Georgia Injury Lawyers Blog
The Annual Review: Overview
Ensuring its CMV drivers are fit for the road is not a “one and done” proposition for motor carriers. Rather, the regulations require them to monitor their drivers annually. The failure to do so may allow a driver who is accumulating tickets, accidents, or both, to slip through the cracks. The regulatory requirement of an (at least) annual review is a post-hiring safety checkpoint that is all too frequently ignored by motor carriers. As a result, it is also a frequent basis upon which counsel can demonstrate that the motor carrier itself was negligent, separate and apart from its vicarious liability for the driver who caused a collision.
Many motor carriers’ internal policies, embodied in driver handbooks, require that a driver be disqualified when a set number of accidents, tickets, or a combination of both, have occurred. These policies are understandably stringent given the degree of danger involved in the operation of a CMV, i.e., dismissal for anything over two moving vehicle citation convictions in a year. The motor carrier will find itself in a grim situation if its safety director is forced to admit in his deposition that a driver should or would have been disqualified at an annual review that never actually took place.