The average 18-wheeler is 70-80 feet long and weighs 40 tons when loaded. With such mass and power, trucks are an imposing presence on the road. They also need 40% more hours to come quickly to a whole stop than cars do. So it's no wonder that large trucks come equipped with an arsenal of safety equipment. Some bits of safety equipment aren't that much different from safety accessories used by cars, including tire chains, tire pressure monitoring systems, and back-up sensors and monitors. Other bits of safety equipment are unique to trucks. These include tire cages, safety lighting, and roadside safety equipment to divert traffic in case a truck stops working on the road.
Recently, major shipping company C.R. England announced that they certainly were putting a Mobileye AWS-4000 safety technology system in all of its 3,500 trucks. These systems use a camera that is programmed with a vision algorithm to detect, predict, and warn drivers of roadside dangers. They are designed to prevent head-on collisions and pedestrian accidents and to warn drivers about lane departures, speed limits, and other dangers on the road. Though the systems are found in private vehicles, Mobileye focuses largely on trucking fleets, since these drivers ar
e on your way for longer periods and can often become fatigued and less aware of the surroundings.
A blog post by Brett Aquila of Truckingtruth.com questions the reliability of these systems. Based on Aquila, such systems are dangerous for two reasons. First, they're simply not accurate. Because the surroundings in that they operate is consistently changing, they can not make precise predictions in what does and does not constitute a danger. As a result, they provide warning signals all the time for dangers that not actually exist. After a few years, truck drivers simply stop paying attention to alerts so that whenever there really is a danger, they're zoned out. The second problem is more straightforward: The systems often stop working.
So what happens when these systems or other trucking safety devices malfunction and an incident occurs? Who's legally accountable for the collision? The stark reality is, there's not really a cut and dried answer, and police offers, insurance adjusters, and Crossett Truck Accident Lawyer will have to conduct a thorough investigation to see who's at fault. It could be the driver who acted recklessly, failed to keep up safety protocol, or zoned out, depending on the warnings supplied by his safety equipment. It could be the trucking company when it trained its drivers to be overly reliant on technological gadgets and did not enforce proper safety protocol. It may be the apparatus manufacturers. For instance, in case a backup monitor did not register that there is an automobile behind the truck, in case a Mobileye system did not provide adequate warning of a head-on collision, or in case a tire pressure system did not indicate that there is an issue, the businesses that make they could be liable. Finally, a combination of the three parties could be held jointly responsible. It takes the work of a dedicated team of investigators to pinpoint who should take the blame when catastrophe strikes on the roads.
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