Long Hours and Sleep Deprivation: How Trucking Became Dangerous in the U.S.
Truck drivers moving large loads across the continental United States operate under unimaginable scheduling pressures, far from what they used to be. Fast delivery deadlines, unpaid wages for waiting time, and long-haul routes that reward distance, not rest. The result is a system that normalizes irregular hours and chronic sleep deprivation. These conditions are a major cause of catastrophic crashes. However, they all seem to be preventable.
Fatigue does not necessarily amount to just “being tired”. It prolongs reaction time, narrows attention span, impairs wise judgment, and in severe cases produces “microsleeps” where a driver basically blacks out for a few seconds while still driving. For a 70,000-pound tractor-trailer at highway speed, those few seconds can be the difference between a near miss and a multi-fatality collision. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) research and tractor trailer truck crash studies consistently find fatigue in roughly 1/10th of serious crashes. This figure alone is widely viewed as conservative because fatigue is underreported and harder to test than alcohol or drugs.
Inconsistent hours double the danger. Many long-haul drivers work shifting schedules that collide with basic human biology. Night driving, rotating start times, and extended workweeks all disrupt circadian rhythms and make restorative sleep difficult or near impossible. Economic pressure compounds it: when drivers are paid by the mile, every traffic jam, loading delay, or detention period creates an incentive to “make up time” by driving longer, later, and in violation of safety rules.
To alleviate the burden, federal Hours-of-Service (HOS) regulations limit most commercial drivers to 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour window, cap weekly on-duty hours, and require rest breaks. The ELD (Electronic Logging Device) mandate was introduced to curb falsified paper logs and make enforcement a reality. On paper, the framework is clear: if carriers and drivers follow HOS rules, fatigue risk drops.
But violations remain widespread, and that’s where the courts come in.
In civil litigation after a truck crash, sleep deprivation and HOS violations are no longer treated as mere technicalities. Personal injury attorneys routinely use ELD data, dispatch records, gas station receipts, GPS logs, and work communication to prove patterns of overwork, logbook fraud, or corporate pressure to “run illegal.” When those patterns appear, courts increasingly allow truck accident claims not only for unsafe working conditions but for negligent hiring and oversight, and outdated company policies.
Judges and juries tend to sympathize with truck accident victims when evidence shows that a carrier knew or should have known that their drivers were exceeding HOS limits and did not act upon it. Violations documented through ELDs can transform a blame game into a clear narrative of reckless conduct. Some courts, like in the State of New York, treat proven HOS negligence as robust evidence of knowing indifference to public safety, giving opportunity to substantial legal verdicts and high-value settlements.
Simultaneously, courts have limits. Fatigue alone, without clear evidence of willful or repeated violations, often supports compensatory damages but not punitive ones. That balance supports a growing legal consensus: trucking companies that run their business models on irregular schedules are not just bending the rules, they are effectively accepting deadly, foreseeable risks. When those risks injure or kill, modern litigation is making it increasingly costly to look the other way, both financially and legally.
