Truck Accident Laws You Need to Know After a Crash

How a truck accident claim works is different from what most people assume. Maybe you’ve heard something about filing an insurance claim against the truck driver who is responsible for your accident. 

But what about the trucking company? Or the maintenance company?

If a big rig was involved in your accident, all of these players come into play. But they won’t make your case easy. Trucking companies hire attorneys and pay millions into their insurance company’s defense every year because they know how to fight back.

There are specific trucking laws and commercial regulations that every driver and trucking company must follow. They are the basis for every truck accident claim.

When those laws are broken, it matters — a lot.

We’re not going to sugarcoat this or overwhelm you with legal rules that don’t apply to your case. At America’s Truck Accident Network, we only connect injury victims with qualified attorneys who can actually help.

Here, you’ll learn about the truck accident laws and regulations you need to know after a crash. 

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)

Alright, first some basics.

Commercial trucks are different from regular trucks. They are much larger. They weigh more. Sometimes they even carry hazardous materials.

These differences mean commercial trucks require strict regulation. A massive federal agency called the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulates them.

The FMCSA has jurisdiction over truck drivers and trucking companies. Its mission statement is to “reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks and buses.”

Everything from the hours a driver can drive to drug testing requirements to maintenance standards is governed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs).

You can find those regulations compiled in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

Now, let’s break down what these regulations mean for you.

The FMCSA isn’t just a bunch of words on paper, giving toothless guidelines that trucking companies can ignore. 

When a truck driver violates a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulation, that violation can come into play during your lawsuit.

For example, if a trucking company requires (or allows) a driver to drive more than 11 hours without a break, that’s a violation of federal regulations. When that violation causes your accident, it’s fair game in court.

Hours of Service Rules

Driving a big truck while tired is dangerous. We know this. The FMCSA knows this.

That’s why commercial drivers are restricted on the number of hours they can drive by a set of rules known as Hours of Service Regulations.

These regulations include things like:

• Maximum driving time
• Minimum required rest
• Allowable driving times

These rules are found in 49 C.F.R. § 395.

When a driver ignores these regulations, it becomes a federal offense. If that offense causes your crash, a judge and/or jury will hear about it.

Don’t think these regulations are always followed. Truck drivers we’ve worked with describe extreme pressure from their employers to keep rolling regardless of the hours they logged.

An attorney with experience in truck accidents knows how to uncover those violations and use them in your case.

Electronic Logging Device (ELD) Mandate

Long gone are the days of trucks rolling down the highway with handwritten logs showing illegal driving hours. The FMCSA put an end to that.

Under 49 C.F.R. § 395.8, commercial drivers are required to install an electronic logging device (ELD) that plugs into the truck’s engine and records their driving time.

An ELD automatically records data such as:

• When the truck engine is on
• When the truck is moving
• Number of miles driven
• Length of time the driver is on duty

An ELD is one of the best forms of evidence in a truck accident case. But if not preserved properly, it can be gone forever.

If your accident involves a truck, contact an attorney immediately. You don’t want to take any chances with ELD data.

Drug and Alcohol Testing

Federal law dictates that truck drivers cannot operate a commercial vehicle with a blood alcohol level above .04 (49 C.F.R. § 392.5). That’s HALF the legal limit for non-commercial drivers.

Federal law also prohibits truck drivers from being under the influence of any controlled substance that could affect safe driving.

Companies aren’t off the hook either. They have an independent duty to make sure drivers are following these rules.

Under 49 C.F.R. Part 382, trucking companies are required to implement a drug and alcohol testing program that includes pre-employment testing, random testing, reasonable suspicion testing, post-accident testing, and return to duty testing. 

Drivers are tested for drugs and alcohol. Companies are supposed to make sure they’re following the rules.

If the company didn’t follow these steps at any point, it could be held liable for your damages.

We see it all the time. Trucking companies who turn a blind eye to positive drug tests, skip required testing altogether, or wait until the last minute to drug test after an accident to try to cover up their liability.

Drunk truck drivers don’t just ruin their lives when they crash. They take your life down with them.

Driver Qualifications Regulations

The driver of that big rig wasn’t always driving trucks. There are federal laws that dictate who can drive commercial motor vehicles and who can’t.

First, every truck driver must be at least 21 years old to drive across state lines and have a valid CDL with the proper endorsements (49 C.F.R. § 391.11).

They also must:

• Pass a physical exam (49 C.F.R. § 391.41)
• Hold a current medical certificate
• Be able to read and speak English
• Maintain a safe driving record

Their employer must also review their driving record every year (49 C.F.R. § 391.25) and investigate their driving history before hiring (49 C.F.R. § 391.23). Companies must also maintain a driver qualification file on every employee driver (49 C.F.R. § 391.51).

Sounds like a lot of homework for the trucking company before they hire somebody. But companies cut corners to hire fast and fill their trucks with drivers.

They don’t always do their due diligence, and when that happens, incompetent drivers end up on the road and hurt someone. When a driver causes an accident, their employer’s neglect to review or investigate properly can come into play during your lawsuit.

Maintenance & Inspection Requirements

Federal law says trucking companies are responsible for their vehicles being in a safe operating condition (49 C.F.R. § 396.3). If they are not, those trucks better not be on the road (49 C.F.R. § 396.7).

Some of the maintenance requirements trucking companies must follow include:

• Performing inspections daily (49 C.F.R. § 396.11)
• Repairing all identified issues before driving a truck
• Annual inspections of every truck (49 C.F.R. § 396.17)
• Completing required repairs from roadside inspections within 15 days of notice (49 C.F.R. § 396.9)

Maintaining records of every truck inspection, repair, and maintenance activity (49 C.F.R. § 396.3 (b))

Maintenance violations aren’t hard to find when they exist.

Take a look at any valid company’s maintenance logs, and you’ll see missed inspections, overdue repairs, and problems that don’t get fixed until after an accident.

Cargo Securement Standards

If cargo isn’t loaded properly, it can cause a truck to become unstable while driving. Rules about cargo securement exist for this reason.

Drivers are prohibited by 49 C.F.R. § 392.9 from operating a commercial truck unless the cargo is evenly distributed and secured. Drivers are also required to inspect cargoes within the first 50 miles of their journey, and then at specified intervals after that.

49 C.F.R. Part 393, Subpart I lays out the rules on properly securing cargo within a truck, including:

• The minimum amount of tie downs depends on how many feet or pounds of cargo you’re hauling
• Unique rules for securing different kinds of cargo, like lumber, metal coils, and heavy equipment
• Rules on weight distribution
• Blocking and bracing requirements within the trailer

Cargo loading issues often come up because improperly hidden cargo can easily cause a truck accident.

Everything may look fine from the outside. But if the shift inside the trailer isn’t balanced properly, you could lose control during one hard stop or turn.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the driver may not be the one who loaded the truck. Many trucking companies use a separate cargo loading company. Suddenly, you have a 2nd potential party who could be responsible for the crash.

Drivers have 49 C.F.R. rules requiring them to inspect cargo before beginning their journey and within the first 50 miles of travel. However, if another party loaded the truck and the issue isn’t something a driver would notice during a standard inspection, then the company that loaded the truck could be mostly at fault.

Proving who loaded the truck and when it was loaded/reloaded requires discovery of the loading records, company dispatch records, and internal company communications. This is investigative work your truck accident attorney will be doing from day one.

State Laws That May Apply to Your Case

You already know about the federal regulations trucking companies must follow. But your case doesn’t operate in a legal vacuum. State laws can affect your claim, too.

Statutes of Limitations

Each state has laws dictating how long you have to file a lawsuit for personal injury claims, or in the case of fatal accidents, wrongful death claims.

Once the statute of limitations expires, you can’t file a lawsuit. It’s as simple as that.

Texas has a two-year statute of limitations for most truck accidents.

Each state has different statute of limitations for personal ijury accidents. A couple even give you less than two years for certain types of claims or defendants.

Don’t assume you have time to file a claim later. Speak with an attorney ASAP so you know what deadlines apply to your case.

Comparative Fault Laws

Almost every state follows some variation on comparative negligence. And that means the fault for a crash can be divided amongst everyone involved…including you.

How your state calculates comparative fault can impact your claim significantly.

Some states allow you compensation minus your percentage of fault. Other states, like Texas, prevent you from recovering anything if you’re more than 50% responsible.

Insurance companies are well-versed in these laws. They’ll do everything in their power to shift the fault onto you to pay out as little as possible. Even if they can damage your credibility by 10%, that could cost you thousands in potential recovery.

That’s why it’s important to prove what happened ASAP.

The more time your attorney has to investigate, the harder it becomes for the other side to rewrite the story of what happened. You want to lock in the narrative early and keep the focus on the negligent parties that caused the crash.

State Weight and Axle Limits

Some states enforce additional weight/axle limits beyond what the FMCSA requires. You can use these to your advantage as well.

If a truck exceeds state weight limits or drives on a road restricted to trucks, then that can be used as evidence in your claim, just like any federal violation would be.

In Texas, commercial vehicles must comply with strict size and weight limits, whether operating with or without a special permit.

Texas measures:

• Width from the outermost points of the vehicle, excluding safety devices
• Height from the road surface to the highest point of the vehicle or load
• Length from the foremost point to the rearmost point of the vehicle or load
• Weight as the combined total of the truck and its cargo

If a truck exceeds these limits, it may be operating illegally. That violation can be used as evidence of negligence if it contributed to the crash.

Certain states may also have additional trucking safety laws that apply. These can include stricter regulations on which roads/truck routes trucks are allowed to travel on. Such as through residential neighborhoods, school zones, or roads with known safety hazards. If the driver was on a state-restricted road at the time of the crash, that’s evidence too.

Your attorney should be familiar with both the federal and state regulations that apply to your crash. Taken together, they build the strongest case for you.

How Safety Regulation Violations Help Your Claim

Okay, let’s dig into how these regulations can help you get the compensation you deserve.

In many states, when a driver or trucking company violates a safety law and that violation causes an accident, the law treats that conduct as negligence on its own. This doctrine is known as negligence per se.

Instead of proving what a “reasonable” driver should have done, the focus shifts to the violation itself. If the law was broken and that failure caused your injuries, liability becomes much easier to establish.

Let us explain.

Most personal injury cases revolve around proving that the other person failed to behave as a reasonable person would. With negligence per se, you don’t need to prove that. The violation of the law is deemed negligent by the court automatically.

So if a driver violated the hours of service limits and hit you while driving drowsy, his failure to follow HOS can be used as direct evidence of negligence. You wouldn’t need to argue about whether driving 13 hours is considered “reasonable.” The violation of that law makes it negligent on its own.

Not every state will accept negligence per se claims as cut and dry as others. But either way, safety regulation violations help your case:

• Hours of service violations that caused a driver to drive while fatigued
• Failed drug/alcohol tests that resulted in an impaired driving accident
• Missed inspections that led to a mechanical failure
• Cargo securement violations that resulted in loss of vehicle control
• Hiring violations where a company intentionally hired an unqualified driver

Trust us. When you start finding violations, they tend to add up.

And when you start stacking violations up, you begin to picture a company that consistently puts profits over safety. A picture like that can lead to major increases in your compensation amount.

Jurors notice this stuff. When they see a negligent truck driver who broke lots of rules, it sets the tone of your trial. You stop looking like a tragic accident and start looking like an accident that should have never happened. And accidents that “shouldn’t have happened” tend to have higher jury awards.

Preserving Regulatory Records

Federal regulations require trucking companies to create/maintain mountains of records.

ELD logging data, inspection reports, driver qualification files, drug testing records, maintenance logs, and cargo securement documentation.

The list goes on and on. And while most of this information will be obtainable later through your attorney, that doesn’t mean it will still be there.

ELD reporting data can be deleted by normal use. Some companies won’t take the initiative to preserve evidence that makes them look bad.

That’s why preserving regulatory records early can be very important.

One of the first things your truck accident attorney should do is send a spoliation letter to the trucking company. 

A spoliation letter demands that they preserve all records related to the crash. It lets the company know that if they lose or delete evidence, they could face sanctions or contempt of court.

Ideally, this letter gets sent ASAP after you hire your attorney. We’ve seen cases where critical evidence was destroyed simply because the victim waited too long to contact an attorney.

Trucking companies are required to keep these records by federal regulations. ELDs for at least 6 months, drivers’ qualification files for the duration of their employment + 3 years after termination. But just because they’re required to keep something doesn’t mean they will.

Accidents happen. Computers crash. Emails get deleted. If a trucking company says they don’t have something, it didn’t exist.

Get the Help You Deserve from America’s Truck Accident Network

America’s Truck Accident Network is here to connect you with an experienced truck accident attorney. They’ve seen every trick in the book. They know what evidence to preserve, what regulations apply to your crash, and how to hold negligent trucking companies accountable.

Don’t let the trucking company build its defense unopposed.

While you were in the hospital, chances are the insurance company sent an investigator to the scene. They’re collecting evidence, talking to witnesses, and building a strategy to pay you as little as possible.

You deserve someone fighting just as hard on your behalf.

A free consultation won’t cost you anything, but waiting too long could cost you everything.