Truck accidents frequently cause fatalities and extremely serious injuries. The weight of a fully loaded commercial vehicle can reach 40 tons, which is 20 to 30 times heavier than the typical modern car. In brief, the size and weight of a tractor-trailer, semi-truck, box truck, or other large freight-bearing vehicle are just insurmountable for passenger cars. Smaller cars sometimes sustain severe injuries when they meet in an accident with a big truck or bus.
It’s critical to get the advice of an attorney with experience in large truck accidents. The legal team at KAASS Law Firm has decades of experience and the expertise you need to pursue justice for the deceased person.
Common Fatal Truck Accident Types
Nine percent of all heavy truck crashes involve a rollover, which accounts for more than half of all truck driver fatalities. Rollover accidents are highly dangerous for both truck drivers and other road users.
Semi-trucks and tractor-trailers are more likely to topple onto their sides. For example, their heavy weight and high center of gravity, turn too rapidly or drive too fast.
Blind spots on these cars can potentially result in collisions. The blind spot of a truck is the area that the driver cannot see in their mirrors or with their eyes without rotating their head and looking away from the road in front of them. Of course, the size of a vehicle’s blind spot will increase with size.
When attempting to merge, pass, or cut in front of traffic, blind spots make it difficult for drivers to detect smaller cars, which can result in collisions or push the smaller vehicle off the road entirely.
Large Truck Accidents and Injuries: Common Causes
Law enforcement and organizations that oversee commercial transportation may launch an investigation after a fatal commercial vehicle accident. These deadly truck accidents frequently have similar pre-accident patterns, which most likely influenced how they turned out. For example, these include:
- Driver Exhaustion
- Driver Omissions
- DUI
- Issues With Load and Freight
- Speeding
- Inadequate Vehicle Maintenance
How Is Liability Established in a Wrongful Death Case Involving a Truck?
Anyone who, through their careless or malicious behavior, led to the victim’s death may be included as a defendant in a wrongful death lawsuit. Multiple defendants are frequently included in large truck accident wrongful death lawsuits, including:
- The vehicle’s driver
- The transport business
- Owner of the truck
- A person who loads or manufactures freight
- Cargo owner
- Maintenance firm for trucks
- The maker of a damaged automotive component
- A tavern that provided a truck driver with excessive alcohol service
Your lawyer will handle the insurance company negotiations, the accident investigation, and the wrongful death lawsuit.
What Losses Are Covered by Commercial Vehicle Insurance?
A wrongful death lawsuit may provide for the recovery of economic, non-economic, and punitive damages.
These damages cover things like the price of pre-death medical care, lost financial support, funeral and burial costs, and more. Your lawyer can propose suing for the following things if the dead was the head of the household and the other occupants depended on their wages to survive:
- Loss of future earnings projections
- Loss of advantages like health insurance or a pension plan
- Loss of inheritance as a result of a person’s premature passing
Economic damages may also include the cost of products and services, such as child care, that the victim would have provided for the family if they had survived.
Non-economic damages can make up for the victim’s suffering before death, the survivors’ emotional suffering, and loss of consortium, which is the breakdown of a relationship as a result of one party’s passing.
Contact Our Wrongful Death Lawyers for Truck Accidents
To conclude, allow your lawyer to represent you. Honoring the memory of the departed by pursuing a wrongful death claim may even assist in stopping future mistakes of those responsible. Such cases are simply one of our many practices. To begin with, a free consultation, get in touch with the team at KAASS Law right away. Call us now at 310.943.1171.