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Victim’s mother sues FMCSA over carrier’s repeated safety failures

The mother of a man killed in a truck crash last year has sued the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration after the motor carrier the truck’s driver worked for was found to have a history of safety violations.

Last October, a tractor-trailer driven by Rouman Velkov of Globe Carrier Co. slammed into a line of nine cars on Interstate 26 in North Carolina, killing Jackie Novak’s son, Chuck Novak; his girlfriend, Theresa Seaver; and three others, according to the Times-News.

FMCSA safety records show that the company failed a safety inspection in November 2010, the newspaper reported. That inspection revealed that Velkov drove more than 11 hours on Nov. 9, and that he wasn’t medically cleared to drive.

At a May press conference addressing the Safe Highways and Infrastructure Protection Act (SHIPA) in Washington DC, Jackie Novak described how her 22-year-old son and his friends were five miles from home when the wreck occurred. She said Chuck Novak had texted her only minutes before the crash.

“Yet, with all those violations, this company and this driver were still allowed to go back on the road,” Jackie Novak said in May, according to a written statement. “I urge the Department of Transportation to institute clearer and more direct policies for enforcement of drivers and companies with multiple violations. These drivers and companies need to be removed from the road and given fines large enough to make them reconsider future illegal actions.”

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