As car accident lawyers and tractor-trailer attorneys in Chicago are acutely aware, transportation accidents continue to take a huge toll on our society not only in Illinois, but nationwide. In November 2008, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) created a Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements, many of which are designed to reduce the number of catastrophic car and truck accidents.
The items on the Most Wanted List apply today, and are designed to reduce car and truck accidents caused by negligence or recklessness, such as accidents where a truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into the rear of an automobile, or where a car or truck driver is talking on her cell phone and drives through a red light into another vehicle, causing catastrophic injury.
Some of the Actions Needed by Federal Agencies, including the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, include preventing medically unqualified truck drivers from operating commercial trucks and tractor-trailers, preventing truck drivers from operating trucks with mechanical problems, restricting the use of cellular phones by commercial drivers of school buses and trucks, enact tougher legislation to reduce crashes involving drunk or intoxicated drivers, devise new standards to protect school bus children from being thrown out of their seats when a bus is involved in a crash.
Another item on the Most Wanted List, which I discussed in a previous blog post as being the subject of a new Congressional bill, includes mandatory Electronic On-Board Recorders to collect data on both driver Hours of Service and accident conditions.
Our top Illinois car and truck accident lawyers support action to adopt the safety improvements listed on the NTSB’s Most Wanted List.
