{"id":369,"date":"2011-03-13T18:01:37","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T22:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/?p=369"},"modified":"2011-03-31T20:15:23","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T00:15:23","slug":"the-basics-of-being-a-professional-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/2011\/03\/waynes-world\/the-basics-of-being-a-professional-driver\/","title":{"rendered":"The Basics Of Being A Professional Driver"},"content":{"rendered":"

CSA SCORES<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really want to be one of those \u201cI told you so\u201d people, but just last week I received two e-mails from companies with CSA score problems.\u00a0 The first e-mail was from a company in Oklahoma with about 200 drivers and a Satisfactory Rating.\u00a0 The safety director e-mailed me that they had just lost a customer over their CSA score and wanted to know when they should start enforcing CSA.<\/p>\n

When I looked this company up, the reason was so obvious.\u00a0 The FMCSA has stated many times that under the old system a carrier could have a \u201cSatisfactory Rating\u201d but still a high CSA score under the new methodology.\u00a0 I told the safety director, in my opinion, the customer left because they did not want to be involved in a lawsuit that the carrier might get into due to an accident.\u00a0 Simply speaking, the carrier had four alerts out of seven categories.\u00a0 Furthermore, the carrier had not taken any corrective actions to reduce future points against them.<\/p>\n

The other e-mail came from a Mexican carrier with 40 drivers and a terminal in the United States \u2013 they also had a Satisfactory Rating.\u00a0 The owner wanted to know why the DOT was taking such a hard line with them.\u00a0 His story was much the same as the other carrier, but he had not lost a customer (yet).\u00a0 I am positive that this scenario will crop up even more in the future if motor carriers do not start taking corrective actions now.<\/p>\n

EOBR UPDATE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) has now proposed requiring nearly all interstate commercial carriers to install electronic on-board (data) recorders (EOBRs) to monitor their driver\u2019s hours-of-service (HOS) compliance.\u00a0 The plan would also ease the current requirements that fleets keep paperwork to document drivers\u2019 HOS records.\u00a0 The proposal calls for interstate carriers to have these EOBRs installed by June 2015.\u00a0 However, short-haul interstate carriers that use time-cards to document drivers\u2019 hours would be exempt from the requirement.\u00a0 The FMCSA said the cost of purchasing and installing EOBRs would range from $1,500 to $2,000 per truck, in addition to several hundred dollars each year in service fees for each unit.\u00a0 The rule would require that carriers still retain HOS records for six months.\u00a0 Carriers that violate the EOBR requirement would face penalties of up to $11,000 for each offense.<\/p>\n

LEGAL CONCERNS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The California Court of Appeals for the First Appellate District recently held that the driver of a commercial motor vehicle (CMV), although legally parked, can still be held liable to other motorists for creating an unreasonable risk of harm.\u00a0 A Safeway tractor-trailer was parked legally on the roadside of US Highway 101 in northern California, near an intersection, where a pickup collided with a motorcyclist.\u00a0 Both parties contended that the Safeway rig obscured the pickup truck\u2019s view of traffic on the highway as he attempted to cross a portion of the highway and turn left onto the highway.\u00a0 Safeway and its counsel defended on the basis that the tractor-trailer was legally parked and, under those circumstances, no duty of care was owed to other motorists.<\/p>\n

The appeals court reviewed a lower court verdict in which the jury apportioned liability almost equally between Safeway, the State of California and the third defendant, the pickup driver.\u00a0 The court noted that the general rule is that all persons have a duty to use ordinary care to prevent others from being injured as a result of their conduct.\u00a0 And, it began its opinion by observing that drivers ordinarily should have no liability if they are legally parked, and that obscured sight lines from parked vehicles are an unavoidable risk with which drivers must generally be expected to cope.<\/p>\n

But, the court then held that the facts of this case involved a risk of foreseeable harm that was unreasonable and avoidable, and imposed a duty on the commercial driver.\u00a0 The court found four factors to support its reasoning: 1) the accident involved a large commercial vehicle; 2) there was expert testimony that commercial drivers are trained to take into account the sight lines of other drivers; 3) the highway had a high posted speed, increasing the potential of serious injury; and 4) the Safeway driver had other nearby places to safely park.<\/p>\n

Recognizing that the resulting verdict was a decision of first impression in the state (California), the court justified its conclusion by pointing out that similar holdings could be found in Connecticut, Missouri, New York, Kentucky, Oregon, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Washington.\u00a0 Hopefully, this decision will not lead to a multitude of additional claims bringing in carriers and owner operators.\u00a0 It does, however, provide one more weapon in the plaintiffs\u2019 arsenal against the transportation industry.<\/p>\n

Remember, you are a \u201cProfessional Truck Driver\u201d \u2013 on the road, you are held to a higher standard.\u00a0 In light of this, it seems appropriate to remind everyone of the definition of a \u201cpreventable\u201d accident: Every accident in which a professional driver is involved is considered preventable unless there was no action which the driver could have reasonably taken to avoid the accident and that his or her actions in no way contributed to the occurrence of the accident.\u00a0 A driver must drive in such a way that he or she commits no errors and so controls his or her vehicle to make due allowance for the condition of the road, the weather and the traffic, and so that the mistakes of other drivers do not involve him or her in any accident.\u00a0 Any accident involving a vehicle which results in property damage and\/or personal injury, regardless of who was injured, what property was damaged, to what extent, or where it occurred, in which the driver in question failed to exercise every reasonable precaution to prevent the accident, is considered to be preventable.<\/p>\n

Yep, you guessed it \u2013 basically, every accident (at some level) is preventable.\u00a0 Be careful out there, but stop blaming everyone else and start acting like a professional!<\/p>\n

~ NTA is a name and organization you can trust.\u00a0 Not only is our website (www.ntassoc.com<\/a>) an official US DOT Internet Training Site, but we are also the administrators of a Nationally Accredited Drug and Alcohol Program.\u00a0 If you have any questions, call me at (562) 279-0557 or send me an e-mail at wayne@ntassoc.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Until next month, \u201cDrive Safe \u2013 Drive Smart!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CSA SCORES I don\u2019t really want to be one of those \u201cI told you so\u201d people, but just last week I received two e-mails from companies with CSA score problems.\u00a0 The first e-mail was from a company in Oklahoma with about 200 drivers and a Satisfactory Rating.\u00a0 The safety director e-mailed me that they had<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-waynes-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}