Your Truck Accident Lawyers.
According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, large trucks are only responsible for 3% of motor vehicle accidents. So with any luck, chances are you’ll never need a truck accident lawyer. But if you are involved in a truck accident, you may.
Although the percentage of accidents associated with big rigs is small, the seriousness of the injuries relating to them is often quite large. Tractor-trailer trucks weigh between 12,000 to 80,000 pounds. That's 25 times more than the average car. At 65 miles an hour, they can be hard to stop and hard to maneuver. As a result, truck accidents may often result in horrific injuries involving brain injury, paralysis, disfigurement, amputation, and unfortunately wrongful deaths.
Factors creating a basis for a claim
As with any personal injury claim, the burden of proof falls on you. That means establishing the following items:
- The trucker or trucking company failed to exercise a reasonable degree of care to avoid injury
- The trucker or trucking company breached the duty of reasonable care
- The trucker’s or trucking company’s failure to exercise reasonable care was the cause of the injury suffered
Truck accidents can be life-changing. If you’ve been injured in a truck accident, make sure you have the right personal injury lawyer fighting for you.
From a practical standpoint, actions relating to the following can form the basis of a legal claim:
- Driver carelessness
- Driver fatigue
- Insufficient training or inexperience
- Violation of traffic laws such as speeding, failure to signal, running a red light
- Vehicle malfunctions
- Poorly loaded cargo
- Improperly attached trailers
During the process, it’s important to identify all responsible parties. That means going beyond the driver and considering trucking companies, contractors, employers, and insurance companies that may have the obligation to compensate you for your injuries. For example, if an employment relationship is established between the truck driver and shipping company, the latter may be held liable for the driver’s negligence. That’s a matter for a good truck accident lawyer to determine.
What can I expect my settlement to be?
Every case and the events surrounding them are different. But four key factors impact settlement amounts namely state jurisdiction, the severity of injuries, death, and monies available. For those reasons, it's difficult to determine an average settlement. Settlements could possibly range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions.