Legal Representation for Trucking Accidents in Detroit
Trucking accidents cause many thousands of severe injuries and about 5,000 fatalities each year in the U.S. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, nearly 85 percent of the people killed in trucking accidents aren’t the truck’s occupants; the fatalities are the occupants of passenger vehicles, motorcyclists, pedestrians, or bicyclists. This is due in part to the weight of large trucks (i.e., trucks with a gross weight of more than 10,000 pounds) – tractor-trailers and even single-unit trucks carrying a normal load that can exceed 80,000 pounds.
Types of Trucking Accidents
About one-fourth of trucking accidents involve a truck hitting the back end of a non-truck, one truck hitting another truck from behind, or a non-truck hitting the back of a truck. The Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration keeps track of the trucking accidents in the U.S. They reported that the other most common circumstances of trucking accidents are:
- A truck backing into another vehicle
- Head-on collisions
- Truck hits an object in the road
- Intersecting vehicles
- No impact (fire, jackknife, other)
- Rollovers
- Side swipes
- Truck ran off road/out of lane
- Truck turned across path/into path
When a truck driver’s or trucking company’s negligence results in injuries or fatalities, they may be held legally liable for the damages incurred by the other party (such as medical or funeral bills, loss of income or life). In some cases, negligence is caused by a fatigued and/or drugged driver, or by a company that has its drivers on the road too much, or by trucks that aren’t properly maintained. Whatever the case, trucking accident victims have legal rights and options.
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