For years, truck accidents have been a significant public safety hazard on American roadways. Drivers, passengers, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians are all at risk when encountering large trucks.

Due to the size and weight of large trucks, the damage and injuries caused by an accident can be devastating. But new and improved safety technologies may offer important opportunities to substantially reduce the number of truck accidents in New York state.

Life-Saving Safety Technology

As safety technologies are developed, improved, and made prevalent in new vehicles, research has focused on how effective these new systems are at preventing accidents and injuries. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety recently conducted an investigation into four such technologies.

Researchers concluded that onboard video based safety monitoring could prevent up to 63,300 crashes per year. All other systems investigated were also found to prevent accidents and save lives. They include: lane departure warning systems, automatic emergency braking, and air disc brakes.

Electronic Logs to be Required on Trucks

Another potentially monumental change involves holding truck drivers and carriers accountable for honest reporting of hours. This ultimately drops the risk of fatigued trucking accidents. For years, commercial truck drivers have been required to keep travel logs of the time and distance they drive each shift. However, hard copies of these pen-and-paper logs are not always accurate. The system relied on honest self-reporting from truck drivers. Because truck drivers are often paid by the mile – not the hour – truck drivers had a financial incentive to push the federal limits for daily driving, and squeeze in as many miles as possible.

Now, federal law will require that commercial trucks be equipped with electronic logging devices (ELDs), to relay tamper-proof data directly from the vehicle. This will allow federal inspectors to ensure that drivers and companies are complying with federal laws – restricting the number of hours a trucker can drive within a 24 hour period.

Trucks.com reports that all commercial trucks must be equipped with ELDs no later than December 18, 2017. Electronic logging devices do not change the number of hours a truck driver can drive in a single day. Rather, they provide a more accurate reporting system, to ensure that drivers are complying with the law. Commercial truck drivers are currently limited to eleven hours per day. ELDs link to a truck’s engine to monitor its run time, and send alerts when it exceeds the federal limit.

There are many ways in which truck drivers and transportation companies can reduce the risk of accidents. Failure to do so may constitute negligence, which creates a legal obligation to compensate truck accident victims for financial losses. Contact an experienced Buffalo truck accident attorney as soon as possible after any type of injury. Truck accident victims have the legal right to be compensated for their injuries and financial losses.