A Kentucky truck driver crashed his tractor-trailer in the early morning hours on North Carolina Highway 52 South in the town of Pilot Mountain, just north of Winston-Salem. The truck was hauling bundles of tobacco to a cigarette manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem.

A spokesman for the North Carolina Highway Patrol said that the driver of the truck apparently ran off the road around 2 a.m., causing the truck to overturn. The truck driver, Jeff Board of Sanford, KY, was not wearing his seatbelt and was partially ejected from the tractor. EMS transported Mr. Board to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. His treating doctors said that he was now in stable condition. They do not know when he will be released.

Single vehicle crashes like this one, involving tractor-trailers in the middle of the night, are often the result of the driver falling asleep at the wheel. Truck drivers are required by federal law to keep a detailed log of the time they spend driving, resting, and being on duty but not driving. The federal rules also limit the number of hours that drivers can work. At Davis Law Group, we often discover that the truck driver in a truck crash case was driving more hours than the law allows. Truck driver fatigue often leads to deadly consequences for innocent North Carolina citizens. More than 750 people are killed each year from truck driver fatigue, and more than 20,000 are seriously injured. Thankfully, this driver will live to drive again, and no other vehicles were involved.

Unfortunately, as I said in a prior post about a tired trucker crashing in High Point, truck companies impose tight deadlines for delivery, requiring drivers to spend upwards of 90 hours a week behind the wheel, with little or no time to rest other than to eat or refuel. Some experts say that at much as 30 percent of all fatal truck wrecks are due to truck driver fatigue.