Commercial Truck Accidents

Wrecks with large commercial trucks are different from other automobile accidents in some very important ways.

1. Large trucks have a lot more kinetic energy that can increase the potential for serious injury. If you’re hit with 80,000 pounds instead of 4000 pounds it can make a difference,
2. The trucking company or its insurer is likely to send out a rapid response team immediately even before the wreckage is cleared. They may have an investigator and even a defense lawyer at the scene. While your loved one is being hauled to the hospital or the morgue, the trucking company team may already be out there deciding how to deal with the evidence for their benefit. They might even have a former law enforcement officer as an investigator out there persuading the police to see it their way.
3. Because of the increased danger associated with big vehicles and tired drivers hauling stuff for many, many miles and many, many hours across the country. Trucking company are required to follow motor carrier safety regulations to keep detailed records of drivers hours of service, vehicle inspections and so forth. But they only have to keep them for a specified periods of time. So it is essential to act quickly to make sure those records are preserved,
4. Lawyers who are good at handling regular car wreck cases may not know much about trucking cases even if they say they do. It takes intimate knowledge of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, the state regulations that follow on those, trucking industry practices, technology, insurance coverage, and how to discover the documents and electronic records that are unfamiliar to the vast majority of lawyers.
5. Trucking insurance companies and claims departments are extremely sophisticated in lulling people into complacency. They may lull you into inaction, telling you they are going to take care of things until the time has run out where they can destroy records and get by with it and then deny everything and say hey you never asked for that stuff.
6. I’ve been on the national board of the trucking litigation group, have spoken on national trucking litigation seminars, about half of my practice involves trucking cases, and I have been involved in trying cases about truck matters since the late 70s as a prosecutor when I first prosecuted a truck hijacking case.

If you or a loved one are seriously injured in a wreck with a large commercial truck, call us for a free consultation*. I hope we can help.

On May 22, 2018, former State Bar of Georgia president Ken Shigley will be a candidate for election to the Georgia Court of Appeals. The only other candidate is Ken Hodges, a former Dougherty County District Attorney. Ken Hodges was the Democratic Party nominee for Attorney General in 2010.