Fatigue leaves no skid marks. When an exhausted truck driver drifts across a lane or fails to brake for stopped traffic, the police report often says nothing about sleep, because fatigue cannot be measured at the roadside the way alcohol can. It has to be proven afterward, from the records the trucking industry is required to keep. That is precisely the kind of case Collins Law Group builds: methodical, science-driven, and aimed at the company as much as the driver.
Peer-reviewed research has shown for decades that sleep deprivation impairs driving the way alcohol does. In a study published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, researchers found that after 17 to 19 hours without sleep, subjects performed as poorly on cognitive and motor tests as people with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05%, with response speeds up to 50% slower on some tasks. Behind the wheel, fatigue also produces something alcohol does not: microsleeps, episodes lasting seconds in which the brain simply shuts off. At highway speed, a three-second microsleep carries an 80,000-pound truck roughly the length of a football field with no one meaningfully at the wheel.
Fatigue is not a rare factor in truck crashes. In the federal government's Large Truck Crash Causation Study, 13% of truck drivers were coded as fatigued at the time of their crash, and safety researchers have long considered figures like that conservative, because fatigue is systematically underreported in crash data. No driver admits to being asleep.
Congress and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration treat fatigue as a known, regulated hazard. The hours-of-service regulations in 49 CFR Part 395 limit a property-carrying driver to 11 hours of driving after 10 consecutive hours off duty, all within a 14-hour on-duty window that breaks cannot extend. Drivers must take a 30-minute break after 8 cumulative hours of driving, and they cannot drive after 60 hours on duty in 7 days (or 70 in 8) without a 34-hour restart.
Those are the rules. The economics push the other way. Most long-haul drivers are paid by the mile, not the hour, which means every hour of rest is an hour of lost income, and delivery windows are set by dispatchers who are not the ones fighting sleep at 2 a.m. When an hours-of-service violation shows up in a fatigue case, it is rarely just a driver's personal failing. It is usually evidence about how the company runs its business, which is why these cases so often become trucking company negligence cases.

The physics are merciless. According to the Illinois Department of Transportation's 2024 Illinois Crash Facts, there were 11,294 tractor-trailer crashes in Illinois in 2024, including 91 fatal crashes. Of the 106 people killed, only 15 were occupants of the truck. Eighty-three were people in the other vehicle, and seven were pedestrians. When a loaded semi hits a passenger car, the catastrophic injuries almost always belong to the family in the car: traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord damage, crush injuries, and deaths.

Fatigue cases are won with documents and data, gathered before they disappear. We move immediately to preserve and obtain:
This is also why timing matters more in truck cases than in ordinary car crashes. Much of this evidence is kept only briefly in the ordinary course of business. One of the first things we do in every case is send a spoliation letter requiring the carrier to preserve all of it, and the case timeline moves differently once a carrier knows the evidence is locked down.
The driver behind the wheel is rarely the only responsible party, and almost never the one with adequate insurance to cover catastrophic injuries. Trucking companies are generally responsible for their drivers' on-the-job negligence, and frequently bear direct responsibility for the conditions that produced the fatigue: impossible schedules, ignored hours-of-service violations, negligent hiring, and inadequate medical screening. Federal law also requires interstate carriers to maintain substantially more liability coverage than passenger vehicles carry, which matters when the injuries are lifelong. We pursue every responsible party; our trucking company negligence page covers how that case is built.
With records, not guesswork: ELD data, dispatch and payroll records, fuel and toll receipts, timestamped bills of lading, cell phone data, and the driver's medical certification history. Matched against the crash time, these records often show a driver who could not have been legally rested.
Federal hours-of-service rules strictly limit driving time, and federal regulations separately prohibit operating a commercial vehicle while ability is impaired by fatigue or illness. An hours-of-service violation in the records is powerful evidence of negligence.
Often the trucking company, and depending on the facts, brokers, shippers, and maintenance contractors. Identifying every defendant and every insurance policy is a core part of the case.
Get medical care, and get a lawyer involved fast. ELD data and onboard video can be overwritten in the ordinary course of business. A preservation letter needs to go out immediately, not after the insurance company calls you.
Fatigue cases reward preparation: the medicine, the data, and the federal rules all have to be mastered, and we have built our Illinois truck accident practice around exactly that. If a truck driver hurt you or took someone from you, call Collins Law Group at (630) 527-1595 or use our contact form. The consultation is free, we advance all case costs, and there is no fee unless we win.

Chris G. was very professional and helpful!