Extreme Weather Trucking Regulations
The Federal Trucking Industry is regulated by what’s called The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The FMCSA has a set of regulations that govern motor vehicle drivers and the carriers that employ them. Those are called the FMCSR – Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.
One of the more interesting regulations is the “Extreme Condition Weather Regulation”. It’s pertinent in Northeast Ohio, especially given our harsh winter conditions. The regulation basically states that if you’re a commercial driver and you encounter any extreme weather conditions such as rain, sleet, snow, ice, fog (if you’re a Northeast Ohio resident, you can have all those in one morning), the commercial driver shall exercise extreme caution and shall reduce their speed. The regulation also stated that if the weather conditions are bad enough, the driver shall suspend operations, stop driving entirely, and wait until the conditions improve.
Most drivers in Northeast Ohio have been in a situation where you are driving and the weather conditions are bad, whether it’s snow, ice, rain, sleet, fog, or a combination of all of them, and you’re on the highway, and an 18 wheeler goes buzzing by you faster than you are going. This is a violation of the “Extreme Condition Weather Regulation”.
What we will first be looking at is what that driver was doing in those conditions? What are the witnesses stating? Was the driver in the right lane with their flashers on doing 40 mph in a 60 mph zone? Or were they passing in the left lane doing 70 mph while everyone else was doing 55 mph? If the latter is the case, we’re not only going to pursue them for negligence but potentially for punitive damages for operating recklessly in contravention of a known regulation.
In the context of the extreme weather regulation one thing that we’re constantly looking at here at Willis, Willis & Rizzi when these types of cases come in, we have a situation where there was a weather event, the driver was not exercising extreme caution – so we are going to go back and look at the carrier. Does this carrier have a history of their drivers being cited for not following the extreme weather regulation? If we can go in to the federal database and find that this carrier has had that driver or multiple drivers get cited by enforcement officers for not exercising extreme caution during a weather event, that leads us to not only be looking at the negligence of the driver the day of the accident, we’re also looking at a separate negligence claim against the truck carrier for their business practices. Whether that be through their hiring, who they are retaining, how they are training their drivers to operate in an extreme weather event and how they are supervising their drivers.
What we have seen in these types of cases is that you get these drivers in a deposition, and you are asking them about their history of driving, and you discovery that the driver has never even heard of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations!
We can tell you from experience, the other side doesn’t enjoy realizing that the first time their client has heard of the extreme weather regulation or other federal regulations is in deposition after an accident has already occurred.
Why Choose Willis, Willis & Rizzi
At Willis, Willis & Rizzi our philosophy is that if a truck driver is entrusted to move an 18 wheel vehicle across the state or country, we are going to dig in and research thoroughly that both the semitruck driver and the trucking company have followed all regular traffic laws as well as the litany of federal regulations that govern their activities.
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