… And he handles catastrophic cases. Him and his firm handle truck cases, product cases, wrongful death cases, and other catastrophic injury type cases, and so he sees a lot of the challenges that we face in these trucking cases. And so, one of the reasons why we wanted to have him on here today was to talk about some of the challenges, because all too often, the worst trucking companies have $750,000 or a million dollars worth of insurance, and that is not enough for a wrongful death or a catastrophically injured case. And Kent and his law firm, they look beyond that truck driver’s negligence and look for other ways to figure out how to help the families.

So Kent, let’s talk a litle bit about, first of all, is 750,000, a million dollars adequate insurance for these trucking companies?

J. Kent Emison: Well, not near. And we’ve had cases where it was five million in insurance, but these trucks weigh so much and they’re so powerful that they hit multiple cars, and we are involved in cases where there are multiple deaths, multiple catastrophic injuries, and always the truck company does not have enough insurance. And you’re right, most of them have 750 to a million, and it’s terrible, the amount of damage and destruction they can cause with very low insurance.

David Craig – Host: And a lot of people don’t realize that they’re a single limit policy. So if you’ve got a $5 million policy, it has to take care of everybody in the wreck. And as you know, I mean, we’ve had multiple… A semi plows into the back of folks in a construction zone, and they may kill several people and injure several people. And so, even the companies that have a lot of insurance, oftentimes, it’s inadequate.

J. Kent Emison: Yeah. No, that’s exactly right. And one thing I like to point out is what I call the magnitude of the problem, how big the problem is, because I don’t think people understand the extent of the problem. So I looked up the numbers this morning so I have accurate numbers, and every year, for the last five years, there have been over 5,000, almost 6,000 people killed, and there have been over 100,000 injured, all from large, heavy trucks, the big semi-trucks. And so, the amount of harm caused by these trucks is just immense. And one of the things that I want to mention later is that, first of all, these accidents should never happen, number one. We’ll talk about that later. But if they do happen, there’s a lot of reasons why over and above the driver’s negligence that contribute to cause the crash.

David Craig – Host: And one of the sad things that I’ve been seeing is that, and I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and one of the horrible things is that the worst companies seem to continue to get worse. The bad drivers are getting worse. There’s obviously some good trucking companies out there and there’s some that care about safety, but the bad ones seem to be getting worse and they’re carrying minimum insurance. I’m running into more chameleon carriers. I’m running into more folks that just don’t have enough coverage or resources, have put many in bankruptcy, and it’s just sad that the bad ones are getting worse. Are you seeing that same thing?

J. Kent Emison: Yeah, exactly. I was driving down the interstate yesterday and advertisements on these trucks about trying to hire drivers. They can’t find good drivers, so what do they do? They end up taking the bottom of the barrel, and that’s just sad. But look, the economy’s pretty good, there’s a lot of trucks on the roadway. I live right off Interstate 70, which goes right through Missouri, and I know you live close to interstates too. The amount of trucks is incredible. They can’t get good enough drivers. Most of the problems are caused by the bad drivers, but sometimes it’s more than driver negligence.

David Craig – Host: Well, and I think that if you’re listening to this… And we put this out, so I believe information’s power, and so folks who had an unfortunate situation where them or their family have been involved in a semi case, truck wreck, the first thing people look for is, “Okay. Well, the truck driver killed my family or injured my family,” and that’s their focus. But you and I both know that oftentimes, it’s a lot more things involved than just the truck driver. The truck driver may be bad. I just had one that we settled yesterday at mediation where the trucking company, the truck driver was high on drugs, but he had a million dollars worth of coverage and it wasn’t adequate. So we had to sue the construction companies because the construction zone was dangerous.

But unfortunately, I see too many lawyers and too many average people, they have no idea that there are other options. There are other things they should be looking at. So let’s talk a little bit about that. I mean, there are all these other folks that when you get a complicated case, you need to be looking at all different avenues and all different sources.

J. Kent Emison: Yeah. So when we’re called to help with a case, usually it’s another attorney that calls us to help with a case, then certainly you have the driver error, and nothing I say, do I want to defend bad drivers. That’s not the point. The point is that you’re right, when you’re looking at getting recoveries for people from these wrecks, if there’s not enough insurance, then you’ve got to look at what other causes contributed to cause the crash, so we look at anything on the truck that could have caused it.

For example, we have a case where a truck lost control because of a tire blowout… so a bad tire caused the loss of control. This wasn’t really the driver, this was the tire. And what we found is that the tire had a lot of prior problems with it. It should have been recalled, it wasn’t recalled. And so, the claim there was, again, several defendants regarding the bad tire, in addition to the truck. So tires are one thing to look at. There could be bad brakes on a truck. There could be bad maintenance on a truck. There are a lot of different types of causes in these crashes that are directly related to the truck itself. Now, I will tell you, good drivers do their pre-trip inspections and post-trip inspections and will spot these.

So again, there’s usually multiple causes to these terrible accidents, and it’s about finding what these causes are. And you know all the rules about how drivers are supposed to do thorough, very thorough inspections several times a day, that, my experience is that doesn’t always happen. But on specific things, you have to look at each crash, but what’s important is to get in early. You’ve got to get to the truck before it’s been modified. You’ve got to get good investigators out there to look at the scene.

For example, if you have a bad tire, it’s important to find the remnants of the tire. So one thing I try to emphasize is, you know this, David, right after a crash, the truck company will have investigators there in an hour or two, maybe faster, they have rapid response teams that get out to a scene. And so, when we get a call, we do the same thing, and I know you do too, you’ve got to get out there. But if you don’t get that call for a day or two or a week or a month, you’re at a disadvantage. And so, the faster we can investigate a crash, the better.

David Craig – Host: And I think that’s something important for the listeners to pick up on. I agree wholeheartedly. And the sad thing is that we’re dealing with families who have lost a loved one, who are dealing with a catastrophic injury. The last thing on their mind is preserving evidence. I mean, they’re worried about their family. People are coming from all over the country to come in and help support them, and they’re not thinking of, what should I be doing to preserve my case? They’re just looking at, how do I survive today?

But the trucking company’s different. I’ve deposed many truck drivers who they call dispatch before they call 911, and they’ll call dispatch and dispatch will immediately put this rapid response team, like you’re talking about, on the roadway. And I’ve taken depositions and I’ve had video where claims people and defense lawyers are literally at the scene of the accident before my client’s family members have been removed, their bodies have been removed, and most people have no idea. If you don’t do what we do, you don’t know that. And just think of what an advantage the defense has by getting to the scene and then talking to the witnesses.

I had a bus case where a bus driver killed a pedestrian, and the news started off very neutral. But then, once this big, huge bus company got involved, they started spinning the news, how this guy just walked out in front. Their lawyer was at the scene while his body was still there, and the lawyer was interviewing witnesses and not telling them to lie, but he was saying it in such a way as, “Well, guys, this bus driver’s tore up. Surely you don’t think it was the bus driver’s fault. We wouldn’t want anything criminal to happen to this bus driver.” And he was tainting the witnesses before the family even knew about the death.

And so, I think if you’re listening to this, Kent has handled these cases and I’ve handled these cases for years and decades, and the one thing I would hope is that if you… Usually, it’s not the family. But somebody close to the family, if you see that, somebody has to step in and help the family and say, “Hey, let’s get a qualified, good attorney to protect our interest.”

J. Kent Emison: I had a recent experience where the truck company showed up at the scene before the officer was done investigating. My client was in the hospital, couldn’t give her side of the story, and the truck company was lobbying the investigating officer to make the report skewed towards the truck. They will go to all kinds of lengths to spin the story in their favor, and you just have to be aware of that. Consumers really don’t understand how sophisticated the truck companies and insurance companies are when it comes to trying to prevent these cases.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. And the police often… That’s a good point. The police don’t have the victim’s side of the story because either they passed away or they’re hauled off to the hospital and so they don’t have their version. And unfortunately, it depends on where you’re at in the country, but some police do a better job investigating than other police departments. Certain police departments have more resources than other police departments. I’ve run into some areas that just all they care about is getting the highway reopened, and they’re not worried about are we dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s? Are we being as thorough as we can be?

They’re just having a lot of pressure to get this interstate back open. And so, that’s what they do. I’ve had body cameras, the body cam on the police officers, and I’ve heard them say that, “We’ve got to get this highway reopened.” They’re not talking about, “We need to go make sure we have all the evidence locked down.” And so, that’s another thing consumers don’t realize. They think the police are going to do a complete investigation, and in my experience at least, that’s just not true.

J. Kent Emison: That’s a really good point. I don’t know about Indiana, but in Missouri, they’re completely redoing I-70 through the state, and a lot of others, and so the amount of road construction is incredible. There are accidents with heavy trucks, big trucks often, and the backup when you’ve got it already down to one lane maybe and you have even a minor wreck, but certainly with a major wreck, there’s all kinds of pressure on law enforcement to open that back up. And so, they do the best they can. I really think they do the best they can, they do a pretty good job. But they can’t do as good a job when they have a mile or two-long backup of people sitting there waiting.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. And again, it depends on the resources of each police department. Some have the equipment that they need, some don’t.

J. Kent Emison: Yeah.

David Craig – Host: And so, where private lawyers can go out and we hire the experts and we can work with people who can make sure that all the data, all the information is downloaded and preserved. Construction zones, you mentioned that. I mean, in Indiana, throughout I-70, I’ve handled construction zone cases all around the country and I’m scared. When I drive, I drive differently through construction zones today than what I did 40 years ago, because I realize that anything that slows up traffic on an interstate is you’re risking your lives, because there’s some drivers out there that are fatigued or their equipment’s bad or they’re distracted, and as long as traffic is moving, they might be fine.

But once traffic slows up on that interstate in a construction zone or slows up for any reason, then all of a sudden, you’re in danger of being rear-ended and killed. And so, I always try to pace myself so I’m in a construction zone that I’m not the last in line because of how many accidents that you and I have both handled where the person in the back of the line just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

J. Kent Emison: That is most common. That is the most common impact. I talked about how many injuries and deaths there were, but by far and away, the rear impacts are the biggest percentage of crashes. And I’m going to talk about a study here in a minute, an old study, where there should be no rear-end crashes with catastrophic injuries or death in the United States. That sounds incredible. When I say that, people shake their head, “He’s crazy, he’s crazy.” But there’s good data to back that up, that the technology is there today to prevent these large trucks from having any rear impacts.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. And let’s talk about that. I mean, let’s talk a little bit about it, because I think one of the things that really makes your law firm unique, and I’ve reached out to your law firm before, in that there are product cases, there are these semis, and a lot of us drive cars now that… When I drive my car, if I get too close to the car in front of me, it beeps. It beeps or it will stop. If there is a car beside me and I want to switch lanes, my mirror lights up, my seat vibrates, and that’s just in my passenger car, which doesn’t cost nearly as much as these semi tractors. So talk a little bit about should there be stuff in there? What’s going on there?

J. Kent Emison: Well, I’m going to give a little bit of history, and I’ll try to be concise with the history. But the things you’re talking about are called collision mitigation systems and they’re all those things, so it’s the forward collision warning if you’re approaching a car that’s slow or stopped, it should warn you. Automatic emergency braking, where the automatic emergency brakes will kick in. The most common is where your seat vibrates or your mirror lights up, so it’s blind spot warnings and things like that. You have something called lane keep assist, which if somebody dozes off, they’ll keep the car or truck in the proper lane.

All these things are part of collision mitigation systems, a package, and people think these are new. They’re not new. These collision mitigation systems, especially in the heavy trucks, the semi-trucks, have been around for over 20 years. And so, for example, I’m looking at a PACCAR ad. PACCAR makes Kenworth and Peterbilt, you’re aware of that. And so, back in 2003, they had an ad promoting their collision mitigation safety systems and how effective they were. And so, they said, “We know 93% of all accidents involve driver error, 93%, and 54% are caused by driver inattention, distracted drivers.” But here’s the really important thing that PACCAR had said, is that one second of warning could prevent 90% of rear accidents.

David Craig – Host: Oh, man.

J. Kent Emison: That’s from PACCAR, not me.

David Craig – Host: Yeah.

J. Kent Emison: 2003. One second of warning could prevent 90% of rear accidents. And the other thing they said is that these collision mitigation systems are as necessary and important as mirrors and headlights. Now, again, that’s not me. That’s PACCAR in 2003, 23 years ago.

And so, with regard to these collision mitigation systems, they’ve gotten incredibly better, to where… I won’t try to get into too many statistics, but this is too good to pass up. There was a big study done by the government, the National Highway Safety and Transportation Association, NHTSA. And this study was done from 2013 to 2016, three years. And so, the government looked at all heavy trucks, big semi-trucks, and they looked at trucks that had collision mitigation systems, ones on from 2013 to 2016. And they tracked these and did a detailed study, and here’s what they found. They looked at over three million miles traveled. They looked at 6,000 activations of automatic emergency brakes, 6,000. Guess how many crashes? None. Not one.

David Craig – Host: Oh, man.

J. Kent Emison: Not one.

David Craig – Host: Holy cow.

J. Kent Emison: And again, people say, “Oh, these are lawyers talking.” Well, this is absolute factual. And again, that was over 10 years ago, 2013, 2016. These systems are a lot better today than they were back then. And so, what they found is that they are highly effective. They are incredibly inexpensive. That’s the other point that we make when we’re talking about these systems. We do focus groups, we ask people, “How much do you think these systems cost?” Thousands, tens of thousands. Okay. Again, this is the government, official study, peer reviewed. The cost to the manufacturer is generally less than $200 a truck, 97 to 200 cost to manufacturer. End cost to the consumer should be under $300. And so, the cost is minimal. These trucks cost over $200,000, sometimes approaching 300,000. You’re looking at systems that the end cost to the buyer should be a few hundred dollars.

Now, here’s the last point I’ll make about this. Why are we having 5,000 people killed a year? Why are we having over 100,000 people seriously injured? Because two-thirds of the trucks on the road do not have these systems. We know that. These are documented facts that I’m saying. Two-thirds of the trucks don’t have them. Here’s why.

David Craig – Host: Why? Why? Why wouldn’t they?

J. Kent Emison: The truck manufacturers mark these systems up over 600%. So when a truck company sits down to buy a truck, if they’re safety-oriented, they’re going to pay the money. But you have a lot of truck companies that will not pay that, that markup. And this is really hard to understand, but what we’ve found is that some of these truck manufacturers make more money when the safety system is deleted. And people really shake their head, “No. Wait, wait, what do you mean?” This is a safety system that they advertise as standard on the truck, that they give the buyer the option to delete it. The buyer sees the systems cost, in this case, almost $3,000, that should cost 300, and the buyer deletes it. It’s a business where the truck manufacturer does not give the truck buyer 100% credit, and they make more money on these systems when the truck buyer deletes it because it’s marked way up. The truck buyer deletes it. They only get a small credit for deleting.

That’s a lot of information. The bottom line is that the government is only going to make these systems mandatory in 2029, so we’re going to have to do another really five years before they’ll have to start being put on trucks, new trucks in 2029. Now, most of the other companies around the world made these mandatory in 2015 or before. So Europe, Japan, Australia, and a lot of other countries, they’re mandatory to have on their trucks. So if a truck manufacturer in the US rolls trucks off the line going to Europe, they have all these bells and whistles and safety systems. In the U.S., two-thirds of them do not. And so, that is something that, the government’s not going to fix that. The government’s not going to help, and the only way to do it is to get the word out and the civil justices, where somebody is hurt in a crash that shouldn’t have happened, that you pursue that.

David Craig – Host: And I think that is a good thing for people to be aware of, because a lot of people wouldn’t even think about that. And unfortunately, there’s some attorneys that don’t even think about that. They just look and say, “Well, let’s settle a case for a million dollars and take the insurance money from the truck driver who caused the wreck.” But they’re not looking at why did this truck driver plow into the back end of stopped traffic in a construction zone. So hopefully, people will open their eyes and they’ll be aware that this is a possibility, that this wreck shouldn’t have happened regardless of the fatigue or the inattention of the driver.

I mean, obviously, not every case is going to qualify as something that may fit this type of situation. What kind of cases do you typically see? Is it rear-end collisions? What type of cases are normal?

J. Kent Emison: Every one of these are rear impacts, almost every one. And it’s ones where the trucks, the speed of the truck can be up to about 60 miles an hour, maybe a little bit over, and these systems are so good, they’ll stop a truck going 60 without an impact. If a truck driver is fatigued and drifts over, they do have lane keep assist, but typically, it’s rear impacts, very often in a construction zone.

And so, if there’s an impact in a construction zone, there are so many claims to look at. The collision mitigation system could have prevented it. The construction zone could have been set up poorly. We had one case in Kentucky where the backup in the construction zone was caused by a wide load on a truck, and there are rules, as you well know, about wide loads going through construction zones, and this particular wide load violated a bunch of them. And so, there was not near enough insurance on the truck that caused that. It was a bad truck driver. But then, we were able to look at all these other claims, and our client was a wonderful guy who was horribly paralyzed, and we were able to make his life a lot better because of all those other claims.

David Craig – Host: Well, I think construction zones to me… Again, there’s so many every year, I can’t think of a year that I haven’t been hired to represent a family who’s lost a loved one in a construction zone, which is tragic. I mean, just year after year, I keep seeing these same kind of cases over and over and over again. But the construction zones are really, I think, some of the most complicated truck cases that there are, because one of the things is, like we talked about, preserving the evidence quickly is so important in just a normal truck case, but in a construction zone case, it’s even more critical because construction zones change. And so, we like to get hired right away so that we can send our crews out to scan the construction zone, look at the signage, look at all those. Now, you can get that through discovery, because they’ll usually have that, where they make a run through there, but it changes and there are things that are different. And so, we try to get out there and preserve the scene.

And then, with a construction zone… Oh my gosh, the most recent one I had, I think there were six different contractors that were involved. So it wasn’t just like, okay, we’re going to sue the state of Kentucky. It’s like, who all was involved in this construction project and why wasn’t there a pull-off lane or why wasn’t there the right signage? All of that goes into it, and the person who does the sign is different than the person who does the lane control traffic.

J. Kent Emison: That’s exactly right. There’s one other type of accident I want to mention with regard to these collision mitigation systems, just because literally five minutes before I got on this call, I was talking to another attorney about a case in Minnesota involving a young girl who was horribly injured, wasn’t killed, but horribly injured in parking lot, in a truck stop. And so, there are a lot of truck injuries and deaths in warehouse parking lots, truck stops, you name it, where the truck is actually going very slow, but they’re not aware of a pedestrian in the area. And if you have any kind of company that does a lot of loading and unloading at a warehouse, you have those cases too.

And so, what we’ve found in those cases, number one, these collision mitigation systems will absolutely prevent those. They have sensors and cameras that are incredibly effective. They’re effective in bad weather. They’re effective at night. The technology’s incredible, and so they absolutely work. And you know what? The truck manufacturers agree. They have ads out there promoting their collision mitigation systems. But in parking lots, it’s particularly dangerous if you’re a pedestrian and there’s a lot of trucks and trailers being backed and moved around. And so, one thing is collision mitigation systems. The other thing is there are other safety systems out for those parking lots that will alert a driver to a pedestrian. They use different technology, but they’re very effective. It’s very inexpensive. And so, I don’t have statistics on the number of pedestrians hurt in truck stops or warehouses or parking lots, but whatever it is, it’s too many. Shouldn’t happen.

David Craig – Host: And I think we’re seeing the technology is just continuing to advance. And so, I mean, we’re seeing AI watch drivers so they can tell whether a driver’s dozing off or a driver is not paying attention or a driver’s eating or a driver’s on their cell phone and can immediately report this back to the trucking company. So you think about that’s today, I mean, what’s going to be here in the next five years? And hopefully, it should just make it safer. But if the trucking companies aren’t putting the equipment on their trucks until they have to, until the government makes them, then that’s kind of scary. And why wouldn’t a truck… I mean, is it just purely the cost? Why aren’t they doing it?

J. Kent Emison: I’ve been involved in a lot of these cases, and we do a lot of focus groups where we get people together, common people of all demographics, and we present both sides and we present it. We want to find out their true opinions. And here’s what we’ve found is that it’s really the money. The truck companies are under a lot of pressure financially, and if they can save a few hundred bucks by deleting a safety feature they don’t have to have, a lot of them will do it. It’s unfortunate.

And then, there used to be a lot of pushback from the truck drivers because of false activations. That’s gone. That problem was solved over 10 years ago, and that is documented by the government in the study I told you about. The report came out in 2016, that the false activations have largely gone away and that’s not a problem. So at this point, it’s just about the money. And it’s one of those things, the government should step up to make it standard. We’re not, not until 2029. And so, good companies put them on, but there’s two-thirds that aren’t good enough to put them on.

David Craig – Host: Just so the people understand though, so who are you suing? So obviously, you have the poor trucking companies, the bad trucking companies, the ones that are not making any money, they’re the ones that are not going to have the equipment on their truck. They may be driving new trucks or they may be leasing a truck, but it’s not new, so who are you suing to help recover the losses that your family has?

J. Kent Emison: So, the manufacturer. The manufacturers defend these things by saying, “Well, it’s an option. This is America. It’s a free country. They can pick and choose what they want.” That’s the point they make. But the problem is the manufacturer do not tell the truck buyers all the advantage of the systems. The things I’ve said here about the effectiveness of the safety systems and things like that, that’s not disclosed to the truck buyer. All they see is a bill sheet where they can save a few hundred bucks by deleting the system. And so, the truck manufacturers don’t disclose.

If there’s a dealer involved that doesn’t give full disclosure about all the advantages, we’ll sue the dealership because they should have told the truck buyer. And then, there’s some truck buyers that are very sophisticated and they know the advantages. And so, if they have minimal insurance or they have significant assets, we’ll sue the truck company. We’ve done that in a case where it was a loading area at a warehouse and very low-speed impact and the driver ran right over this pedestrian. And huge company, didn’t have near enough insurance, very minimal insurance, but had over 10,000 units out there. And so, we’re not just going for the insurance. We’re saying, “You could have prevented this death for a few hundred dollars and you should have had this system on this truck.” So to answer your question is, it’s a good point, it’s something that we look at a lot, we’ve done focus groups.

David Craig – Host: I’ve been doing this long enough and I can’t understand why trucking companies don’t have on their trailers side underride guards. And I can remember I handled a rear underride guard probably 30 years ago, and back then, we would see underride guards that were not built properly. And I used to notice them on the highway, like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a bad rear underride.” And I don’t see as many now that are as bad as they were 30 years ago, but you still see underride crashes on the side or even in the rear. So are you doing underride guard cases as well?

J. Kent Emison: We are. We’re doing mainly rear underride. We’ve had a few side underrides. So rear underride guards are required by the government. The problem is there’s some really good ones, but there’s really bad ones. There’s a really good video by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, IIHS. If people haven’t been on that site, they should go there, iihs.com. And they go through the good underride guards and the bad underride guards. And again, there’s a big, big, big difference. They also have a really good video on side underride guards and how effective they are. And the thing with underride accidents on trucks, the injuries are some of the worst I’ve ever seen in my life.

David Craig – Host: So other types of cases that you’re seeing or that you guys are handling that involve trucks?

J. Kent Emison: Well, we’ve gone through the main things, the guards and that. I think that the main thing we’re going to see in the future is that… This thing which PACCAR said back in 2003, one second of warning would eliminate 90% of the rear impacts out there. So I think what we’re seeing is there was quite a bit of pushback from the public on acceptance of these collision mitigation systems, I know that from focus groups, because a lot of people of our generation do not like the technology, they don’t like their seat vibrating. But the technology’s a lot better, and you know what? I think people are starting to realize it’s not so bad. This could really keep me from hurting somebody really bad or elsewhere.

The other thing you mentioned, AI. Some people like AI, some people do not. But if you have a heavy truck driver and AI can detect that truck driver nodding off or being distracted, you want every safety feature in that truck we can, and if it means AI to detect a truck driver who’s not paying attention, then it needs to be there. So that is what the future holds, and I see nothing but good things happening with regard to safety on the highways. It just won’t happen fast enough. The government is reluctant to really get in and require companies to do this. They’re very slow at this. Fortunately, the technology is there, the technology’s really, really inexpensive, and it’s going to make things safer and safer every year we go down the road.

David Craig – Host: And I guess if you go far enough, you look down the road far enough, you’re going to see driverless trucks. They’re already down in Arizona, they’re already running, they’re running in Indiana with a driver. Some states now are driving them without drivers. And I don’t know. I’ve done a couple of articles where people have very strong opinions, kind of the same way with… I still like gas-powered muscle cars, big engines. My son’s looking at electric. It’s like, okay, just generations, just different times where we grew up. But I see a lot of people still feel strongly about the driverless semis. What’s your thoughts on where that takes us? And will that be product cases and where that will lead us?

J. Kent Emison: It will be. And what people don’t understand is that a lot of it is software problems. So on a lot of these cars, a lot of the problems, the technology is incredible, but it’s all driven by software. And you know from using your computer, software has glitches every now and then. So a lot of the defects we find, we have to get computer experts and software experts in to look at this because it’s a software problem that caused the problem.

And then, you mentioned something a while back that I want to also follow up on, that most of the accidents out there are caused by really bad companies and bad drivers. We know that. We see that over and over. And the thing with it is they undercut their competition. They undercut it because they hire inexperienced drivers, drivers with problems, things like that. And the other thing we’ve seen, and I know you see it, is that some of these mainline companies will broker a deal with a really cheap carrier. So we have this accident and we find out that this small company that has a terrible record and terrible drivers, well, guess what? One of these mainline companies hire them to broker the load, things like that. I know you do a lot of that work, that’s not well-known by the public, but they get these loads off the internet.

David Craig – Host: Yeah.

J. Kent Emison: So they’re placed off the internet. And generally, if you have a major carrier that may have a good safety record and they are overbooked, they will broker the load with another smaller company. They’ll just look on the internet, their websites. They can go to the cheapest one. They’ll put it out there for bid. They take the cheapest one. Then they’ll have this fly-by-night company handle the load that they’ve contracted with a company to haul. So that’s the other thing, I think, that’s not generally known, is that a lot of the truck business today is done over the internet, in the sense such that the small fly-by-the-night cheap companies get a lot of the workload.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well, that’s the problem. So yeah, people don’t know. So a shipper has some merchandise, and I had a recent case where they had a big load that they were going to send out. And so, you’re right. And so, it goes on a board, electronic, computer, and so these brokers get it. Now, if you want to see something really scary, go to YouTube and look up brokers, and these brokers talk about how they can make millions of dollars and all this money by being a broker. They’re running out of condos, they’re running out of trailers, they’re running out of apartments.

And there’s no requirements for how much money that they have to have. They don’t have to have a mandatory… They have to have a bond, but they don’t have to carry a lot of insurance. Now, there are some big brokerage companies that have lots of insurance, but there’s then some bad brokerage companies that have very little. And then, they look at a load and they say, “A shipper’s going to pay X number of dollars, and so if I can find a trucking company that’ll take it for less, we can make some money off of the difference.” And so, the broker then obviously tries to find somebody to do it as cheap as possible.

Now, those companies though, like Kent said, are horrible companies. I had one that had what we call a ghost driver. So this trucking company took a load that you really couldn’t make money off of. The margin was so small because the broker was taking a big chunk out of the middle. So the shipper’s paying X number of dollars, the broker’s taking their cut, and they leave very little for a driver. And so, the driver that took it, instead of having two drivers driving from Indiana to California driving in shifts because they’re only allowed to drive so many hours. So you would say, “Okay, there’s two drivers and…” They’re not going to make very much money if… They’re going to lose money. But instead, they hire somebody that’s a fly-by-night bad company and they have a ghost driver. Well, a ghost driver is there’s only one driver, but he’s saying there’s two. And so, there is a phantom driver that’s not… And they create a whole file, and there’s no… There’s one driver driving straight from Indiana to California.

Now, I’ve had several of these cases, and the fascinating thing is nobody catches them unless there’s a wreck or a motor carrier stops them. And so, normally, they get away with it. And the reality is when they do crash, the phantom driver’s never there. They’re always like, “Well, they got out at the truck stop, they got sick,” or whatever. They make up some story about how come they’re not in the truck. But in fact, they are… And a lot of those cases are fatigued drivers, because they drive so many hours that they’re fatigued. But what starts it is the broker, looking for a cheap driver, hires somebody who’s willing to cheat and run bad equipment and violate the hours of service in order to make a little bit of money. So I agree with you, brokers are… I mean, that’s an area that people need to look at. Even though you have rules, there’s companies out there that will skate around the rules.

J. Kent Emison: Yeah. And the other thing, we find a lot of maintenance problems on the trucks, and sometimes the trailers, but that’s something. Who knows what you’ll find? But that’s why you have to get to the truck and trailer early and have really good experts go and inspect it. And there’s all different kinds of inspection problems that can come up.

David Craig – Host: And that’s one of the things that you talked about early on, was how important it is to get out there quickly. We use a heavy truck mechanic who, for his entire career, he’s worked on semi-tractor trailers, he’s done inspections. And so, we send him out on every case, even though I have no idea whether there’s going to be something there or not. It doesn’t look like sometimes there’s a mechanical problem, but I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out a year later that we didn’t look at something. And so, I would rather spend the money on a rapid response team that I can call and say, “Hey, look, get out to the scene. Let’s go inspect this equipment and let’s find out if there’s anything wrong with the truck.” Because unfortunately, sometimes there is, or it depends. But we’ve sued maintenance companies. We’ve sued other companies related to providing the equipment, maintaining the equipment. I’ve had fifth wheels go bad and there was other companies that were maintaining it and the truck driver didn’t know the difference. So I think that maintenance can be a huge problem, and it’s, again, something…

And one other thing I will say, shippers, shippers are hard to sue. A lot of states require that it be a latent defect. Because a truck driver, normally, when they take that load away from the shipper, the truck driver’s responsible and they’re responsible for that load. They have to do inspections, like you talked about, pre-trip, post-trip. But occasionally, the shipper can be responsible. If there’s a latent effect, there’s something that when they loaded that truck, the truck driver didn’t know, had no way to know, and then that load shifted or caused some kind of problem that caused the wreck. And that’s something you don’t find out unless you inspect quickly.

J. Kent Emison: Yeah. That’s a really good point. On load shifts, another area that we’ve had good recoveries on is it’s generally called conspicuity, and you know that. It’s a big word. I don’t like to use that in normal conversation. But that’s basically when a truck is required to have reflector tape and things of that nature. But that reflector tape sometimes get damaged, it’s not on there, that reflector tape fades, that reflector tape is sometimes covered up. And so, if you have a crash at night, and that’s something we look at very carefully, was the truck too dirty to see the reflector tape? Was the reflector tape in good condition? But that’s pretty common. Doesn’t happen a lot, but every year, we’ll have one or two conspicuity cases, where it may have been our client hitting the truck because the truck was not visible. So it’s whether you can see it sufficiently.

David Craig – Host: So I took all of my attorneys out to Montana to Lou Grill’s facility out there, and one of the things, they have a drag strip that they rent, and we took cars out on the drag strip at night. And they had trucks parked out there with conspicuity tape even at an angle. And we knew we were looking for something and we do this for a living, and yet we still didn’t see the trailer parked across the roadway. And so, you’re absolutely right. And I’ve had cases with ash, where ash covered the tape and conspicuity tape. But again, you have to get hired quickly. I’ve been hired by other lawyers that waited a while, and by the time I got to inspect them, that was the cleanest doggone trailer I ever saw.

J. Kent Emison: Amazing. Amazing how those wrecked trailers get cleaned up that fast. You’re right.

David Craig – Host: I asked the defense lawyer that was with me, I said, “Now, how did that get so clean? I’ve never seen one that clean.”

J. Kent Emison: Yeah. The other thing is there’s certain truck companies that will get rid of their truck incredibly fast. That may sound crazy, but certain truck companies are known to dispose of their truck by salvaging it or selling it in days. Days after crash, truck will be gone, because they’re under generally no legal requirement to keep it. So they have a policy, they have a wrecked truck, they’ll get rid of it in days, not weeks.

David Craig – Host: And it’s great, a lawyer can get a restraining order to stop that. If we know that this trucking company has a history of doing that or we see that they’re moving it quickly, we can file and get a court order to stop it. Otherwise, they will take it. And I’ve had underride guards disappear. I mean, you name it, we’ve seen it disappear. So don’t assume that everybody’s playing fair. You have to assume if you need somebody to protect your interests.

Well, Kent, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. Anything else you want to cover?

J. Kent Emison: No. I would just tell people if they’re in a crash or have a friend in a crash, the most important thing is to get a good attorney involved as soon as possible, just because of all the things we’ve talked about. Every crash is a little bit different, but the longer you wait, the bigger the risk that the evidence is going to disappear and you’re not going to be able to have the things you need or your attorney needs to pursue the claims and find out who contributed to cause that crash.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well, Kent, how do people reach out? If people want to find you, how can they find you?

J. Kent Emison: Well, it’s pretty easy. We have a website. And Bob Langdon and I have been partners for almost 40 years. And it’s www.langdonemison.com. That’s the best way. And then, by email is pretty simple, kent, K-E-N-T, @, L-E-L-A-W, .com, kent@lelaw.com. And then, our telephone numbers, our cell phone numbers are all on that information. We’re very responsive. We try to call back as soon as possible. We have a really good intake team. We have five full-time intake people, we have 25 lawyers, so we try to return calls, be as responsive as possible.

David Craig – Host: Kent, I really appreciate you taking the time. And if you’re out there listening, these guys are great attorneys, and I wouldn’t hesitate to reach out to them. So again, thanks, Kent, for your time.

J. Kent Emison: All right. Thank you, David. Appreciate it.

David Craig – Host: Thanks for listening to another episode of After the Crash. If you or someone you know has been involved in a semi-truck wreck and you want to talk, go to ckflaw.com or give me a call at 1-800-ASK-DAVID. If you want additional information about semi-truck wrecks or how to pick the right attorney, check out my two books, Semitruck Wreck: A Guide for Victims and Their Families or It’s Never Been Easier to Hire the Wrong Attorney. Both of them are available on Amazon, or you can download them for free on our website, ckflaw.com.