Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/687054
DODGING THE AMBULANCE CHASERS June 2016 | Overdrive | 31 FIND A LOCAL DISTRIBUTOR AT MINIMIZER.COM OR CALL 800.248.3855 MINIMIZER POLY PRODUCTS • TESTED AND TORTURED TM • DAILY BY TRUCKERS FOR TRUCKERS TESTED AND TORTURED TIRE BENCH Times change. So should you. NICE TRY NAILED IT Minimizer Poly Fenders Guaranteed for life Typical dented, cracked, and rusted metal fenders Guaranteed to look terrible FLOOR MATS TOOL BOXES TOOL BENCH TIRE MASK that might be shortsighted in light of litigation. "I like the camera pointing both ways," he says as an attorney. "You're able to eliminate that you're not on the phone," among other things. "You're going to be criticized [by plaintiff 's attor- neys] if you don't have the driver-facing camera as well." Moseley believes the same logic that underpins why "the big companies get cameras ought to apply to the small com- panies. I would think that, to me, there's no diff erence from small versus large in terms of what the event recorders can do for you." ELDs can have a similar eff ect in eliminating operator wrongdoing as a potential contributing factor in a crash, Moseley says. Plaintiff 's attorneys have shown great skill at mining the public CSA system for recent-past violations to tell a story about company negligence. "The last thing you want is an inspection report from transport police writing you up for false logs right after the highway patrol writes you up for the accident," Moseley says. But even with e-logs, a problem can happen. Strimbu tells the story of an early-morning accident in March. Pulling a reefer, the Strimbu driver came upon an automobile in the median that had gotten stuck in snow. The four-wheeler was "rocking the car back and forth, and when the truck got even with it, the car turned right over the snowbank and drove head-on into our truck," Strimbu says. In-vehicle cameras showed the truck driver was not at fault. Later, it was learned that the auto driver was a "con- victed felon who borrowed his girlfriend's car, with no insurance, wanted for an armed robbery the day before," Strimbu says, but that wasn't the end of it. "Our driver, on e-logs, had just had his 34-hour restart and had only been driv- ing four hours," says Strimbu. The post- crash inspection showed no equipment violations, but the U.S. Department of Transportation inspector went back four days on the logs. The fourth day before the accident, he "found the driver was loading at a shipper near the trooper's geographical area and went off -duty for 8.5 minutes," Strimbu says. "He said, 'no way you were in the sleeper berth' " and fi ned the driver $650. So there's "now a chink in the armor," says Strimbu, which the company is aggressively challenging via the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's DataQs system. "Our insurance compa- ny's saying we've got to win that, because the ambulance-chasing attorneys" will no doubt be circling.