The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has ordered a Missouri-based truck driver out of service after an investigation into his driving history following a multiple fatality eight vehicle pileup crash in July 2019.
On Thursday, August 8, the FMCSA announced that 57 year old truck driver Bruce Andrew Pollard was an “an imminent hazard to public safety” and was issued an out of service order. The order was served to Pollard on August 2.
The FMCSA says that a pileup crash that claimed the life of a mother and her young twins sparked an investigation into Pollard’s driving history that revealed that he had made intentionally false statements about his employment record and previous crash history.
From an FMCSA news release:
On July 14, 2019, Pollard, a commercial driver’s license (CDL) holder, was operating a tractor-trailer in an active work zone along Interstate 465 eastbound near Keystone Avenue in Indianapolis, Indiana, when his truck, traveling faster the posted speed limit, collided into the rear of a line of vehicles. A fire erupted and two young children and their mother were killed; seven other individuals were hospitalized. Following the crash, Indiana State Police arrested and charged Pollard with three counts of reckless homicide, and one count of reckless operation of a vehicle in a highway work zone.
A subsequent investigation by FMCSA investigators found that Pollard had a history of careless driving and had been disciplined and later terminated in April 2019 by his previous employer for repeated instances of unsafe driving.
In applying for his latest truck driving position in June 2019, Pollard failed to disclose his employment with the previous motor carrier, failed to disclose his termination and the reason for his termination. Pollard falsely certified on his job application that he had not previously been involved in a crash. It is a violation of USDOT/FMCSA regulations to make fraudulent or intentionally false statements on a federally required, safety sensitive, document.