Truck accidents are much more dangerous than car accidents due to their weight. Truck accidents often result in more severe injuries and can complicate the legal process.
Heninger Garrison Davis, LLC has represented clients in all 50 states, totaling over $3 billion in recoveries. Our Birmingham truck accident lawyers explain how truck accidents differ from car accidents.
Truck Accidents Cause More Severe Injuries Than Car Accidents
The massive size and weight difference between commercial trucks and passenger vehicles means people in cars often sustain much more serious injuries when an accident with a truck occurs. Due to the strong forces involved, truck crashes frequently result in severe and life-altering injuries. Common severe injuries seen in truck collision cases include:
- Broken bones and fractures of the legs, pelvis, arms, ribs and vertebrae
- Sprains and ligament tears of the ankles, knees, wrists and elbows
- Internal organ lacerations to the liver, spleen and kidneys
- Spinal cord injuries like herniated discs pinched nerves, or broken backbones
- Traumatic brain injuries such as concussions, bleeding, or bruising on the brain
- Crushed chest or flail chest from shattered ribs pressing on lungs
- Amputations of limbs tangled in wreckage or severed by debris
- Facial fractures affecting the jaw, nose, cheekbones or eye sockets
- Nerve damage to the brachial plexus resulting in arm immobility
- Vascular injuries requiring emergency surgery to repair torn arteries
- Third-degree burns over large areas of the body from vehicular fires
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Truck Accidents May Have More Liability Complications Than Car Accidents
Truck drivers often have to follow several different rules compared to regular non-commercial drivers. Here are some of the liability complications you and your lawyer may face when holding a truck driver responsible for your accident:
Complex Liability Determinations
Truck accidents often involve more complex liability determinations compared to typical car crashes. Since large commercial vehicles are heavily regulated and operated by businesses, more potential parties could be at fault. The driver may be negligent, but so could the motor carrier for faulty training, maintenance, or oversight.
Regulations impose liability on carriers for the acts of their drivers within the course and scope of employment. Proving a carrier failed to oversee its operation properly can extend liability beyond individual driver negligence.
Impacts of Regulation Noncompliance
Additionally, commercial vehicles are subject to a web of federal transportation and safety statutes. Compliance with regulations concerning hours of service, load securement, speed governors, and equipment inspections can impact the allocation of liability. Violations move a crash from simple negligence into statutory liability, which has stricter standards of care.
Courts may assign partial liability to both carriers and drivers based on breach of statutory duties. Since multiple negligent parties can be sued in truck accident cases, it makes apportioning liability quite complex.
Federal Preemption Implications
Establishing liability is further complicated if the commercial vehicle was engaged in interstate hauling regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) or transporting hazardous materials. Federal preemption doctrines may prevent enforcement of certain state traffic statutes.
Accident investigations must consider compliance with specific transportation regulations rather than general auto negligence laws. This increases the difficulty in proving liability in truck accident litigation compared to basic vehicle crashes.
How Can a Lawyer Help You Understand the Legal Differences Between Truck Accidents and Car Accidents?
If you’ve been involved in a truck accident, it’s important to understand the complex legal issues that may be involved compared to a traditional car crash case. An experienced truck accident attorney can provide crucial guidance and help you understand the varying rules and regulations that apply. Some ways a lawyer from Heninger Garrison Davis, LLC, can help include:
- Explaining the commercial motor carrier regulations and how they impact liability determinations.
- Advising on compliance with FMCSA rules for commercial drivers, hours of service, vehicles, cargo, etc.
- Interpreting how negligence standards may differ, incorporating duties for proper training, load securement, and maintenance programs.
- Addressing jurisdictional concerns like preemption of state law by transportation regulations.
- Guiding strategy due to challenges in obtaining repairs or maintenance records, driver logs, and communications from carrier defendants.
- Assessing whether the loaded configuration or hazardous cargo status affects potential claims.
- Anticipating insurance coverage disputes between personal and commercial policies.
Truck Accidents Result in Higher Damages Than Car Accidents
If you are involved in an accident with a large commercial vehicle, it is important to understand that the damages you can recover in your legal claim could potentially be much greater than those from a typical automobile collision. This is due to the severity of injuries frequently caused by crashes with heavy trucks. Our truck accident lawyers can help you recover damages such as:
- Medical expenses: This covers all treatment and care required to address injuries sustained in the accident, such as hospital stays, surgeries, prescriptions, therapy sessions, medical equipment, home health aides if long-term care is needed, and future checkups or services.
- Vehicle repairs: This damage applies to repairing or replacing a vehicle that was damaged in the accident.
- Lost wages: This compensates for salary and income that was lost during the time missed from work due to injuries, as well as for any potential long-term reduced earning power.
- Decreased earning capacity: This damage pays for lifelong loss of potential income if the injuries result in permanent disability that prevents returning to the previous occupation.
- Pain and suffering: These non-economic damages cover impacts like physical and emotional distress, scarring, inability to participate in usual activities, and reduced quality of life.
- Emotional distress: Compensation is awarded for trauma, grief, depression, or anxiety disorders experienced as a result of losing a loved one or sustained disfigurement in the accident.
- Wrongful death: In Alabama, you can only recover punitive damages in wrongful death cases.
- Traumatic brain injury: It addresses costs for around-the-clock care over a lifetime required to manage serious permanent cognitive and functional impairments due to head trauma.
- Spinal cord injury: These extremely high expenses cover complete or partial paralysis care and ongoing mobility needs for the injured person’s remaining life.
Learn More About How Truck Accidents Are Different Than Car Accidents
Truck accidents and car accidents have similarities, but overall, truck crashes are more severe and result in more damage. If you’ve been injured in a truck accident, our team at Heninger Garrison Davis, LLC, can help you with a free consultation.
Contact us to learn more about how truck and car accidents differ from one another and how our team can help.
