A truck accident can turn your life upside down, depending on your situation. Whether you walk away with serious injuries or not, you still have a right to try and pursue compensation if you were not at fault. A Worcester truck accident lawyer is an ideal person to have on your side through the process.
While compensation is not guaranteed, it is usually worth seeing what you may get out of the case. As long as you have the evidence, you can have more potential. A Worcester personal injury lawyer at DiBella Law can help make sure you have your proof organized and follow the steps along the way.
Common Causes of a Truck Accident
Driver fatigue from lack of sleep or driving too many hours without adequate rest can slow reaction times, impair judgment, and cause truckers to nod off while driving. Trucking companies may pressure drivers to meet tight delivery deadlines, leading to marathon trips with little time for proper sleep. This fatigue severely compromises safe driving ability and plays a role in many truck accidents.
Faulty equipment like defective brake systems, worn tires, or broken lights can increase risk, as can overloaded cargo, which makes trucks much harder to control. Trucking companies are required by law to adequately maintain vehicles and avoid overloading, but violations still occur too often. Enforcing maintenance standards and cargo limits could prevent many accidents.
Risky driving behaviors like speeding, distraction from mobile devices, recklessness on the roads, or failure to yield right of way to other vehicles also contribute to many truck crashes. Operating such a large vehicle requires heightened discipline, focus, and caution at all times. More driver training and education could lead to safer habits.
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Determining Liability
Liability determination begins by investigating all factors that may have caused or contributed to the truck accident. Police will determine the basics at the scene, but a full probe of records, driver histories, truck maintenance, cargo, crash dynamics, and more is crucial. A truck accident attorney in Worcester at DiBella Law has the resources to thoroughly assess root causes.
In truck crashes, multiple parties may share fault depending on the specifics of each case. The truck driver, trucking company, truck manufacturer or component maker, cargo loader, road maintenance crew, or other motorists could play a role. Pinpointing negligence by each party is key to seeking maximum compensation through legal avenues.
Comparative negligence laws in Massachusetts mean financial awards are reduced by the percentage of the injured person who was liable based on their contribution to causing the accident. A lawyer can try to build the strongest argument around the defendant’s highest share of fault to maximize claim value for the injured. There are no guarantees with compensation, but the more evidence you bring, you may have more potential.
How to Build a Compelling Case
Constructing a convincing truck accident case starts with gathering police reports, medical records, and all other documentation connected to the event. An attorney thoroughly reviews all materials, looking for factors causing or contributing to the crash and establishing the full extent of damage and injuries. Any information gaps are filled through detailed investigations.
The truck accident lawyer in Worcester must demonstrate the trucker and potentially the company acted negligently in clear violation of safety regulations around driving limits, truck maintenance, cargo loading, or other standards. Evidence like driver logs, inspection records, and policy manuals can reveal failures to meet legal obligations to safely operate vehicles.
Making a compelling legal argument also requires quantifying both economic and non-economic impacts on the victim in areas such as medical bills, lost income, pain, and suffering. Expert testimony is utilized to validate injury claims and ensure adequate compensation is achieved.
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Types of Trucks that Often Cause Serious Accidents
Large semi-trucks like 18-wheelers or tractor-trailers pose major hazards due to their massive size and weight, with more lethal force involved when crashes occur. Most severe or fatal trucking accidents involve these types of large commercial vehicles. Blind spots around the trucks coupled with speeding worsens outcomes.
Dump trucks, garbage trucks, concrete transport trucks, and other industrial vehicles frequently injure passenger motorists in collisions. Their construction purposes lead to design flaws like huge blind spots for drivers. Car drivers often don’t see them changing lanes or turning.
Pickup trucks and other light trucks account for many truck accidents partly due to the high incidence of failure to properly secure rolling or shifting loads in their beds. Unsecured cargo falling onto roadways also creates danger for other motorists. The height and design of pickup trucks also make them more likely to roll over.
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Liable Parties in a Truck Accident
The truck driver often shares fault because of behaviors like speeding, distracted or impaired driving, fatigued operating, and disregard for safety protocols. Their employer, the trucking company, can also share liability through inadequate driver training programs, ineffective safety policies, unrealistic delivery expectations that prompt drivers to disregard rules, or poor truck maintenance. Identifying driver and corporate operational failures that compromise safety is crucial for determining liability.
Truck manufacturers may also bear responsibility if defective vehicle parts or design flaws cause the crash while loading companies can share the blame. This can be through improperly secured cargo, not following weight limits, or hazardous loading practices. Additionally, other motorists involved may be liable if reckless driving on their part contributed to the collision, and government agencies like the state transportation department can be at fault for poor road design, lack of signage, badly timed lights or signals, or inadequate maintenance.
Pinpointing the exact share of liability for each party requires an exhaustive investigation into every factor potentially causing the truck crash. Truck accident attorneys utilize experts like crash reconstructionists, private investigators, scientists, and specialists to definitively determine causes and appropriate percentage of fault for each negligent party. Building this evidence potentially leads to the strongest injury claim and possible best outcome.
Contact a Worcester Truck Accident Attorney
Going through a truck accident case on your own can feel daunting. DiBella Law is ready to help take some of the overwhelm off if you can provide sufficient evidence. Contact us for a free consultation today.
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