Hi. This is Roger Ghai and I wanted to talk today a little bit about lights which are required to be on trucks, reflectors that are required to be on trucks, as well as retroreflective material that’s supposed to also be on or near trucks. Headlights, of course, are required to be capable of burning steadily the entire time. It also goes without saying that any of the equipment as far as the lighting on the truck is supposed to be fully operational at every single moment.
According to the Code of Federal Regulations, both lights and reflectors on trucks have to be visible at all times during nighttime hours. Reflectors on trucks have to be placed on the rear as well as on the side of trucks. Nothing on the truck itself can obscure the reflector whether something is hanging off the truck, it cannot hang off the truck. If that cargo hangs off the truck to obscure or hide the reflector then it’s a violation of the Code of Federal regulations.
In addition, retroreflective sheeting has to be placed on the truck as close to the front of the truck as well as to the back part of the truck. All trucks have to have hazard warning signals and the particular equipment has to be such that when the driver turns on the hazard warning signals, all of the warning signals on the truck come up.
Many people, including even accident attorneys, car accident attorneys, don’t realize that if the trucker did not have on proper lights or was not operating the lights properly or was not putting reflectors on properly, and the client or you, in this instance, would be the client, if you’ve run into a tractor trailer, you would still be able to recover for your damages because it’s a violation of the Code of Federal regulations, again. Those are the regulations that govern the trucking industry.
If you have questions about whether lights or reflectors may have been a contributing cause to your vehicle accident, please call me at 770-792-1000.