How Do Injury Lawyers Prove Fault in Complex Trucking Accidents?

Truck accidents often involve multiple parties, and there are federal rules that apply to trucks that make things a lot more complicated than with typical passenger car accidents. All this means it can be hard to pin down fault, and a truck accident attorney with experience here in North Carolina may be needed if you want to be sure of getting the full compensation you’re owed after a crash.

Why Trucking Accidents Are More Complex

A semi-truck can weigh up to 80,000 pounds, so when it goes flying, injuries and property damage are usually serious. In addition, something that large is often going to injure multiple people and involve multiple vehicles in its crash. There could be a dozen or more drivers, pedestrians, and property owners who all need to make a claim in a worst-case scenario.

Fault isn’t always clear-cut, either, because it’s not just the driver and the truck. In addition to the driver, you need to look at the trucking company and potentially the truck or truck parts manufacturers, a third-party mechanic service, or even a cargo loader. And finally, you need to be familiar with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) rules about hours of service for drivers, maintenance, driver qualifications, and cargo securement in order to successfully bring a claim. If these rules weren’t being followed, then the driver or the trucking company could bear some liability even if the driver didn’t initially cause the accident.

Say, for example, that a sedan makes an illegal U-turn in front of a truck, which causes the truck to brake and swerve to avoid it, and the truck crashes into you and two other vehicles. Is the sedan driver the only one at fault? Perhaps, but if your lawyer looks into it and finds that the truck’s brakes weren’t being maintained properly and the driver had violated hours of service rules, then you could potentially have a claim against the sedan driver, the truck driver, and the trucking company.

Evidence Your Truck Accident Attorney Will Use to Establish Fault

Your lawyer will need to move quickly to preserve evidence, as some of it tends to disappear fast. Key evidence will include the police reports and photos and video from the scene (if available). The photos have to be taken before the scene is cleaned up, and the video has to be secured before it gets overwritten. You’ll also want witness statements, and witnesses tend to forget as time goes along.

Maybe even more crucial will be the “black box” data and information from the truck’s electronic logging devices (ELDs) that show speed, braking, acceleration, and hours driven. Video from inside the cab can show what the driver was doing, and driver logs and maintenance records may reveal FMCSA violations. But all this belongs to the trucking company, and they may “lose” or “accidentally erase” it, meaning your lawyer needs to get on the job fast.

If you’ve been hurt in a truck accident, contact us at David & Associates right away so we can get started gathering and saving evidence to protect your rights. We serve the Supply, Wilmington, Clinton, Jacksonville, Wallace, and Whiteville areas.

Tags: personal injury, personal injury attorneys, truck accidents
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