Big rig drivers cause some of the most devastating accidents on Virginia’s highways. Think about it. After 10 straight hours behind the wheel, how can an 18 wheeler driver be completely alert? They can’t. The driver at the helm of the heaviest and most dangerous vehicle on the highways is also often the least alert driver on the road. 400,000 times a year, a large truck will be involved in a crash. These crashes result in more than 5,000 deaths – an average of 13 a day! But truck accidents are traumatic even when they do not result in death. Commercial truck accidents cause catastrophic injuries that can last a lifetime and cost a fortune. Our attorneys are dedicated to making sure that you can afford to pay for a lifetime of treatment after an accident by holding the trucking companies accountable for the negligence of their drivers.

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Truck Accidents

THOSE BIG TRUCKS ON OUR HIGHWAYS

Our highways are more crowded than ever. Anytime you are on a highway, you are surrounded by more and more 18-wheeler, big rig, tractor-trailer trucks. A wreck with an 18-wheeler can be devastating. A tractor-trailer truck can do incredible damage to a car. The personal injury can be life threatening.

Trucking companies and their drivers are supposed to follow strict rules about how much weight they can carry, how many straight hours the drivers are allowed to drive in a day, what kinds of safety inspections the rigs must pass, etc. But, in spite of these rules, truckers cut corners and put their dollars ahead of your safety.

Missed deadlines means missed revenue for the trucking company and its customers. As our highways become more and more clogged with heavy traffic, it becomes harder and harder for those deadlines to be met. The result? Truck drivers are more likely to be stressed and tired and apt to make bad decisions about speed and behavior on the roads.

A study http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/ltccs/default.asp?page=press conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration showed that driver behavior was ten times more likely to be the cause of truck accidents than any other factor, including weather conditions and vehicle performance. Truckers’ careless behavior may be:

  • Driving at an unsafe speed
  • Not checking the truck’s many blind spots
  • Not leaving enough space between vehicles
  • Not paying attention to the road
  • Driving aggressively
  • Drug use


What should you do if you are involved in a truck accident?

At the scene --

  • Get names, addresses, phone numbers of those involved
  • Get insurance information from the other driver(s)
  • Get contact information for all witnesses
  • Get the names of the police officers at the scene – including whether they are local, state or federal officers
  • Get accurate information about the location of the accident
  • Note all apparent injuries (take pictures if you have a camera)
  • Note all visible damages to the vehicles involved (take pictures if you have a camera)

Within a day or so –

  • Inform your insurance company
  • File a police report about any injuries or extensive vehicle damage
  • Find out if a report needs to be filed with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)

Within a few days or sooner if the injuries are severe or a death occurred –

  • Contact a lawyer experienced in handling truck accidents

There are special challenges when you are in a wreck with a tractor-trailer.

Being in an accident is bad enough. Being in an accident with a tractor-trailer truck is even worse. Uncovering the facts you will need to get a fair result from a trucking company’s insurance carrier is vitally important and requires knowledgeable legal assistance.

Who owns the truck? It might be simple to determine the ownership of a family vehicle. It is usually on the registration form that people are supposed to keep in their glove compartments. It’s not quite that easy with a tractor-trailer. More often than not, tractor-trailers are commercial vehicles, and they may very well be interstate haulers. Complicating matters even more is that the tractor part is probably not owned by the same company that owns the trailer part, the contents of the trailer likely are not owned by either of those companies, and the driver may not be an employee of any of them. Any one or all of these companies may be responsible for the wreck.

Tractor-trailer rigs are much more mechanically complicated than a family car. Finding out if it had a mechanical malfunction is a top priority.

A case involving a tractor-trailer will usually require that you hire an expert to investigate the collision and help determine how the wreck happened. This can be very costly.

Weiner, Rohrstaff & Spivey are experienced at handling cases where people have been injured or killed due to the carelessness of truck drivers and trucking companies.

We serve clients across Northern Virginia, including the Counties of Fairfax, Alexandria, Prince William, Loudoun, Arlington, Stafford, Fauquier and the cities of Manassas, Manassas Park, Haymarket, Dumfries, Quantico, Falls Church and Vienna, VA including Burke, Herndon, Centreville, Chantilly, Reston, Springfield, McLean, Great Falls and Burke Station.

Library for Truck Accidents:

Case Results for Truck Accidents:

Web Resources for Truck Accidents:

©2008 Weiner, Rohrstaff & Spivey, PLC, All Rights Reserved, Reproduced with Permission
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