According to a husband and wife truck driving team in Trucks.com, the federal government adding new trucking industry regulations – including speed limiters for trucks and electronic logging devices – will not address the root causes of most truck crashes. 

The couple, Jeff and Linda Halling, stated in the article that if the government wants to improve truck safety, there needs to be better training for truck drivers. They believe that the federal government needs to require a much better system for training truck drivers. In their view, obtaining a CDL should be a 3 step process and should be the same in all states.

They believe that all truckers should get a probationary CDL that requires 40 hours of class training, 40 hours of yard training and 40 hours behind the wheel that includes day and night driving. Also, there should be bad weather driver training.

They note that there are some states where a truck driver applicant to test for their CDL without even pulling a trailer. They believe that this should not be allowed and the CDL testing requirements should be the same for all states.

After the drivers get their probationary CDL, there should be on the job training by certified instructors and should include 100 hours of additional training behind the wheel.

Our View

Our Virginia and North Carolina personal injury attorneys are glad to see that there are some truckers out there who stress the importance of additional trucker training. While additional training could cost more money to trucking companies, this would certainly save lives. We see far too many personal injury lawsuits and wrongful death lawsuits in truck crash accidents that could have been prevented with more training.

Maybe this $5.5 million personal injury settlement case could have been prevented if the trucker had been trained better. As it was, he seemed to have been distracted or fell asleep. This led to a serious crash that maimed two children for life.