How A Tractor Trailer Accident Lawyer Helps Maximize Your Settlement

A tractor-trailer accident lawyer will help you seek compensation for damage and/or personal injuries.

An estimated 500,000 truck accidents occur every year.

As a driver in California, the state credited with the highest number of recorded truck accidents in the past ten years, it’s important for you to understand what you can do if you’re involved in an accident with a truck, 18 wheeler, or tractor trailer.

Today, we’re exploring how a tractor-trailer accident lawyer can help you seek compensation for your injuries while protecting your interests.

Let’s get started …

A Tractor Trailer Accident Lawyer Helps You Seek Compensation

One in eight traffic fatalities involves a truck.

If you have the misfortune of experiencing an accident with a truck, tractor-trailer, or 18-wheeler, you may sustain a personal injury. In this case, it’s important for you to seek compensation to help pay for medical bills and vehicle repair.

All of this can be really overwhelming, especially after experiencing a tractor-trailer accident.

For this reason, we recommend you seek the help of a professional tractor trailer accident lawyer. This type of attorney specializes in accidents involving commercial trucks, like 18-wheel trucks and tractor-trailer trucks. Unlike other lawyers, this lawyer will likely have years of experience in this particular area of law.

Tractor trailer accident lawyers will assess the evidence, listen to your account of what happened, and help seek compensation for any damage or personal injury caused by the accident.

Identifying Cause and Fault

Accidents can happen for a variety of different reasons.

Tractor trailer accident lawyers understand the common causes of truck accidents.

In some cases, your attorney may find that the trucking company pressured the driver to complete the job in as little time as possible, which taxes the driver’s ability to stay focused and attentive while driving. Spurred on by financial incentives, some truckers push their limits with the result being negligent and dangerous behaviors that result in injuries and fatalities.

These behaviors include driving at excessive speeds, driving while fatigued, using drugs that impair judgment or reflexes and failing to adjust to adverse weather conditions.Truck drivers have different challenges from car drivers. They must be aware of the weight and momentum of the truck and its stopping ability and maintain a safe following distance. Truck drivers have different viewing angles than car drivers and much larger blind spots, requiring extra precaution.

Maintenance issues are problems, too. In an effort to cut costs and improve profits, trucking companies can delay vehicle inspections or needed repairs or fail to replace defective parts.

When you are involved in an accident with an 18-wheeler, there can be more than one party at fault, and this is where an attorney can help sort out the offenders.They can be drivers who work for the trucking company directly or as independent contractors. They can be truck mechanics or cargo loaders. And there is the trucking company itself. An attorney will look at your situation from all sides to determine any and all negligent parties that contributed to your injury and losses.

Your attorney will look to see if the driver had adequate training and licensing for the size and kind of truck being driven. She will look at the scheduling to see if it was unrealistic and may have contributed to the driver being overly tired or careless. There are federal regulations that limit the number of hours a driver can operate a truck without sleeping and these rules may have been broken. Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Section 395.3, limits the hours a commercial truck driver can drive and states just how long the breaks between operations needs to be.

Your attorney will investigate possible distractions like cell phone use or navigational use. And she will check on cargo restraints to see if careless loading or securing of cargo was involved.

Road conditions may have also contributed to the accident. Improperly maintained roads can cause accidents. Federal, state and local government agencies, as well as construction companies, may be held accountable in these cases.

And while your attorney is investigating possible sources of negligence, she will also advise you if she thinks you may have been partially responsible for the accident. California has a Comparative fault law that states that multiple parties can share, to varying degrees, the blame for truck accidents. Your attorney can argue in your defense to make your percent of the blame to be as low as possible.

Determining Compensation

The damages from your commercial-truck crash injuries can be grouped into two broad categories: economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages are the financial expenses associated with your injuries, and non-economic damages are those that impact your life in other ways.

Financial damages cover the loss of earning potential and current or future medical bills. They also cover physical therapy or rehabilitation. They include vehicle repair or replacement and rental car costs. And they include any accommodations that need to be made to your home or auto as a result of your injuries.

Non-economic damages cover life-changing events like emotional pain and anguish, loss of career, loss of interest in hobbies or other activities you have enjoyed before the accident, and general disinterest in life after your crash.

There is a time limit to file a claim in California. If you are aware of the injuries at the time of the accident, the statute of limitations gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a lawsuit against any negligible or at-fault parties.

If you become aware of the injuries at a later date, the law gives you one year from the date you discovered the injuries to file a claim. Should this be your situation, it would be a good idea to have an attorney help with the process of putting together the right records for you including witness statements and any evidence that would support your case.

If you are contacted by an insurance company for a possible settlement, you should consult with your attorney before responding. Insurance companies often try to lowball the victims of truck crashes. Another pitfall is having you make statements that can later be used to mitigate the insurance company’s responsibilities. Never negotiate with insurance companies without the advice of counsel.

In a worst-case scenario, if you have a loved one who was killed in a truck accident caused by someone else’s careless or negligent actions, you may be able to file a wrongful-death claim to receive compensation for your loss.  A wrongful-death claim is subject to very specific rules, and an attorney should be consulted to assist you.