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Prosecutor: Trucker in Tracy Morgan crash hadn't slept

AJiveMan

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Prosecutor: Trucker in Tracy Morgan crash hadn't slept

The Wal-Mart truck driver charged in the fatal wreck that left comic Tracy Morgan critically injured had not slept for 24 hours before the crash, authorities in New Jersey said Monday.

Kevin Roper, 35, faces charges including death by auto and four counts of assault by auto. He is free on $50,000 bail and faces a court hearing Wednesday, the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office said.

This is inexplicable, how can this happen? Aren't those Walmart drivers tracked per DOT regulations? If they are, why didn't his dispatcher tell him he needed time off?

This accident should never have happened IMO.
 
Prosecutor: Trucker in Tracy Morgan crash hadn't slept



This is inexplicable, how can this happen? Aren't those Walmart drivers tracked per DOT regulations? If they are, why didn't his dispatcher tell him he needed time off?

This accident should never have happened IMO.

What DOT regulations are you referring to? The story makes no mention of why the driver chose not to sleep. Are you simply assuming that he was "on the clock" for more than the legal maximum?
 
As far as I jnow Wal-Mart uses electronic logs, so I doubt he was bootlegging.
 
Based on what? The story made no mention of why the driver decided not to sleep.

Charged with what the driver was charged with, I would venture to say he was on the clock.

If he was dispatched, he should have told the dispatcher he needed rest or sleep. two wrongs don't make a right, besides, most GOOD dispatchers will ask drivers if they are ready to run.
 
I agree with you, and someone higher than the driver needs to take ownership of this.

Disagree unless you can prove someone higher up ordered the driver to break DOT rules. If supervisors told drivers to fudge the rules. Then yes, the driver and the supervisor needs to be held accountable.

People need to take responsibility for their actions. Start with the driver. Even if a supervisor stated to the driver your on for 24+, the driver should have said, no way.
 

More hours on the road is always the push for a truck driver. There are two professions I have found in my life that breed self-imposed competative sleep deprivation: US Military and Truck Drivers. THey like to trade war stories on how long they stay awake. Today the competition isn't there anymore since a lot of truck drivers are starting to use Provigil to stay awake for days at a time. Hell, with that ABC write up I am wondering why I am not on Provigil....

This guy obviously wasn't on Provigil.
 
Disagree unless you can prove someone higher up ordered the driver to break DOT rules. If supervisors told drivers to fudge the rules. Then yes, the driver and the supervisor needs to be held accountable.

People need to take responsibility for their actions. Start with the driver. Even if a supervisor stated to the driver your on for 24+, the driver should have said, no way.

I think any time an employer orders you to knowingly do something that violates the law they take a healthy slice of responsibility for what happens.
 
I agree with you, and someone higher than the driver needs to take ownership of this.

I agree. I drove OTR for awhile, my dispatchers always, always asked me if I were ready to run before giving me anything. If I were not, I told them I was not. Sometimes they weren't happy to hear a NO, but they understood the fine line of being safe behind the wheel and not.
 
Having read NTSB aviation accident reports for years one thing that becomes clear is that there is no one cause for an accident. Further if you dig deep enough you'll find systemic problems at the root of most accidents. Putting it all on the most proximate cause - in the case the driver not sleeping - is usually a gross oversimplification and keeps us from actually fixing the root causes of accidents.
 
Charged with what the driver was charged with, I would venture to say he was on the clock.

If he was dispatched, he should have told the dispatcher he needed rest or sleep. two wrongs don't make a right, besides, most GOOD dispatchers will ask drivers if they are ready to run.

Yep. It would appear that he did not.
 
I think any time an employer orders you to knowingly do something that violates the law they take a healthy slice of responsibility for what happens.

agreed to a point. . Nothing in the OP article says anything about the employer ordering the driver to violate the law. The driver has the ultimate responsibility.
 
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This surprises me. My daughter is a dedicated driver now in the Southeast, but used to drive OTR. Her company is extremely strict on allowing them when to drive and when not to drive. They have only a certain amount of hours per day to drive, per DOT regulations. All logs are electronic now, so it's a lot harder to fudge. Also, she told me that Walmart is very, very strict on it's drivers.

A lot of unanswered questions, but the news is definitely saying that lack of sleep was the issue for the driver.
 
agreed to a point. The driver has the ultimate responsibility.

An employee certainly bears some responsibility but I don't know about ultimate responsibility. Certainly not legally.
 
An employee certainly bears some responsibility but I don't know about ultimate responsibility. Certainly not legally.

Do you have any evidence that the employer was trying to force the driver to break the law? If not, its not important. The driver messed up.
 
This surprises me. My daughter is a dedicated driver now in the Southeast, but used to drive OTR. Her company is extremely strict on allowing them when to drive and when not to drive. They have only a certain amount of hours per day to drive, per DOT regulations. All logs are electronic now, so it's a lot harder to fudge. Also, she told me that Walmart is very, very strict on it's drivers.

A lot of unanswered questions, but the news is definitely saying that lack of sleep was the issue for the driver.

Admittedly I haven't read much on this but I'm surprised as well.

I don't even know how a driver goes about fudging his logs nowadays with digital logs and GPS.
 
Do you have any evidence that the employer was trying to force the driver to break the law? If not, its not important. The driver messed up.

I don't know what that has to do with anything I said.
 
I don't know what that has to do with anything I said.

we have a failure to communicate.:lamo

if the driver in this case acted on his own to break DOT laws, then how would the employer have any responsibility for this accident?
 
agreed to a point. . Nothing in the OP article says anything about the employer ordering the driver to violate the law. The driver has the ultimate responsibility.
Too early in the investigatory process, but it will come out if the dispatcher knew the driver was past the hours of service limitations, and if so, both the driver & WM will be held accountable and a head or two might roll at Walmart Transport LLC.

I did a brief search of Walmart Transportation LLC, and they have a pretty good equipment and driver safety record.

Walmart Transportation Llc USDOT# 63585 - Bentonville,Arkansas Trucking Company
 
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