Victim’s family urges graduated licensing to keep inexperienced truck drivers off of difficult routes.
Trucking companies already have many specific responsibilities related to ensuring the safety of their trucks and drivers and preventing accidents. For example, they are expected to keep their vehicles roadworthy, ensure their drivers are properly trained, and avoid pressuring employees to drive under unsafe conditions. Failure in any one of these responsibilities could result in the trucking company being liable for damages should an accident occur.
However, the family of one accident victim believes the current safety precautions are not enough and is advocating for further regulations to help promote safety and prevent other families from losing loved ones.
Twenty-five-year-old Daniel McGuire was killed in a trucking accident in July of 2014, when a big rig driver from Saini Bros. Trucking lost control of his vehicle. According to the driver, the brakes on the truck failed. The fact that the driver was relatively new and had little experience driving large trucks on the steep and winding roads his route covered was also believed to have had an impact on the accident.
McGuire’s family has initiated a wrongful death lawsuit against the trucking company, alleging that the company was negligent in their maintenance of the vehicle and in their training and supervision of the driver.
This first argument seems the most promising for the success of their trucking accident lawsuit. The first step would be securing evidence that the brakes did fail. Then, the family’s attorneys would need to prove that the trucking company was aware of or should have been aware of some deficiency in the brakes and yet did nothing in order for them to be liable. For example, perhaps the brakes were due for a checkup or replacement that was never provided, or perhaps the brakes were installed incorrectly by the company mechanic. If these points could be proven, the trucking company would most likely be found liable for damages that resulted from the accident, including McGuire’s death as well as injuries to many other individuals involved in the accident.
The second argument, that it was somehow negligent for the trucking company to assign an inexperienced driver to a difficult route, is less certain to bring a good result. As of now, there are no official requirements as to how a driver can be judged “experienced” enough for a “difficult” route.
This is in fact what McGuire’s family wants to change. They have launched a petition calling for the trucking industry to adopt a system of graduated licensing that would help keep inexperienced drivers off of difficult routes. If their petition is successful and the trucking industry’s regulatory bodies change their requirements, then future accident victims would have the ability to use driver inexperience on a difficult route as a basis for a personal injury lawsuit.
Until that time, truck accident victims must rely on the traditional pillars of liability when attempting to secure compensation for their injuries from drivers or trucking companies. To learn more about the options you may have in your truck accident case, please contact The Law Offices of Fernando D. Vargas today.
