A federal truck safety regulator has suspended the operating authority of a truck driver who was involved in a headline-grabbing fatal crash on Interstate 55 in Illinois last month.
Francisco Espinal-Quiroz, 51, of Indiana, who operates Indiana-based Espinal Trucking, failed to cooperate with an investigation examining his safety record, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced Aug. 8.
“Espinal Trucking failed to obey the demand” to provide the agency’s investigators company records by a July 30 deadline, according to FMCSA. A 2012 federal highway law authorizes the agency to revoke the operating authority registration of a motor carrier if the firm fails to comply with an administrative subpoena or formal requests to provide safety records.
On July 21, authorities said Espinal-Quiroz had been operating his truck for about 12 hours when he ran through a construction zone and collided with multiple cars on I-55, outside of Chicago.
The accident killed four people. Prosecutors have charged Espinal-Quiroz with falsifying information on a logbook that shows how many hours he’s worked, violating logbook rules and failure to slow down in a construction zone.
