3 Million Miles in a Truck Without an Accident or a Ticket? This Trucker Did It.

We devote a lot of space on this blog cataloging fatal truck accidents and other consequences of unsafe truckers and unsafe trucking companies, so it’s nice to be able to single out a driver who “takes safety to a whole new level.”

Richard Batt, a 69-year-old Indiana truck driver, was recently honored for 3 million miles of safe driving with J.B. Hunt Transport, where he’s worked for 21 years. That’s 3 million miles in an 18-wheeler without a single traffic ticket or accident.

“This is a very big deal,” Bunny LePell, a company fleet manager who has worked with Batt for 14 years, told the Kokomo (Ind.) Tribune. “Twenty-one years. Three million miles. That’s impressive. He takes safety to a whole new level, and it’s not easy these days with all the road rage and crazy people out there.”

Batt has been driving a truck since 1963, when he got his first driving job delivering McDonald’s hamburger buns to Louisville, Ky. He estimates he’s trucked more than 6 million miles in total.

The secret to safe driving? Making safety the number one priority.

“I’m always looking around when I’m driving,” he said. “Even at cars driving on the other side of the median. I’m a defensive driver, but I have to be driving up to Chicago every day.”

Unfortunately, not all drivers are as safety-conscious as Batt. In addition, many carriers simply do not place a priority on driver and vehicle safety. The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson provides legal representation to victims of trucking and other commercial vehicle accidents.

Whether the cause of the collision is driver fatigue, improper truck maintenance, and/or improper screening, training and supervision of drivers, the Dallas truck accident lawyers at The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson have the experience, resources and technical abilities to determine what happened and who should be held responsible.