Ep. 78 – Fighting Dangerous Trucking Laws

Episode 78: Fighting Dangerous Trucking Laws: A Conversation with Scott A. Faultless

Scott Faultless: We have plaintiffs lawyers and trucking companies wanting the same type of change, but it goes nowhere. When you have people on both sides of an issue wanting to get the same thing done and no one listens, that’s a problem for everybody.

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 inside 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: The Podcast. Today, I’m very fortunate to have a great guest on. We’re going to talk about some interesting topics. My guest today has received the highest award in the state of Indiana. One of the highest awards you can receive, this was called the Sagamore of the Wabash. He received that from Governor Pence when Mike was governor of the state of Indiana. He was recognized as Sagamore of the Wabash. In addition to that, my guest is on the board of the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association. In fact, he’s on the Executive Committee of that organization. He’s also a Board of Regents member of the largest trucking plaintiff group in the country, ATAA. He’s board certified in truck accident law from the NBTA, which there’s only four lawyers in the state of Indiana that are board certified, and Scott and I are two of the four. He’s also on that ATAA group. He’s the chair, co-chair of the Safety Committee. And the Safety Committee is in charge of one of the things, one of their many responsibilities is to monitor the laws that are passed and the lobbying that is ongoing throughout the United States of America, which is a big task. And to make sure that we’re aware of anything that’s going on and to take place and try to protect the consumers and the people of the public. He’s been recognized by the National Trial Lawyers Association as one of the top 100 lawyers and one of the top 10 trucking lawyers in the country. He’s also been recognized by the Super Lawyers. So my guest today is also my partner, Scott Faultless. Scott, welcome to another episode of After the Crash.

Scott Faultless: Good morning, Dave. Thank you for the chance to talk.

David Craig – Host: So I think that you and I both have been involved in trucking cases for years now. We represent a lot of victims of truck accidents, and both of us would like the roads to be safer. Unfortunately, that’s not what always happens. You would think that legislation and people in charge would want to pass laws that make things safer, make things better. It’s not a Democrat philosophy, it’s not a Republican philosophy. It’s just, how do we make the road safer? How do we protect the consumer? How do we protect the public? But you and I both know that that’s not what always happens. So from your perspective, I’m curious because you’ve been active in politics. Do you think that protecting the public is a conservative or liberal or a Republican or Democrat issue, or is this a person, people issue?

Scott Faultless: It’s definitely not an issue that either party owns, if that makes sense. It’s literally, it’s what’s best for people. And you would think that instead of fighting for changing the laws to hurt people when they’re injured already, they should be changing laws to protect people to prevent them from becoming injured or killed. And so it’s literally, unfortunately, both state and federal governments, that’s to a great extent what they’re trying to do right now, is hurt people further after they’re hurt instead of protecting them in the first place.

David Craig – Host: And I just want to make sure everybody knows that’s listening. Again, this is not a Republican issue. This is not a Democrat issue. Scott and I both know prominent lawyers who represent victims of truck accidents that are both Democrats and Republicans. We know people who are liberal and conservative, and it’s not an issue. But big business, certain trucking lobbying groups and certain groups that protect insurance companies, these are folks that have a lot of clout, a lot of power, and they look out for their own interest, not the interests of the public. And unfortunately, the public is often unrepresented in some of these lobbying efforts.

Scott Faultless: Yeah. Let’s take for an example. There’s an organization called the Trucking Alliance, and that is a trucking company organization that’s advocating for trucking companies. They come up every year with their safety priorities of what they want to do to improve safety on the roads. And I would say probably 80% of what they propose, everyone would agree with. An example, in their most recent list, they said they want to expand electronic log devices to include more commercial vehicles. Because right now, only if you’re driving an older truck, semi, you don’t have to have an electronic logging device. And so you’re literally just trusting the truck driver to write down his or her hours accurately, as opposed to trying to drive more to earn more. They want to expand it to have interstate trucks have that as well because those rules don’t necessarily apply to interstate trucking. And also there’s the 150-mile rule. They want it to apply to that as well because it should. It’s a safety measure to protect people. The Trucking Alliance—this is again, the trucking, a certain segment of the trucking industry—wants to expand drug testing because again, local drivers, 150-mile rule, are not required to undergo the same drug testing requirements as interstate long haul drivers, over-the-road drivers. They also want to include the hair testing, which is much more accurate than urine and blood because it lasts longer than urine and blood. And you can see it, does this person have a long-term drug problem as opposed to drug and urine, which is only going to capture alcohol and drugs recently? And get this, the Trucking Alliance wants to increase the minimum amount of insurance that truck companies have to have to drive on our roads because that protects people. The minimum amount of insurance has not changed in the United States since 1980, 46 years. For 46 years, it’s been $750,000 is the only amount of insurance that’s required for a trucking company to operate on our roads. Everything has increased. Inflation has increased exponentially since 1980. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the amount of insurance the truck companies have. And they’re actually suggesting that raise the limits to at least $2 million. And what would happen is that would get rid of your fly-by-night trucking companies that don’t care about safety. And oftentimes they barely have enough to keep paying their insurance because their safety record’s so poor. And their premiums increase because they have a poor safety record, which it should. But at $750,000, they can hang on. If you raise to $2 million, a lot of those fly-by-night companies that are safety risks across the board, have poor safety records, they would be out of business because they have horrible safety records. So those are just some of the suggestions of the Trucking Alliance. And again, so you have plaintiff’s lawyers and trucking companies wanting the same type of change, but it goes nowhere. And so, that’s a problem. When you have people on both sides of an issue wanting to get the same thing done and no one listens, that’s a problem for everybody; Republican and Democrat.

David Craig – Host: And the $750,000, the worst companies out there are running with minimum insurance. And you and I have handled cases where the damages exceed that number just in the medical expenses. Like you said, medical expenses are one of those things that have increased with inflation, and yet the $750,000 has not increased. We had a case where a client had over half a million dollars just in medical bills alone. And so you look at it and say, okay, well, it makes sense. And just so you know, folks, there are trucking companies out there that carry far greater amounts of insurance. There are trucking companies that have safe drivers and safe trucking companies. They have safe equipment. They carry adequate insurance. The problem is there’s a race to the bottom. There’s these lobbying groups that look after the bad companies, and they have created this false impression, for example, that there’s not enough truck drivers. ATA, through their lobbying efforts, they were one of the first… They were arguing, “Well, there’s not enough drivers, so we need to relax the rules. We need to relax the rules so we can get more drivers on the road.” And what happened was we flooded the market, in my opinion, with bad unqualified truckers. We have truck drivers out there who cannot speak and read English. We have CDL mills that are cranking out CDLs to people who aren’t qualified. And the auditing and the supervision has dropped. They even wanted to put 18-year-olds behind the wheel of semis. And what happened was we’ve… And they had domesticated visas, they had people coming in from out of the country with their CDLs that maybe weren’t properly trained. And so instead of improving the quality of the drivers, we flooded the market ,and these drivers that are unqualified are oftentimes running their own equipment, they’re carrying minimum insurance, and they’re bidding on jobs lower than what good truck drivers can afford. Because they’re carrying the least amount of insurance, they’re underestimating the cost of the job, and they’re not maintaining their equipment, so it’s gotten worse rather than better.

Scott Faultless: And then you have the other side of the equation. You have an industry group, the Trucking Alliance, who to a great extent, not entirely, are advocating for positive change that affects people in a personal good way. But then you have the other side, you have the insurance industry, you have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and they come in and again, their interests are not for the people. They really only care about bottom line, profits, and they’re not really concerned about individual families, people who are hurt. They just want to make sure the bottom line looks as good as it can. And they come in and say, “Oh, we need tort reform.” Tort reform means torts are, that’s how you can file a lawsuit to protect yourself when someone hurts you. That’s in essence, what that means. And so they want to change the way lawsuits can be pursued. And you have to remember, this is coming from the insurance industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the people who they’re paying, lobbyists, lawyers, corporate lawyers who want to sing their tune. And I want to share a screen and show you, they say that, well, insurance is becoming unaffordable. That the trucking companies can’t even afford the insurance, and we need trucking companies. There’s no doubt we need trucking companies, but you have to remember, when you look at the bottom lines of the insurance companies, 2024, that was their year of greatest profit in the history, in history. In profit, their profits for all the insurance companies was $144 billion, B, billion. It’s exponential profit growth over the years. The insurance companies don’t hesitate to raise your auto insurance, your homeowner’s insurance, and use that as an excuse, the claims. “We have to pay a lot of claims. Jury verdicts are bad.” And so they’re using as a… They’re trying to blame the people who are hurt and the lawyers who are trying to help them to maximize how much they can pay in premiums, force people to pay in premiums, so they can have maximum profits. So that’s who’s trying to sell you that we have to try to do tort reform to change the way lawsuits are pursued. And they’re doing that in a variety of ways all across the country. They want to say every semi-crash case has to go to federal court. Federal courts, typically, they’re extraordinarily expensive in federal court because they require so much more formality than state courts. And so just to pursue a case in federal court, it costs individuals a lot more money than it does in state courts just to pursue your own case. And then federal courts put in a lot of procedural hurdles that you don’t see in state courts for the most part that make it more difficult to even get to trial. The number of trials that… If you go back and look at the data back in the 1970s and ’80s, how many civil trials there were in federal court, there were a fair number. The percentage was pretty high. Today, federal civil case trials are almost nonexistent because they put in place all these procedural hurdles that do everything they can to force people to settle and take lower settlements. So there is a reason why the trucking industry and the insurance industry wants to try to force all the trucking cases into federal court. It’s more expensive and more difficult for individuals, for people. And they want people to… Potentially parents as well, particularly parents. If you have a child that’s injured—and as a parent, your job is to protect your child. You have to take the steps to protect your child once they’re hurt. If the child’s case is worth $250,000, if the attorney gives you an opinion, the case is worth $250,000, but the insurance company says, “We’re only going to offer you $150,000.” Well, if you want to protect your child, you’re going to proceed to trial because you have a duty to your child to protect them and make sure their interests are being protected. If you go to trial and instead of $250,000, let’s say the jury says your child’s case was worth $249,000, so the attorney’s opinion was off a little bit. But if the insurance company’s made an offer say, “We’re only going to pay 150 and you don’t get the 250,” well, the parents could be on the hook under legislation that’s currently proposed, on the hook to pay $100,000 to the insurance company because the valuation is off by $1,000. $100,000 penalty because you’re trying to protect your child or if you-

David Craig – Host: One of the things about that is that people have to understand is that the insurance company, it goes both ways. And so if the insurance company loses and their numbers are off, but they can afford to pay $100,000, they’re making billions, tens of billions. But our clients are just average everyday folks who would probably not risk. And so it unfortunately discourages you to go forward because you’re afraid that you may lose $100,000, even if you win the case.

Scott Faultless: And another, insurance industry, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, lobbyists, and corporate lawyers are advancing in terms of trying to change the law, change the way lawsuits can be pursued, is they want to say, “Hey, after we pay for your medical bills and/or your funeral and burial costs and the amount of income that you’ve lost, we’re only going to pay you a million dollars.” So what they’re saying is a human life is only worth a million dollars. That’s what they’re telling everybody. Whether it’s a child’s life, your spouse’s life, it’s only worth a million dollars. And I think that’s outrageous. I think it’s un-Christian and they’re doing it so they can make more profit. And so those are just some of the examples of what’s going on across the country, across the country of insurance companies and the Chamber of Commerce trying to protect their own profits at the expense of individual people and families.

David Craig – Host: Well, we’ve seen. I mean, the caps are coming in Iowa a few years ago. What was the cap? They passed a cap over in Iowa on truck cases.

Scott Faultless: They started off at a million and they, in essence, tried to coerce and/or incentivize people to change their vote and it got up to $6 million. So Iowa, a human life is worth $6 million.

David Craig – Host: And so the great thing is that our founding fathers, they sat down and they did a great job and they eventually came up with a jury system. And the jury system is, the concept is that we have ordinary people who make decisions, who listen to the evidence and decide what’s fair, what’s right. And that system has worked for all these years and it has been a fantastic system. And I will tell you, sometimes the people who bring the lawsuit, they lose. Sometimes the trucking companies win, sometimes the insurance companies lawyers win. But you know what? Jurors try really hard to get it right, and sometimes the injured families win, sometimes the plaintiff wins, sometimes the victims win. But I trust, and every states have different numbers of jurors, but here in Indiana, we have six and it has to be unanimous. Some have more, but it has to be majority. But it’s a state thing. It’s a state decision. And it’s ordinary people from the county where the wreck happened or the county where the defendant lives or there’s some connection to the county where you’re at. And I think most of us would say, if we were on the jury, we would make sure it was a fair outcome. We don’t need a cap one way or the other.

Scott Faultless: You’re 100% right. The Seventh Amendment in the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution guaranteed the right, in all civil cases, to a right to a jury trial on all the issues that were triable at that time. These types of cases, injury cases, there are people who were hurt at the founding of our country and they could bring claims. There was no limitation on what the value of a person’s life was when the Constitution was passed and juries were allowed to make that determination entirely. We trust juries to impose the death penalty, recommend the death penalty to judges. We entrust juries to do important things in our society, and yet the insurance industry and the Chamber of Commerce don’t trust juries. And so when they start talking like they don’t trust juries and we’ve protected it in our Constitution 250 years ago, then you better watch out because they’re coming for your basic constitutional rights. And the same constitutional rights, even greater protections are embedded in the Indiana Constitution and actually in every constitution in the states across the country. And so not only are they trying to impact individual people, and plaintiffs, and their families, they’re literally coming for your constitutional rights at both the state and federal level across the country under the guise of, “Oh, we don’t trust juries to do their job in making important decisions in our society.”

David Craig – Host: So what are the things we are seeing nationwide? What other types of challenges are we looking at or we’re seeing that the folks are facing?

Scott Faultless: Well, just to talk about some of the issues that positive change that could happen if people actually on both sides could agree; there should be more technology in trucks. Because right now, and it should be mandated, many trucking companies, many of the good trucking companies, the safe trucking companies that get the large contracts from shippers because they’ve been vetted by the shippers, they actually go through and look at their accident history. Are they safe? How new is their equipment? How are their semis equipped? Do they have the most current safety features? Yeah, I’ll give a contract to you because I don’t have to worry about, am I going to get sued because I did something by vetting and giving a contract to an unsafe motor carrier. And so if you have safety built into your trucks, the good trucking companies are going to get more business and they’re going to need more good drivers. And the technology’s there. There’s technology now where you have driver facing cameras, as you’re going down the road, that can detect if a truck driver is fatigued and it sends an alert to the terminal, the trucking company terminal to let them know, “Hey, we’ve got a driver that’s potentially fatigued. You need to do something.” And then they can actually communicate with the driver saying, “Let’s go take a break.” They can detect and get safety alerts from the systems that it lets them know, is this truck driver braking suddenly too many times out of the ordinary? Is he or she accelerating too fast? Are they departing their lanes? Are they making sudden movements? Are they following vehicles too closely for the circumstance? All that technology is available that it can give immediate feedback to the trucking companies and the dispatchers and the safety personnel so that they can take steps to coach them, train against the bad behaviors, and encourage the good behaviors, or terminate the driver and bring someone in who’s going to follow the rules. If they just implemented those issues into rules and required that type of equipment, it would save countless lives every year and save countless, and prevent countless injuries every year. Instead, you have some trucking organizations going in to legislators, legislatures across the country saying, “Hey…” They typically say, “Oh, let the marketplace decide and what equipment should go into trucks.” But then they go in and ask for a law to be changed and say, “You can’t hold it against us because we didn’t have the most safety equipment on our trucks.” That’s inadmissible. A jury’s not allowed to hear that because it’s not required by a rule. And so it’s amazing how they know that there’s equipment out there that makes the roads safer, protects lives, prevents injuries, and yet they don’t want even juries to hear that because it’s not required by a rule yet. And so it’s so counterintuitive to what most people believe is common sense, yet it’s not in the interest of many trucking companies, not all, but many trucking companies and the bad actors in the trucking industry because they want to save money and they want to put safety last.

David Craig – Host: And again, there’s good trucking companies out there that already have the equipment. They’re buying new equipment that has that. Most of us, when you drive a car today, if you buy a new vehicle, for example, has a blind spot integrator and a light will flash in the mirror; very inexpensive piece of equipment. Yet, I look at all the stats of all the wrecks, for example, that happened in Indiana in 2025. You’d be shocked at how many blind spot wrecks there were where trucks did not have that equipment, and they moved over into other traffic and caused wrecks. And it could have been simply avoided had they had the right proper mirrors and had they had blind spot indicators, which they could easily add to it or they can buy it. And so it’s out there. The equipment’s out there. The equipment is now coming standard a lot of times. And unfortunately, some of these trucking companies are actually opting out of it. They’re saying, “Okay, I don’t want to buy. Don’t give me the safety equipment. I’ll save money by not doing it.” And yet at the same time, they don’t want that to be used against them, but they’re making a decision to be dangerous.

Scott Faultless: And they charge them more money to take the safety equipment out. And it’s crazy what some in the trucking industry are doing. There’s many good trucking companies, many good trucking drivers, but there are also a few bad actors that make it more expensive for everybody. If you got rid of the bad actors out of the industry, insurance rates would go down for the good actors. And so-

David Craig – Host: Majority of truck drivers are good, caring, professional drivers that are trying to get home to their families, that are hauling 70% of the goods in the United States from destination A to destination B. The problem is the bad ones are getting worse, and the bad ones are bad. And you have companies, so you have brokers, for example. And a broker is somebody that is a middleman between the shipper and the driver and the trucking company. And so the shippers will try to ship something from A to B and they want to pay as low as they can. The broker is in the middle and the broker will shop it around and say, “Hey, who wants to haul this load?” And it will be bid. And who do you think bids the lowest amount? It’s the people who have bad equipment, who have low insurance, aren’t paying much in premiums and are not qualified typically or are not as experienced. And so oftentimes, the load is going to the worst trucking company, the worst truck driver, instead of being the safest. And they’re incentivized as long as they don’t have to buy the equipment that Scott talked about. As long as there’s no rule that requires it, then you can have these truck drivers go out there and say, “Well, I’m going to run on the cheapest equipment. I’m going to run on old equipment that doesn’t have electronic logs. I’m going to get my CDL through a mill and I’m going to get out there and I’m going to haul as long and I’m going to push it. I’m going to go as fast as I can because the quicker I get from point A to point B, the more trips I can make and the more money I make.” And what’s sad is that we talked about minimum insurance on trucking companies only have to have $750,000. People would be shocked to know the brokers, brokers don’t have to have even that. They’re required to have $75,000. That’s it. And yet, where is the outcry? Where is the legislation to say brokers need to have more money because these brokers, oftentimes you can go on YouTube and you’ll be shocked at some of these brokers telling on how you make millions of dollars. These brokers are making the money on the backs of the truck drivers. They are making their money and they’re not paying for equipment. They’re not paying for insurance or minimal. And they’re running out of their apartments, or condos, or wherever. And then as soon as they get sued, they go out of business and they open up another place, and another location, and under a different name. And there’s nothing that prevents them from doing that.

Scott Faultless: Well, I think that for people who are watching, when you start hearing commercials by the insurance industry or the Chamber of Commerce or their acolytes talking about tort reform, contact your state senator, your state representative and be willing to go testify about… If you’ve had an experience in a commercial vehicle crash, be ready to share with them your experience and how that change could dramatically affect the lives of people who are going through the same experiences you have. And because believe it or not, that is the most effective way to prevent some of these horrible laws or bills from becoming laws, is from hearing from individual people who went through the process and shared what they see are the inadequacies of the current system and the proposals are making that even worse. And so I think that’s really important that people talk to their elected officials and try to do what they can to set them on the right track.

David Craig – Host: And I think that you should reach out and look for, not only should we be fighting those bad rules and bad laws, but I think you should encourage your congressmen to be proactive. What things can we do that would make the road safer? Underride guards, speed limiters that limits the speed of a truck, electronic logs in all vehicles. I think truck drivers should be paid by the hour, not by the mile. For generation after generation, we’ve paid truck drivers by the mile. So when a trucker gets stuck at a loading shipper and the shipper sitting there for two hours and they’re not getting their load. And they’ve got to get from point A to point B, and they’re getting paid by how many miles point A to point B is, but they’re sitting there for hours waiting for their load. There’s some trucking companies that do not pay them for that time they’re sitting there. And so they have an incentive to get back on the road as quick as possible and get from point A to point B as fast as possible. And they’re exempt. They’re not even paid overtime. There’s no system that rewards a great truck driver. I know truck drivers that have been doing this for decades and never had an accident, who’ve never had a ticket, and they don’t get rewarded by lower insurance premiums. Their trucking companies don’t get lower insurance. Why don’t we incentivize the good trucking companies, the safest equipment, the best drivers? Let’s reward them because we are for having the safest equipment and the best drivers on the roadway, and let’s get the bad equipment and the bad drivers off the road, because every one of us and our families are in danger by the bad ones.

Scott Faultless: And I can’t think of a better way to end with that. Let’s do something that makes positive change in people’s lives and protects our families, your families, and everyone’s families from ever having to go through the horrible experience in being involved in a semi-crash.

David Craig – Host: Well, Scott, thanks for being a guest on After the Crash, but more importantly, thanks for being my partner and keeping me out of trouble. Thanks, everybody.

Scott Faultless: Thank you.

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.