In car accidents cases involving carelessness by a truck driver, especially a long-distance truck driver, your client may benefit from modern technology used by many trucking companies today. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Electronic Control Modules(ECM) provide a great deal of information that previously was unavailable. More and more frequently you will find that trucks are being linked to their company headquarters via satellites and receivers as part of a GPS. This allows drivers to be tracked by their employers. In addition, any important communication can be sent and received within seconds, including weather reports, directions, and other beneficial information.
In addition, like those “black boxes” that are key to airplane crash investigations, ECM provides useful information regarding a truck’s operation before the crash. In trucks, depending on the particular vehicle, these devices can provide information regarding the stop-and-go driving throttle position seconds before impact, state of driver’s seatbelt switch, departure and arrival times, vehicle stop time, road miles and cruise control time. It may also reveal the number of unnecessarily long stops, the number of time exhaust rises above a safe temperature, engine warm-up and engine cool-down times, idling times, vehicle speed seconds prior to impact, engine speed seconds before impact, brake use just before impact and fan clutch use.
Considering that approximately 18,000 tow-away crashes occur every day, technology allowing vehicle safety researchers to collect accurate and detailed crash data can not only determine who was at fault in an accident, but also help to engineer reconstructions of truck accidents-this often lends insight to a crash that other engineering methods don’t. For example, crash data from heavy trucks can provide a record of driver behavior and vehicle speed for nearly 2 minutes and provide a clear picture of pre-crash events. Obviously, plaintiff’s discovery in these cases may benefit from all that modern technology has made available to the trucking industry.