Road safety, trucking and the law, explained.
Commercial vehicle safety: drivers, carriers, federal rules and the crashes they are meant to prevent.
Investigators coded fatigue for 13 percent of truck drivers in the largest federal study of serious truck crashes. Police coded it for 1.4 percent in the 2019 and 2020 fatal-crash census. The gap is the story.
Editorial Desk8 min read
Federal hours-of-service rules run several clocks at once. This explainer takes them one at a time, then follows a hypothetical driver through a full day to show where each one stops the truck.
Editorial Desk8 min read
Brakes, tires and cargo securement lead the list of defects that take trucks off the road at roadside. Federal rules require carriers to find them first and to keep the paperwork that proves it.
Editorial Desk7 min read
The most detailed federal look at why large trucks crash is now more than twenty years old. Read carefully, it still says a great deal, and much of it is not what the usual summaries claim.
Editorial Desk7 min read
An ELD is an hours-of-service record, not a black box. Knowing the difference saves investigators from asking it questions it was never built to answer.
Editorial Desk4 min read
