Trucking Companies Will Have Better Access to Backgrounds of Semi Truck Drivers
One issue that arises in personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits resulting from truck accidents is a truck driver who is unqualified to safely operate a semi truck and a trucking company that did not perform the proper background check to prevent that driver from being on the road. Personal injury and wrongful death lawyers can investigate the truck driver during the lawsuit and find out a variety of negative facts about the truck driver that should have prevented the trucking company from hiring him/her to drive a tractor trailer in the first place. However, trucking company employees often plead ignorance and say they did not know those things about the truck driver that would have caused any responsible trucking company to reject the driver's job application.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has been working to make it easier for trucking companies to investigate truck driver applicants. A database has been prepared that contains information about a semi truck driver's accident history and inspection history. With the database, a trucking company can screen a truck driver applicant to see if he/she has been involved in multiple accidents and/or has a history of failed DOT inspections. The rules do not require trucking companies to participate in the program and check the database, but it is hard to imagine that trucking company employees will have good answers as to why they did not screen truck driver applicants in a deposition during a lawsuit after a bad driver causes a serious injury accident. Failure to screen a truck driver with a history of accidents and/or failed inspections would seem to be pretty clear negligence on the part of a trucking company after a serious accident and could lead to the trucking company paying significant damages to a plaintiff who has been injured by an unsafe truck driver.
The latest news about the database does not indicate whether past, failed drug and/or alcohol tests will be included in the database information. If not, this is important information that any trucking company should investigate and know prior to hiring anyone for a semi truck driving position.
