Federal limits on how long a commercial driver may drive and work, and the electronic records that show whether those limits were kept.
Federal regulation caps the driving and on-duty time of commercial motor vehicle drivers, requires minimum off-duty periods, and limits hours over a rolling multi-day window. The purpose is fatigue reduction, and the rules apply to the carrier as well as the driver - a carrier may not permit or require driving beyond the limits.
What makes the rules matter outside the industry is the record-keeping. Most drivers subject to them must log duty status electronically rather than on paper, and carriers must retain supporting documents. Those records, together with vehicle telematics and inspection reports, are objective evidence of what a driver was doing in the hours before a crash - which is a very different evidentiary position from an ordinary collision between two private cars.
The rules are detailed and carry numerous exceptions by cargo type, distance travelled and adverse conditions, so whether a particular driver was subject to a particular limit is itself frequently a contested question rather than a given.
Where a commercial vehicle is involved, the evidentiary window is short and it is the reason to act early rather than the severity of the injury: electronic logs and supporting documents are subject to defined retention periods, after which routine deletion is lawful. A formal request to preserve them is ordinarily the first step, and it has to be made before the retention period runs rather than after.
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