What Causes Truck Accidents?

Truck accidents are a bit more complex, in many regards, than are passenger car accidents. To start with, semis are much more complex vehicles and they have several systems that most passenger cars do not: hydraulics, for example. Semis also use air brakes, a type of brake that requires a special license to operate. Truck driving is one of the blue-collar jobs that requires a very extensive amount of training, varied skills and the ability to navigate a huge, dangerous vehicle through the densest of urban traffic. When truckers or the companies they work for are negligent, injuries and death are usually not long in coming.

Truck accidents are sometimes caused by negligence on the part of others aside from the truckers and the trucking companies, however. For instance, just about every truck on the road has a sign on it that warns you to stay away from the right hand side of the vehicle if it’s at an intersection. The driver needs to swing out to make tight turns and being pinned between the curb and the semi can be deadly. Some drivers press their luck anyway, however, and it is something of a credit to most truckers that more of them aren’t hurt or killed. There are plenty of cases, however, where you’ll run into a trucker who is far less professional than this example implies.

A lot of truckers report falling asleep while driving. This is because they run on tight schedules and, sometimes, the trucking companies overwork them. A semi is obviously not something anyone should operate if they’re drowsy and, unfortunately, there are a lot of people driving under these circumstances. In some cases, they may weave across lanes, drive off the road or plow into other cars. As you might guess, anything in front of them does not have a good chance of surviving the crash.

Semi companies sometimes try to cut corners and save costs by being lax on safety standards. The problem with this is that a semi truck is a very complex piece of machinery and, whether the companies like it or not, semis are expensive to maintain. Truck accidents sometimes happen because trucks didn’t have their tires changed on schedule, their brakes serviced and checked or their lights and other equipment maintained. A broken blinker on a passenger car is an inconvenience. On a semi, it’s positively lethal, in some situations. A truck accident can leave a person with serious head injury or even traumatic brain injury. It is very costly, both in terms of dollars as well as pain and anguish even in a minor accident with trucks.

If you’re in a truck accident, you’ll want to talk to a lawyer. You may be offered a settlement by the trucking company to keep you from suing. In reality, this isn’t really a settlement. A lawyer negotiates a settlement when you’re ready to go to court, if the party being sued wants to avoid a trail. When you’re giving up your right to go to court to seek fair compensation for a little bit of money, you’re only settling the trucking company’s nerves. A good lawyer can make sure that you know all of your options.