When is a Truck Driver Driving Too Fast?

I do a lot of trucking videos about safety and trucking, so
the question is: When is a truck driver driving too fast? My name’s Gary Burger from Burger Law, and I’d like to tell
you a little story about this accident that made the front page of the Gasconade County Republican. So, this involved two tractor-trailer drivers, and the one went around the
curve. And, I’m going to tell you that. The one that went around the curve is actually in a tandem with three and he was
holding a wet feed, and as he went around the corner, his load tipped and it went over the side and went into the
oncoming lane. Our client was coming into that oncoming lane, and he didn’t have any time to react and crashed right
into it. You see him being taken away on a stretcher right there, and it was a bad impact.

And so, when truck drivers and tractor-trailer drivers, it’s not just speed limits, it’s the speed for the circumstances
and the jury instruction and the commercial drivers’ code, and the CDL requires the truck driver use the highest degree
of care to drive at a speed appropriate for those circumstances, and obviously if you go around the turn and you spill
your whole load over the highway and you crash into another truck, that’s not happening. And so, it’s those turns, it’s
navigating those things, it’s changing lanes where you can lose control, it’s being able to stop when there are sudden
stops in traffic in more urban areas ahead of you or because of an emergency situation or road construction or getting
into road construction season. So, controlling your speed and operating at safe speeds is very important. It can lead to
dangerous injuries or death because the velocities and the
force. Force equals mass times acceleration. Trucks have so much mass that the force involved in these trucks when
they’re driving in excessive speed is truly extraordinary.

I have other articles where I’ve written about this case. I really just wanted to touch about this and show you the
pictures and do a little video, just about going around and doing turns. So, tractor-trailers on rural roads, whether
it’s dump trucks, whether it’s holding feed, whether it’s full, semis going around those turns and they can get careless
and they need to slacken or slow their speed even more than they think because you never know who’s coming around the
corner the other way. In this case, it was a tractor-trailer, but it could be school buses, families. There’s a wide
variety. We read about sad stories about wrecks on these roads all the time.

If you have any questions about the standards truck drivers must subscribe to, any questions about the law or any
questions about particular circumstances, give us a call at Burger Law, 314-542-2222, 618-272-2222, 866-599-2222, a lot
of 222s in there, but if you want, you email me at [email protected], and you
don’t have to dial any twos. Thank you.