A truck driver from Virginia has been ordered off of the road for hours of service violations after causing 2 crashes in fewer than 24 hours.
On Thursday, August 17th, the FMSCA announced that truck driver Carlos Alberto Garcia is “an imminent hazard to public safety.”
According to a press release by the FMSCA, Garcia will no longer be allowed to “operate any commercial motor vehicle in interstate commerce.”
Garcia has been banned from operating commercial vehicles due to the “egregious violation of federal hours-of-service regulations,” he committed on June 24th, after being involved in two separate wrecks over the course of 19 hours.
The FMCSA describes the crashes below:
On June 23, 2017, at approximately 9:30 p.m., Garcia crashed a… large commercial truck he was operating into the rear of a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) bus that resulted in injuries.
Roughly 19 hours [later] on June 24, 2017, Garcia was operating a [different] large commercial truck along Interstate 495 outside of Washington, D.C., when, at approximately 3:50 p.m., he drifted into a caution-striped, paved median area striking two individuals who had stopped their vehicle to re-secure a boat to a trailer they were towing. One individual was killed and the other was seriously injured.
The Virginia State Police investigated the incident and found that Garcia had committed a substantial hours-of-service violation at the time of the second crash.
At approximately 3:50 p.m. on June 24th, Garcia had been “on duty and driving for more than 103 hours over the previous eight days,” and had only taken one 10-hour break during that same time.
The FMCSA believes that allowing Garcia to remain on the road “…substantially increases the likelihood of serious injury or death to you and the motoring public.”
Garcia faces fines of up to $1,811 as well as possible criminal charges.