Tennessee Injury Lawyer Blog

Should I pay the ticket or try to fight it?

The Government is giving out Speeding Tickets in record numbers. They are also giving out other types of moving violations. Many people who get Speeding Tickets in Tennessee are traveling through the state and are not familiar with the many speed limit changes that occur on Tennessee highways. Tennessee Speeding ticket police are there waiting to get you when the posted speed changes. Speeding tickets in Tennessee get reported to your home state as soon as you mail in your money and plead guilty.

The effect that a Tennessee Speeding ticket has on your insurance premiums is shocking. The Speeding ticket fine and court fees are just the tip of an iceberg. Your insurance is what matters. Your points will stay on your driving record for at least a year. Points on you record can have a dramatic impact on your insurance premiums. When or if you ever try to get coverage on a new policy, a TN speeding ticket can preclude you from obtaining insurance coverage. If the speed is extremely high, your premiums may be the least of your worries. Many judges in the State of Tennessee will actually require you to do jail time if he speed is excessive. You should not pay your Tennessee speeding/traffic ticket fines without a fight. If A Tennessee Traffic Ticket Lawyer can often appear for you if you are out of state, get the fines reduced, and give you a chance of getting the speeding ticket dismissed altogether.
The speeding ticket laws in Tennessee are complex, and they vary from city to city. Even though you may have been told by a Tennessee Speeding Ticket police officer that you can go to traffic school and it will be dismissed, this is not altogether true. Call the Higgins Firm and get our traffic ticket experts to handle the Tennessee speeding/traffic ticket for you. We will give you an assessment of your ticket based on your particular set of facts. We are here to help.

It seems to me that too often lawyers and the public think of truck accident cases just like in other car wreck case. Unfortunately, this failure to consider a truck accident case as unique often a tragic mistake. In doing so, the trucking company may escape responsibility for putting an unsafe vehicle on the road, pushing a driver to the point of exhaustion and/or putting profits over public safety. Although there is a long list of items my office considers in any trucking case I would like to set forth a few that we often see in this blog and the next few blogs to come. I will start with the rear end collision:

First, people often believe that rear in cases are always the fault of the driver that collides into the rear of a vehicle. This is not always the case. When a passenger vehicle impacts the back or side of a large truck and/or tractor-trailer, running beneath it, the resulting accident is termed “under ride.” Sometime an underide collisions is not a fault of the driver following the truck. Specifically, some of the reasons an under-ride occurs are:

1. The truck has no guard designed to prevent these types of accidents.
2. The truck has a guard, but it is designed poorly and fails to provides adequate protection.
3. Reflective tape or reflectors, used to warn approaching cars, is missing or obscured by mud or dirt.

It is also important to note how the car held up in this type of collision. Was the car "crash worthy"? Did the air bags deploy? Did the glass shatter? Did the seat belt work? A proper inspection should be made of any car involved in a serious accident.

Tennessee big rig truckers know that every two years commercial drivers need a physical to renew their commercial driver’s license or “CDL”. This CDL examination ensures the driver is in good health--or at least in good enough health to drive a big rig or a school bus. A federal study released Monday by the Government Accountability Office reveals that over half a million commercial drivers who’ve passed their CDL physical are either eligible for, and many already receive, full disability benefits from the federal government.

In GOA’s study to be presented tomorrow during the House Transportation Committee hearing on trucker’s health and safety, researchers reviewed the medical records for CDL holders in 12 states, including Tennessee. What they found was that more than 562,000 bus drivers and truckers passing their CDL physical may be a danger on the road because of disabilities ranging from epilepsy to impaired hearing and vision. In Tennessee, about 1 in 20 licensed semi-truck and bus drivers are actively receiving full disability benefits—and nearly half of these disabled persons were considered fully disabled when they passed their test to be a Tennessee bus or truck driver. As the report states:

Commercial drivers with serious medical conditions, even those whose conditions qualify them for full federal disability benefits, can still meet DOT medical fitness requirements to safely operate a commercial vehicle and thus hold CDLs. However, there is general agreement that careful medical evaluations are necessary to ensure that serious medical conditions do not preclude the safe operation of a commercial vehicle.

The GAO report remains tactful by suggesting, as the Department of Transportation states, that it is physically possible to drive a semi-truck while qualifying for full disability benefits, but the report does advise caution and reconsidering standards for the safety of our nation's drivers. As the report states, approximately 5,000 citizens die every year from tractor-trailer truck accidents, and over 125,000 more drivers are injured from truck or bus collisions. DOT’s own studies show that 12% of commercial driver-caused crashes were caused by the driver falling asleep, having a seizure or heart attack, or other reported physical impairment. To save Tennessee Law Blog readers the math, that could mean 530 people with loved ones still alive and walking the earth, and that’s over 13,000 bus or truck-related car crash injuries that never should have been. (Click for more from HHP on Tennessee truck collision lawsuits.)

Even more painful for those who are injured or lose a loved one I have met through these trucking accident lawsuits, most truck drivers walk away from these collisions relatively uninjured--except, I suppose, for whatever persisting medical conditions had qualified them for full disability.

Special federal and Tennessee safety laws and rules apply to truckers, including fitness examinations and semi-truck maintenance records. As one of the few Tennessee attorneys unafraid to take on the trucking company lawyers, I know what to look for in the trucking company's records and accident reports to reconstruct the collision and determine the trucking company’s negligence in the crash. If you have been seriously injured or have lost someone in a semi-truck collision, call me at my Nashville, TN law offices at (615) 353-0930 or fill out HHP’s Tennessee legal action form to speak with me or other qualified trucking collision lawyers.

This year the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that it will open the southern U.S. border to Mexican interstate trucking companies. Unfortunately, in 2005 the DOT Inspector General found that there is inadequate border safety facilities, that many of these Mexican trucking companies failed to have accurate data about Mexican trucks and drivers, that they failed to certify random drug and alcohol testing already required of U.S. truck drivers.

Another concern is that the Mexican truck drivers ignore drive time limits and will suffer from driver fatigue. Fatigue is a recognized a widespread industry problem that contributes to truck-related crashes and is a major safety concern for truck drivers entering the U.S. John Lannen, the executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition stated “I am deeply troubled that DOT is looking the other way on the problem of fatigued and sleep-deprived Mexican truck drivers”. According to Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH) and Parents Against Tired Truckers (P.A.T.T.). “The U.S. DOT knows that more than 15 percent of Mexican truck drivers entering the U.S. don’t even have the paper logbooks that are currently required to show the amount of working, driving, and rest time. We have no proof that Mexican drivers will not continue to flout U.S. limits on driving time and fail to keep proper time records,”

I have represented families in Tennessee and throughout the United States that have lost loved ones or been tragically injured in trucking accidents. It is imperative that we keep are highways safe and this latest government move is not a step in the right direction. We have plenty of good drivers in this Country and we do not need to lower the bar.

Over the past couple of months there have been several devastating automobile accidents in Tennessee. Also, the tragic death of Metro Officer Christy Dedman, who was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer while assisting a stranded motorist on I-40 in July 2004, in Nashville, Tennessee helped bring to light the impact of these accidents on families and the public and prompted a change in the law.

After the Dedman accident an initiative began which lead to the MOVE OVER law in Tennessee. The move over law requires drivers who are approaching a stopped emergency responder of any kind on a highway or interstate to move over if a lane is available, or to slow down if you cannot change lanes.

This has been a great initiative to avoid senseless loses. I believe are next step to avoid accidents is to strictly enforce laws requiring truckers to comply with the hours restrictions placed upon them by the federal government. To often, truck drivers are forced by their company to get products to the destination no matter what the cost. This often results in the drivers pushing themselves behind their limits. Truck drivers who routinely get too little sleep or suffer from sleep apnea show signs of fatigue and impaired performance that can make them a hazard on the road.