Who Is Liable in a Truck Accident?

Who’s liable in a truck accident really depends upon the actions of the drivers involved. The driver who was acting unreasonably, not following the rules, not following the law, not paying attention is generally the driver who’s going to be considered at fault for the wreck, because it’s their conduct that likely caused the crash in the first place. Fault in a car accident can be determined by a number of different people. First, the law enforcement officer who’s investigating the case, and secondly, possibly by a judge or a jury who might be called upon to answer those questions after they’ve reviewed the facts, heard the witnesses, and seen what actually happened.

When we handle a truck accident, we sometimes treat it somewhat differently from a regular car accident. Truckers are held to a higher standard of care on the roads. There are more rules for them to follow, more statutes for them to follow. Those rules and those regulations, along with the simple size of their vehicles, hold them to a different standard and require a different level of investigation to prove who may have been at fault for that crash.

Anytime we’re investigating a truck crash, a number of different things have to take place. First, we need to make sure that the police report that was filled out is accurate. Sometimes that means hiring an accident reconstructionist to go back to the scene and take the same measurements and do the same work that law enforcement already has. It also requires us to get the electronic data recorders from the trucks to find out exactly what the truck was doing leading up to the crash, whether that speed was appropriate, and whether their video cameras picked up anything that they were doing that would be considered unreasonable.

There are a number of things that truckers do to put other people on the road in danger: they drive for too long, they drive fatigued, they drive while using some sort of chemical to help them stay awake. All of those things can put drivers in danger, and all of those things can lead to a crash.