Federal rules target trucker fatigue

If you are like many people in Florida, when you come up next to a semi-truck or another very large commercial vehicle in your standard passenger vehicle, you can feel a bit nervous. The thought of being in an accident involving one of these big rigs can make people realize why these crashes often end in such tragedy. Their size alone is a huge contributor to this reality. The need for truck drivers to operate their vehicles safely cannot be understated.

Fatigue among truckers has long been recognized as a contributing factor in many crashes. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has developed rules designed to prevent excessive fatigue among commercial truck drivers. These are called the Hours of Service rules. They cap the number of hours a driver can work and drive each day and week.

Work weeks can span seven or eight days with the maximum number of working hours each week being 60 or 70, respectively. In a given working day, a trucker can work up to 14 hours but can only drive for up to 11 of those hours. A 30-minute break must be taken after eight hours on the job and each work week must be separated by a period of 34 hours off duty. 

If you would like to learn more about how you might seek compensation after you or someone in your family has been involved in an accident with a commercial truck, please feel free to visit the trucking crash assistance page of our Florida personal injury website.