Texas teacher involved in deadly school bus crash files $1M lawsuit. As hard as it is for everybody to find and hire qualified drivers in this day and age, this is a tale of doing the right thing, no matter how desperate the need is. Guess who the teacher’s suing? Not the school district or the driver of the bus. She’s suing the owner, along with the driver himself, of the concrete pumping truck that slammed into them head-on and caused her injuries. How could a company be so negligent as to hire a driver that would be responsible for such carnage, you ask? Let’s take a closer look. The driver’s “mugshot [from a previous arrest] was used for his work ID picture at F.J.M. Concrete, LLC.” That shoulda been the outfit’s first clue they were headed in the wrong direction with hiring this guy to drive a 72,000 lb GVW rig. On top of that, the driver admitted ‘to using marijuana the night before and cocaine the morning of the crash, while also operating on little sleep.’ If you have a problem connectin’ the dots, allow me to spell it out. DOT and FMCSA have more laws and regulations than you can shake a stick at, and every one of them exists for the sole purpose of protecting other drivers sharing the road with commercial vehicles. If nothing else, this story should be a cautionary tale of what could happen to any organization that puts driver procurement, availability, and retention ahead of safety, regulatory compliance, and potential fiscal disaster, should one of their drivers be found at fault and trigger an accident. As a heavy equipment service manager, I walked that tightrope for years, so I can honestly say “been there, done that.” Bottom line: To survive in today’s litigious society, any company that utilizes vehicles or equipment needs to have commonsense internal policies on the books that parrot regulatory guidance and enforce ’em.
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