Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations

When you are involved in an accident with a commercial truck driver, they are subject to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSR) that set forth a wide range of regulations for commercial interstate trucking. These regulations are intended to make our roads safer for everyone, including the truck drivers who drive more than 140 BILLION miles a year. An individual truck driver may drive between 80,000 and 110,000 miles per year on average, which is a shockingly high number until you consider that this is their fulltime job. regardless, this is an impressive amount of time to spend on the roads, and while we are lucky to be surrounded by many safe drivers, even the safest of all drivers are still at risk of an accident. 

Take a look below to get a general understanding of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, and learn about how they will play a role in your claim with the commercial trucking insurance company after your Fresno accident. When you are working with the experienced team of trucking accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices, you can focus on recovering from your injuries while we take on this wealth of information and the necessary details to get you the money that you truly deserve. 

Contact us now to schedule a free initial consultation, where we will be able to discuss your accident, your injuries, whether or not the truck driver violated any of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, and much more. 

What Are Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations?

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sets a wide range of regulations that comprise the body of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations that commercial truckers, trucking companies, and all other participants in the shipping industry must comply with. Essentially, these regulations are intended to be the minimum regulations for the shipping industry, although each state and municipality may provide their own specific regulations that build off of this body of work. These are typically traffic-related laws such as speed and travel restrictions (such as passenger vehicle-only roads).

Drivers MUST meet these requirements in order to operate a vehicle, although there are many additional certifications and regulatory requirements that they must meet and adhere to in order to transport certain types of cargo, operate certain vehicles, and more. If you are involved in an accident with a truck driver, we will go through all of the details of the crash to ensure that they were in adherence with all regulations applicable to them,

Determining a Driver’s Adherence to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations After an Accident

Whether or not a driver was adhering to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations is only one step (although important) that we will take as we move forward laying out your case. If we find that a driver has been operating a commercial vehicle in violation of any of the applicable regulations, both federal and local, we will use this information as leverage in order to prove that the driver was at fault for your accident.

There are many different regulations that they will need to adhere to, meaning that there are many different regulations that we will need to investigate as we move forward with determining fault, including the following:

  • Creating pre-trip, end of the day, and post-trip reports
  • Submit to, and pass annual inspections
  • Adhere to prescribed loading procedures (in the case that the driver loads their own cargo)
    • In instances where a driver is transporting a sealed trailer loaded by another team, they will be held responsible for any loading violations
  • Setting out appropriate warning devices when the vehicle is stopped on a roadside
  • Lights, reflectors, and other indicators must be in working order 
  • Brakes must be properly maintained and kept in working order
  • Hazardous materials require specific certifications that a driver must display while traveling

There are many more regulations that the driver must ensure that they follow, and even those previously mentioned go into much greater detail. We will help you understand each of these regulations, as well as how to determine whether or not a violation took place, as a part of the work that we will do together as your legal team.