Tractor trailer accidents often lead to catastrophic injuries due to the sheer size and weight of these commercial vehicles. These cases also involve multiple parties and complex regulations.
If you have been injured in a wreck involving a tractor trailer, protect yourself by retaining the services of an experienced injury lawyer to ensure that you receive maximum compensation from from all responsible parties.
Multiple parties may be involved in a commercial trucking operation, and any one of those parties may be at least partially liable for your injuries.
Properly identifying all responsible parties requires a thorough investigation and is critical to ensuring that all avenues for recovery are pursued for maximum compensation.
Below is a list of parties that may bear some form of responsibilty for a wreck involving a tractor trailer:
May be liable for distracted driving, speeding, driving under the influence, or violating hours-of-service laws.
Can be held responsible for poor hiring practices, inadequate training, or pressuring drivers to exceed safe limits.
Improper loading can lead to unbalanced trailers, causing rollovers or jackknife accidents.
Defective parts like brakes or steering components may contribute to the crash.
If a third-party company is responsible for maintaining the vehicle and fails to meet safety standards, they may share in liability.
In addition to knowing which parties may bear shared responsibility for a tractor trailer wreck, it is also important to understand how to actually prove the actions or inactions of those parties that gave rise to the wreck in the first place. Below are common ways of establishing liability in these big trucking accident cases:
The police report will have the officer's conclusion as to which party caused the wreck. The conclusion may be based off of witness statements and/or evidence at the scene of the wreck such as the layout of the road, the position of the vehicles, the damages on the vehicles, and debris from the vehicles. The report will also have additional information regarding the truck driver and the trucking company that your attorney will use to do more research into other potential responsible parties.
When both drivers give conflicting stories about how the wreck occurred, it can be helpful to engage an accident reconstruction expert. They specialize in analyzing the scene of the wreck, debris from the vehicles, the damage to the vehicles, and the statements of each driver to determine how the wreck most likely occurred. Sometimes they may come to a conclusion just by looking at all of the evidence, while other times they may require several simulations to get to the most likely cause of the wreck.
A particularly useful tool is the use of sworn statements of suspected responsible parties. While it is good practice to question all potential responsible parties, the truck driver is typically one of the first that most attorneys want answers from. Many of the questions are centered around the driver's past driving history to determine whether he or she has a pattern of reckless driving. With any luck, an extensive prior record can later be used to prove that the trucking company itself was negligent in hiring an irresponsible driver, and a representative of the company would be deposed on that topic.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) lays out specific regulations for tract trailers, and trucking companies are required to comply. It is always a good practice for a trucking accident attorney to stay up to date on those regulations and to review the case for any potential violations, which may be uncovered either through sworn deposition testimony or the attorney's review of the trucking company's records.
Tractor trailers are equipped with recording devices, which record what is known as black box data. This can be an extremely useful tool for your attorney because it records information about the tractor trailor such as the times of driving and rest periods, the speed it was traveling at a particular time, intances of hard braking or sudden stops, and engine performance and diagnostics. However, this data can be overwritten or deleted over a certion period of time, so your attorney should quickly issue a legal request in order to preserve it.
Truck drivers and trucking companies are held to strict standards set by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). Violations of these regulations often play a central role in truck accident lawsuits.
Below are some of the most common regulations that truckers and trucking companies often fail to comply with:
Drivers are limited in how many hours they can operate without a break to prevent fatigue-related accidents. Violations may suggest driver exhaustion contributed to a crash.
Trucks must not exceed certain weight thresholds based on axle count and cargo type. Overloaded vehicles are harder to stop and more prone to rollovers.
Commercial carriers are required to inspect and maintain trucks regularly. Lack of proper maintenance (e.g., brakes, tires, lights) can create hazardous conditions.
Drivers must pass physicals, background checks, and licensing requirements including CDL (Commercial Driver’s License) certifications. Unqualified or undertrained drivers present a serious risk.
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