Regulatory Failures Lead to Dangerous Semi-Truck Accidents: How Our Truck Accident Lawyers Can Help

When Regulations Fail, Dangerous Truck Drivers Are Left Behind the Wheel and On the Road

Commercial trucking research has shown that drivers suspended for dangerous driving – usually for drugs or alcohol – are six times more likely to be in a crash than a person who has never been suspended.

Yet even as heavy truck traffic is climbing with the delivery of $7 billion a year in freight, deadly crashes keep happening in cases where guilty truckers have evaded regulatory systems meant to keep them off the road. Over and over, tragedies stem from a lack of federal oversight in the trucking industry and failures by state governments to share information about dangerous drivers.

The Pritzker Hageman semi-truck accident lawyers have handled cases where families lost the people closest to them because trucking companies hire incompetent drivers, some with histories of past violations. In a nation of 227 million licensed drivers, nearly 6 million people are driving with a suspended license and they make up 13 percent of drivers in accidents where someone is killed.

In the category of trucking deaths, one haunting example continues to play out in New Hampshire. That’s where Volodymyr Zhukovskyy admittedly ingested cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl hours before his truck and trailer crashed head-on into a group of motorcyclists, killing seven of them. The slaughter happened on June 21, 2019, as the group of ex-Marines and their motorbike companions were returning from a charity event. In 2024, the truck driver went back to court to seek reinstatement of his driver’s license.

The investigation revealed an awful truth: When Zhukovskyy crashed into the Jarheads motorcycle group, he was fresh off a drunken driving arrest in Connecticut. His driver’s license should have been revoked, but regulators in his home state of Massachusetts admitted to dropping the ball. Connecticut authorities provided notification, but the alert was effectively ignored and a top official at the Massachusetts motor vehicle agency stepped down after the lapse was revealed in a Pulitzer-prize-winning story by the Boston Globe.

Moreover, Zhukovskyy had been involved in a crash in Texas just months before his drunken driving arrest. On the day of the motorcycle deaths, according to public radio, multiple witnesses saw Zhukovskyy driving erratically in the hours leading up to the crash.

In emotionally charged courtroom dramas since then, Zhukovskyy was acquitted in his manslaughter trial despite telling police at the scene that he caused the wreck. Most recently this year, the truck driver appealed the suspension of his driver’s license. He lost his license but continues to fight to have it reinstated. He told the judge this year he’s been sober for 5 years and on good behavior. The state of New Hampshire asked for the maximum license suspension, until 2031.

Family and friends of the deceased bikers attended the proceedings to help keep Zhukovskyy off the road.

“Someone that caused such incredible, horrible pain to so many people has the audacity to say ‘I want my privilege back,’” David Bark, a member of the Jarheads told the press. “It’s not a constitutional right to drive a car, to operate a motor vehicle on a public access highway. This is a privilege.” 

In the end, the administrative law judge from the Department of Safety extended the license suspension for two years, until the end of June 2026. Another consequence of the case was the federal government’s finding that the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles was in substantial noncompliance with federal truck driver licensing procedures. The state was not processing paper notifications from other states systematically and did not follow its own procedures for processing out-of-state driver notifications, the audit found.

Semi-Truck Accident Lawsuits: Getting Justice When the System has Failed

The Zhukovskyy case is just one example of ongoing regulatory failures – an illustration of why it pays to hire a good semi-truck accident lawyer. According to research reviewed by Pritzker Hageman’s legal team, other commercial truck drivers are not being stopped or properly disqualified for serious offenses. These drivers pose a preventable safety risk and must be removed from the roadway to protect the motoring public.

Our truck accident lawyers have handled numerous cases where individuals were badly injured and where families lost the people closest to them because trucking companies desperate for drivers hire incompetent people with histories of past violations.

Attorney Eric Hageman and his team at Pritzker Hageman have won substantial settlements and verdicts for our clients in lawsuits against trucking companies, drivers, and insurance firms. In total, our team has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for clients. In one case, the law firm achieved a $6 million settlement in a case where our client’s leg was crushed and had to be amputated. The truck driver was impaired by alcohol.

In another case, a motorcyclist suffered an amputation injury when an unqualified and overtired delivery truck driver collided with him. The award exceeded $5 million. Trucking companies may be held liable for accidents caused by negligent, dangerous, or disqualified drivers.

Gaps in Oversight Are Everywhere

According to research by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the United States has a serious problem detecting actions taken against truck drivers. These failures are aiding commercial truck drivers to avoid disqualification. An FMCSA study across all states found roadside detection rates of previous violations as low as 24 percent. One major shortfall exposed in the study showed that conviction records get lost or compromised through data deficiencies among various agencies. The result? Offenses that would otherwise be disqualifying are not always recorded on a truck driver’s operating history.

Some examples of disqualifying offenses include driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs; leaving the scene of an accident; using the vehicle to commit a felony or causing a wrongful death due to the negligent operation of a truck.

Moreover, FMCSA research has found a correlation to truck accident frequency even when a violation is not disqualifying. For instance, truck drivers who have a moving violation on their record were 54 percent more likely to be involved in a carrier-preventable crash, the federal safety regulator reported in 2020. It matters even more when the baseline truth in highway safety is that large trucks are involved in more fatal crashes per unit of travel than passenger vehicles.

Suing Truck Companies: Dangerous Drivers are Not the Only Wrongdoer

Keeping dangerous truck drivers off the road is crucial for the simple reason that crash consequences are often dreadful and dire. As explained in our law firm’s truck accident litigation, a fully loaded semi-truck can weigh 20-30 times more than a passenger car, leading to a much greater impact force in a crash. Due to their height, trucks also can easily “override’’ a smaller vehicle in a collision, causing severe damage. Truck braking capability also can be a factor in truck crashes. Loaded tractor-trailers require 20-40 percent more distance than cars to stop, and the discrepancy is greater on wet and slippery roads or with poorly maintained brakes.

Truck driver fatigue is also a known crash risk. Drivers of large trucks are allowed by federal hours-of-service regulations to drive up to 11 hours at a stretch. Surveys indicate that many drivers violate the regulations and work longer than permitted.

A total of 4,764 people died in large truck crashes in 2022. Seventeen percent of these deaths were truck occupants while 66 percent were occupants of cars and other passenger vehicles. Another 16 percent were pedestrians, bicyclists, or motorcyclists. The number of people who died in large truck crashes was 51 percent higher in 2022 than in 2009, when it was the lowest it has been since the collection of fatal crash data began in 1975. Eleven percent of all motor vehicle crash deaths in 2022 occurred in large truck crashes.

Federal Review: What Needs to Change

To improve oversight of systems designed to keep bad truck drivers off the road, a federal audit in 2021 identified the following shortcomings:

• The license review process lacked quality control and did not require a checklist. Evaluators sometimes skipped important steps in their reviews.
• Evaluators were not consistently determining whether electronic out-of-state convictions were posted to driver records within the required 10 days. 
• FMCSA’s own information system for tracking compliance by states was found to be unfriendly to users and difficult for states to use.

Together, the audit concluded that the weaknesses have hindered FMCSA’s ability to keep unsafe truck drivers off the road. But the report also found fault with states. Some states allowed drivers to appeal disqualifications, overturning them in some cases. Some states also backdated disqualification periods to effectively put dangerous truck drivers back on the road.

We Support Common Sense Solutions: One Driver, One History

With the industry still in search of solutions, the truck accident law team at Pritzker Hageman supports the concept of one driver, one history record. One promising system is the State To State Verification System (S2S), spearheaded by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA). It’s a speedy, modern way for states to standardize and share all driver history records. It also includes a connection to the federal Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse – another resource for states and trucking companies to run reliable checks on a truck driver’s history. 

The clearinghouse contains violations of the U.S. Transportation Department’s drug and alcohol testing program for commercial vehicle drivers. Employers are supposed to screen job candidates using the clearinghouse. On the flip side, employers, substance abuse professionals, medical review officers, and others must report violations to the clearinghouse.

S2S Verification Service is a means for a state to electronically check with all other participating states to determine – in real-time – if the applicant currently holds a driver’s license or identification card in another state. The platform that supports S2S was introduced in July 2015. Since then, at least 41 states have joined, including Minnesota, New York, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Alabama, Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and Utah.

It’s Time to End the Gaps in the System

Also available to states is the Problem Driver Pointer System, developed and maintained by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. It allows jurisdictions and some organizations to search the National Driver Register, a repository of information on problem drivers across the U.S. Based on the information received, the issuing state decides if the applicant is eligible to receive a new or renewed driver’s license.

Some disqualified truck drivers have been known to apply for a new license under a false identity. To combat those attempts, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators is leveraging a database of facial images of problem drivers. States can submit facial images of problem drivers. They can also screen applicants by running their photo through the database to see if it matches the image of a previously disqualified driver. To be able to successfully exchange images, both requesting and receiving jurisdictions have to be full-time participants in the system.

With ongoing and seemingly endless frequency, however, truckers and companies that have no business being on the road still cause fatal highway crashes. In June 2024, a semi-truck operator with no valid license was arrested for vehicular homicide and vehicular assault after crashing into several cars on U.S. Highway 285 in Colorado. Left dead was 64-year-old Scott Miller. A heavy load of 40-foot steel pipe segments spilled when the semi-jack-knifed and collided with another vehicle. Three other motorists were injured, one seriously.

The case triggered public outrage in late August when the at-fault driver, Ignacio Cruz-Mendoza, was sentenced to a mere 364 days in jail. He and the now-defunct California trucking company that employed him had a long history of trouble. 

According to reports from law enforcement officials, trucking regulators, and the media, Cruz-Mendoza had been removed from the U.S. multiple times, did not keep a driver’s log, did not submit to drug and alcohol testing, and had been stripped of his commercial driver’s license four months before the crash.

After the crash, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an Imminent Hazard Order to Monique Trucking, citing its lack of safety compliance and ordering it to cease “all commercial motor vehicle operations.” The company had five violations on its record over the previous two years, including insufficient tie-downs. More details are expected to surface in related truck accident lawsuits.