Answering Your Questions About Truck Wrecks
A traffic accident involving a large commercial truck, such as an 18-wheeler or semi-truck, can have disastrous consequences for your family. A fully loaded large commercial truck can weigh over 80,000 pounds, while an average passenger automobile weighs approximately 3,000 pounds. Due to a commercial truck’s sheer size, any collision between a truck and another vehicle is likely to result in terribly serious, even fatal, injuries.
Why do commercial truck accidents happen?
Commercial truck accidents occur for many reasons. Trucking is an enormous business — and trucking companies’ attempts to maximize profits can also present hazards for innocent people on the roads. Commercial truck drivers are sometimes required to work long hours with little or no sleep. Large trucks may break the speed limit in order to deliver goods unrealistically quickly, and trucks are not always well maintained. Improperly loaded cargo and unsafe road conditions may also cause disastrous accidents.
Should I accept the insurance company’s initial settlement offer after a truck accident?
Victims of truck accidents and their families can be overwhelmed by the medical and financial consequences of these life-changing events. When the breadwinner of a family is killed by a truck driver’s negligence, his or her family may be left without resources or options. If a person is grievously injured by a truck driver’s negligence, he or she may never be able to work again and may be saddled with massive medical bills. Representatives for the trucking companies may have their representatives contact you shortly after the accident. While they claim to want to assist you, their real motivation may be to persuade you to accept a settlement that is smaller than what you need and deserve. Before signing a settlement agreement, talk to the attorneys at Marynell Maloney Law Firm. We are deeply committed to making sure that your best interests are represented.
What do we need to do to pursue a case?
To establish a case on your behalf, we must show that the truck driver or other defendant owed you a duty to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances. Furthermore, we must show that the truck driver or other defendant breached or failed in that duty; and that this breach was the cause of the your or your loved one’s injury. Although this may seem straight forward, the trucking industry and its insurers are extremely well funded. Insurance defense attorneys are required to provide small – not fair – settlements to the victims of trucking accidents. Trucking companies have access to paid experts who will testify on the company’s behalf. Therefore, it’s especially important to have an attorney on your side with the resources and ability to hire qualified experts to conduct accident investigations, accident reconstruction, and render professional opinions regarding driver qualifications, driver standard of care, federal DOT and state laws and regulations, training and safety compliance, and a host of other issues.
Contact Us
If you or a loved one has been involved in an accident with a commercial truck, and you would like our firm to evaluate your claim, please contact us today. Please call us in San Antonio at 210-446-0035 or complete our contact form. We can help.
We collect attorneys’ fees only if we secure compensation for you.