Trucking cases turn on paper, data, and the consistent systems that a motor carrier must run every day and then produce when something goes wrong. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations require carriers to preserve and produce safety-related records, and they also require cooperation during investigations. A carrier must make accident records available to authorized investigators and provide reasonable assistance, including full and truthful answers. That obligation matters in civil litigation because plaintiffs often need the same core information to prove what happened, who controlled the operation, and whether the carrier ignored known safety risks. The Chicago trucking accident attorneys of Zneimer & Zneimer PC are familiar with the recordkeeping obligations of commercial carriers.
Start with the most direct recordkeeping duty. The regulations require each motor carrier to maintain an accident register for three years after the date of each accident. The register must include key fields that map neatly onto civil proof issues, including the date and location, the driver’s name, counts of injuries and fatalities, and whether hazardous materials were released. The regulations also contemplate preservation of official accident documentation, including copies of accident reports required by states, other governmental entities, or insurers.
In litigation, that accident register and those reports help identify every prior crash the carrier had to log, and they can expose patterns: repeat rear end collisions, repeated lane departure events, recurring brake issues, or a driver who keeps showing up in preventable incidents. Plaintiffs use that history to prove notice, to challenge “this came out of nowhere” defenses, and to support negligent hiring, negligent retention, negligent entrustment, and punitive exposure when a carrier kept rolling the dice.
The regulations define a carrier’s “principal place of business” and tie it to access. The carrier must make records required by Parts 382, 387, 390, 391, 395, 396, and 397 of Title 49 of the Federal Regulations, available for inspection at that location within 48 hours of a request, excluding weekends and federal holidays. A carrier cannot credibly claim it cannot find the core safety records because the rules assume the carrier can produce them promptly at the hub where it runs the business.
Categories of records, helpful for litigating trucking accidents
Driver records. The driver qualification file and related materials help answer the questions juries care about: Did the carrier vet this driver, train this driver, supervise this driver, and keep this driver on the road after warning signs appeared. Plaintiffs use hiring packets, prior employer checks, medical qualification materials, discipline, and safety training to show foreseeability and preventability.
Hours of service and electronic logging data. Fatigue hides in timelines. Logs and supporting operational data can show whether a driver drove beyond lawful limits, whether dispatch pressured unrealistic schedules, and whether the carrier tolerated log manipulation. Even when the collision looks simple, fatigue evidence can explain delayed reaction, lane drift, speeding, or a catastrophic failure to brake.
Inspection, repair, and maintenance records. A crash caused by brake failure, tire failure, steering issues, lighting failures, or load securement problems often becomes a records case. Work orders, inspection reports, and maintenance histories can reveal deferred repairs, repeated out-of-service conditions, cut-rate vendors, missing inspections, or a carrier that ran equipment until it broke.
Drug and alcohol testing records. In serious crashes, plaintiffs often need to know whether the carrier complied with testing, handled positives correctly, and monitored return to duty processes. These records also support impeachment when witnesses describe a driver as unimpaired but the documentation tells a different story.
Insurance, authority, and hazardous materials compliance records. These records help identify the correct defendants, confirm the operating carrier, and pin down coverage issues early. In hazardous materials cases, they also help establish the compliance framework and the safety culture around high risk loads.
Injured plaintiffs do not control the truck, the telematics, the dispatch system, the maintenance shop, or the hiring file. The carrier does. The regulations place recordkeeping duties on the party that controls the evidence, including a duty to maintain an accident register for three years and to populate it with standardized facts.That structure protects injured people in two ways. First, it reduces the carrier’s ability to rewrite history. A contemporaneous register entry, a maintenance work order, or a log audit created in the ordinary course carries a credibility punch that post-lawsuit narratives rarely match. Second, it gives plaintiffs a way to test every defense story against the data. If the carrier claims the driver acted safely, the logs, dispatch messages, and speed data can confirm or contradict that claim. If the carrier claims the equipment worked fine, the inspection and repair history can confirm or contradict that claim. If the carrier claims this was a one off event, the accident register and prior incident history can confirm or contradict that claim.
Although an accident may happen in a second, it takes time to reconstruct an accident through records and examination of evidence. These records let plaintiffs build that reconstruction with concrete anchors: who drove, where the truck came from, what the driver did in the hours before impact, what condition the equipment sat in, and what the carrier knew before it let the truck roll.
When carriers keep complete records and produce them promptly, cases resolve on truth instead of theater. When carriers “lose” records, plaintiffs focus on the gap itself, because missing safety records often signal deeper safety failures. Either way, the recordkeeping rules force the case to live in reality, and reality tends to favor the injured person who asks the simplest question in the world: show me what you were supposed to keep.
The law office of Zneimer & Zneimer PC has litigated many cases involving truck and commercial carriers and is experienced in gathering and examination of the data. If you were involved in an accident and need help, call us at 773-516-4100 or contact us right away. Our consultation for victims of accident is free.