What Should I Know about Lawsuits Involving Large Trucks?

Large trucks include vehicles such as tractor-trailers, single-unit trucks, and heavy cargo vans whose gross weight is above 10,000 pounds. If you don’t drive anything that might be considered a large truck, you might think you don’t have to worry about any kind of a lawsuit involving large trucks. You would be wrong, though, because a large-truck accident doesn’t have to involve just large trucks. If you are in a regular car or on foot, and you are hit by a large truck, its weight and speed can do a lot of damage.

The 2008 statistics for accidents that involved a large truck, compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), are eye-opening.

• 4,229 people died in large-truck crashes during 2008.
• 677 of those people were in a large truck. The rest were not.
• 3,139 people were in some kind of vehicle other than a large truck.
• 413 people were not in any kind of vehicle.

In other words, only a little more than 16 percent of the people who died in large-truck accidents were in the large truck.

What should I do if I am involved in a large-truck accident?

If you are injured in a large-truck accident, the chances are that the cost on a personal level to you and your family is going to be very large. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is to find a good truck accident attorney to represent your interests.

The trucking company is going to be looking out for its own best interests, which are not necessarily the same as yours. You should not sign any papers or make any statements until you have met with a personal injury law firm.

You only have a limited amount of time to file a lawsuit. Federal regulations require commercial carriers to keep specific records, but they can get rid of the records after a period of time unless they are required to keep the records because of a lawsuit.

Although the trucking company may delay compensating you for damage, federal regulations do require that they carry insurance. If the trucking company can be shown to be negligent, and if you incurred substantial damages, then at some point your truck accident lawyer should be able to get you some financial relief.