I think the truck driver was fatigued. Can that be proven?

Fatigue is one of the few things that leaves a paper trail

Most driver conduct is provable only by testimony. Hours of service are different: federal law requires the hours to be recorded, requires the recording to be automatic, and requires documents that can be checked against the recording. Fatigue is arguably the most objectively provable claim in a truck case — but only if the records still exist.

What the rules actually require

For a property-carrying commercial driver, the limits are specific.

Ten consecutive hours off duty before driving. Then a 14-consecutive-hour window in which driving is permitted — and it is a consecutive clock, so breaks do not extend it. Within that window, no more than 11 hours of actual driving. A 30-minute break is required once eight hours of driving time have passed without an interruption, which can be off-duty, sleeper berth, or on-duty-not-driving time.

That eight-hour trigger is one of the most commonly misstated rules on the internet: it runs on driving time, not on-duty time. Getting it right matters when you are reading a log.

Weekly, a driver is capped at 60 hours in any 7 consecutive days, or 70 in 8 if the carrier operates every day, and the period can be reset with 34 or more consecutive hours off duty. Adverse driving conditions allow up to two additional hours.

The electronic logging device did the recording for you

Paper logs were falsifiable, which is why they were called comic books. Since December 2017 most commercial drivers must use an electronic logging device, and the ELD records automatically rather than on the driver's say-so.

The regulation specifies what it captures: date, time, vehicle location, engine hours, vehicle miles, driver identification, vehicle identification and carrier identification — recorded at every duty status change, at engine power-up and power-down, at login and logout, on certification, on any malfunction, and at intermediate intervals of at least one hour whenever the vehicle is in motion.

That last item is the one that does the work. A truck moving at 65 miles an hour generates a position record every hour whether or not the driver logged a status change. A log claiming the driver was in a sleeper berth while the ELD was recording highway motion is not an argument. It is a contradiction in the carrier's own data.

The cross-check — where falsified records come apart

Carriers must also keep supporting documents, and the regulation names the categories: bills of lading and itineraries showing origin and destination; dispatch and trip records; expense receipts for on-duty-not-driving time; electronic communications through a fleet management system; and payroll or settlement sheets showing what the driver was paid. Drivers must submit them to the carrier within thirteen days, and a carrier need not retain more than eight per driver per 24-hour period.

Those documents get compared against the log, and independent traces get added: fuel purchases with timestamps and locations, toll transponder records, weigh station data, delivery receipt signatures, cell records, the receiving facility's own gate logs.

A log showing rest at 2 a.m. in Van Horn does not survive a fuel receipt from Junction at 2:14 a.m. And the payroll documents carry a second argument entirely: settlement sheets showing pay-per-mile with delivery bonuses go to whether the carrier's compensation structure pressured the driver to run past the limits. That turns a driver's violation into the company's practice.

The reason speed decides these cases

Everything above exists on a six-month federal retention clock. Records of duty status and their supporting documents must be kept six months. Texas gives you two years to file suit. The arithmetic is unforgiving.

Some categories last longer — driver qualification files, which show the hiring and training decisions, are kept for the length of employment plus three years, and the accident register three years. But the fatigue evidence proper is the shortest-lived material in the case, and a carrier that destroys it on schedule has generally done nothing wrong unless it was told to preserve it.

That is the entire argument for getting a lawyer involved in the first days rather than the first months. A preservation letter naming the ELD data, the supporting documents, the ECM download, the dispatch records and the onboard video freezes the clock. Nothing else does.

Authority: 49 CFR 395.3 (hours of service) · 49 CFR 395.11 (supporting documents) · 49 CFR 395.26 (what an ELD must record)