Preventability has been a charged word among commercial vehicle attorneys. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration can label a crash as “not preventable” through its crash preventability determination program, but it takes a motor carrier’s action. (The comment period for the administration’s program ended June 12.) Part of a submission could be an internal preventability determination. Here, I will reconsider the law that helps inform whether the benefits are worth the risk.

First things first: A preventability determination may be made when a commercial motor carrier internally investigates the facts of a crash and decides whether it could have been avoided. A motor carrier, such as an interstate trucking company, wants to make a preventability determination. It may help their ratings with the FMSCA (a concept I will return to this at the end of the article). It is also a tool for employment decisions—the carrier that gathers the facts of how a crash happened and how it could have been avoided can discipline a driver who was careless. If the driver’s conduct is reckless or repetitive, the analysis may lead to employment termination.