In what the media calls a “nuclear verdict,” a New Mexico jury has ordered Werner Trucking to pay $40.5 million to the family of a woman killed in an 18 wheeler accident. The truck accident took place in February of 2017 and involved a student truck driver whom the court found was inadequately trained and supervised.

An Avoidable Tragedy

The truck driver, a Florida man, reportedly had only eight days of on-the-job road experience at the time of the accident when the 18 wheeler accident occurred. He had been traveling on U.S. Interstate 10 near Las Cruces when he crossed four lanes of traffic, jumped the median and slammed head-on into the victim’s vehicle.

She was pronounced dead at the accident scene.

The woman’s family had claimed that the defendant, Werner Trucking, had failed to properly train new drivers at its own school, and exhibited “a systematic disregard for basic safety policies.”

The new student driver had been assigned a trainer, whose job it was to observe him for no less than 30 hours during his first five days on the job. In addition, the student driver was required to put in a minimum of 10 hours observing his trainer. Werner’s own policy prohibits new drivers from operating a company vehicle without trainer supervision.

The court determined that these policies were not followed. Having worked for the company for only eight days, the new driver was allegedly unsupervised more than two-thirds of the time. Neither the driver nor his trainer had logged any observation time.

Part of the reason, according to reports, is that Werner continued to assign them delivery jobs with strict schedules (known as “just-in-time,” or JIT loads). This meant that the trainer was required to sleep when he should have been training the driver because of hours-of-service regulations.

Not the First Time

The recent New Mexico verdict is the second time in two years that Werner has been called to the carpet for an 18 wheeler accident allegedly resulting from its failure to train and supervise new drivers. In May of 2019, a Texas jury ordered the company to pay $90 million to a family for a collision that left one child dead, another paralyzed and the mother and a third child severely injured.

The truck driver, also a new hire with limited experience, lost control of his vehicle on an icy freeway while he and his trainer were carrying a JIT load. The plaintiffs’ counsel argued that the National Weather Service had issued a winter storm warning only 2 hours prior to the accident and the driver had an obligation to pull over – deadlines notwithstanding.

18 Wheeler Accident Avoidance

Current federal regulations limit truck drivers to 11 hours a day and 70 hours a week behind the wheel. After reaching the 70-hour limit, they may not drive again for 34 consecutive hours. Driver fatigue and driver inexperience are the two most common factors in trucking accidents, but freight companies frequently skirt these rules when attempting to meet deadlines.