PENNSYLVANIA TRUCK ACCIDENT LAWYERS
Truck driver in Pennsylvania like you know how grueling your job can be. Hours and hours on the road every week with very little time to rest can lead to a number of poor side-effects for your health. It can also take a toll on your ability to concentrate and make snap decisions, which can lead to accidents.
So, are truck drivers who are tired and overworked a hazard to other people on the road? The short answer: yes. The U.S. Department of Transportation has taken painstaking measures to try cutting down on driver fatigue, a major cause of accidents between privately owned vehicles and trucks. Of the nearly 4,000 people who die in truck-related accidents, the majority of them have involved driver fatigue. Truck drivers have been reported as working up to 80 hours or more in a week, with some squeezing an entire extra shift into their weekly schedule and getting very little rest in between the end of one week and the start of another. Though that is less common, one thing that is common is the frequent skipping of rest breaks while on the job to cut down on delivery or travel time.
For this reason, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has been introducing new measures to help truck drivers like you get more rest on the job. Introducing more mandatory breaks and cutting down the maximum total hours from 82 to 70 hours a week were the starting points, and more changes have been made since then.
There are still some situations where you may feel you need to skip on sleep to get more work done, even if it’s illegal. But that’s the number one way to become a road hazard yourself, potentially causing yourself or others around you to come to harm.
