As David Chang reports for NBC 10, a truck driver who caused a major accident – when in his logbook he’d indicated he was sleeping in the cab of his truck – got more than a year in prison for making that false entry.
In fact, the driver was alleged to have made 15 false entries in his logbook over the course of roughly a year, during which he presumably drove and violated the hours-of-service rules.
It’s not clear why the 58-year-old truck driver started making false entries; possibly, he began to think that he wouldn’t get caught, or perhaps his employer began pressuring him to complete driving routes.
Also known as “comic books” in the industry, logbooks are audited by authorities to ensure that truck drivers aren’t spending too many hours behind the wheel, sleepy and fatigued. The logbooks got their alternate name from the drivers who falsify them.
As this case illustrates, driving while sleepy is a serious risk to other people on the road. The 58-year-old truck driver ended up crashing into another vehicle on the highway, killing the driver and causing serious injury to the passenger.
As Chang reports, the Department of Justice wrote: “[Hours-of-service rules] ensure that truck drivers operate their multi-ton trucks in a safe, unimpaired manner to protect the public from commercial trucking-related accidents on the nation’s highways.”
Source: Truck Driver Sentenced for Falsifying Log Books: Investigators