A truck driver hits and nearly kills a pedestrian. There is cocaine in his system. And during discovery, it’s found by the plaintiff’s truck accident lawyers that the truck company employing the grossly negligent driver did not have a drug testing program in the first place.

Sound outrageous?

As an attorney who has handled hundreds of very serious truck accident lawsuits throughout my career, and as past-president of the American Association for Justice Truck Litigation Group, I see versions of this scenario time and time again.

15 Months Off Work and Unable to Walk From Personal Injuries Is Not “Serious Enough”

If there’s one truth to emerge from the horrifically flawed Michigan Supreme Court ruling in Kreiner v. Fischer, a case that has doomed thousands of auto accident victims in Michigan, it is this:

The word “normal” doesn’t mean what you think it does.

At least not for innocent Michigan residents who have suffered serious personal injury from car accidents and must now follow Alice into Wonderland.  Linda Berishaj has had to learn that lesson the hard way.

As part of my efforts to raise awareness on dangerous truck companies in America with the general public and truck accident attorneys, I recently posted a step-by-step guide to finding unsafe motor carriers.

The presentation below shows you exactly how to use SafeStat, a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Web site that details the Department of Transportation’s assessment of a truck company’s regulatory compliance:

In the last two days, I’ve written about the enormous hidden safety crisis of the large numbers of truck drivers under influence of drugs or alcohol causing truck accidents on our roads. I’ve written about how tens of thousands of truckers and trucking companies conspire to cheat drug tests by using masking products and how truck companies are not required to run (and therefore largely avoid) criminal background checks on drivers. I reviewed a news report that cited hundreds of thousands of drivers carrying commercial licenses even though they qualify for full federal disability; and how many of these truckers do this by picking their own doctors to clear them, no matter how serious their underlying medical conditions. This is a practice the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has been trying to prevent since at least 2001.

Yesterday I wrote that many experienced truck accident lawyers estimate the real number of truck drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol on our roads today may be well over 200,000. Today I’d like to expand on one of the factors allowing this to occur — what I believe is an industry-wide conspiracy allowing cheating on mandatory drug testing.

I realize many people may disregard what I say, as an attorney handling truck cases, when I opine on this issue. But last year, a Government Accountability Office report to Congress called the Department of Transportation’s drug and alcohol testing program for truck drivers unreliable and riddled with problems.  For example:

The image of one trucker driving an 80,000 pound truck while under the influence of drugs or alcohol and causing truck accidents on our roads is scary enough.

Now imagine 100,000 truckers on our roads on drugs and alcohol.

According to the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) Roadcheck 2008, 1 percent of the truck drivers who were stopped during checks were under influence of drugs or alcohol. One percent  multiplied by the number of truck drivers on our roads would be 92,500 truck drivers under
influence of drugs or alcohol.

Now double that.

Don’t Let Defense Attorneys Blame the Victim

I settled a tough motorcycle accident case last month on the eve of trial.  My client had very serious injuries, and the insurance company was offering zero.  Preparing for trial, I had focus-grouped the case a number of times to mock juries. Even as an attorney who handles motorcycle accidents, the results surprised me.

Last week, a reporter from the Des Moines Register interviewed me for an article on the national debate on elderly drivers causing auto accidents: Do they pose a great risk to others and should therefore face more restrictions, or could that constitute age-based discrimination? As a personal injury attorney handling car accidents and truck accidents, a significant portion of my practice involves elderly drivers.

This reporter found me through my blog on older drivers. Our firm cares deeply about the well being and safety of the elderly as well as how it relates to Michigan drivers. I was pleased to be included in the story about such an important topic:

As an attorney handling serious car and truck accidents, I would estimate approximately 50 percent of my cases involve a traumatic brain injury component. TBI is something that I and the other lawyers here feel strongly about, which is why we often speak at seminars and lawyer education programs around Michigan and the country, helping people who have suffered traumatic brain injury after an accident. Many people with TBI are ignored or receive poor follow-up care, and many attorneys simply do not understand the underlying medicine to be able to properly protect them.

On Tuesday I wrote about an appalling case, Roberts v. Farmers Insurance Exchange; involving a 14-year-old car accident victim with traumatic brain injury and an insurance company that once again, refused to pay her no-fault insurance benefits. Farmers Insurance did this because the child did not make it to her mandatory insurance medical examination.

But the reason she couldn’t get there is because her indigent, working mother was in the ICU with a serious illness for more than two weeks.