Attorney At Law

A Truck Accident Attorney knows that large trucks are involved in close to 400,000 police-reported crashes each year, of which 4,500 involve a fatality. A truck accident attorney is aware that about 60% of fatal truck crashes involve one large truck colliding with a single passenger vehicle.

In fatal crashes involving one large truck and one passenger vehicle, errors on the part of the passenger vehicle driver were recorded significantly more often than errors on the part of the truck driver. In fatal crashes, up to three driver crash-related factors may be coded for each driver involved in a crash. Reviewing the driver-related factors alone indicates that passenger vehicle drivers contributed disproportionately to fatal crashes involving a large truck and a passenger.

U.S. Government figures show that truck drivers were not coded with any driver-related crash factors in 73 percent of the crashes. In contrast, only 18 percent of the passenger vehicle drivers were not coded with a driver-related factor. In 16 percent of the crashes, the large truck was assigned crash factors, while in 71 percent of the crashes, the passenger vehicle was assigned crash factors. In 10 percent of the crashes both drivers were assigned crash factors.

One explanation offered for the disproportionate number of factors attributed to the passenger vehicle driver is that typically the passenger vehicle driver is killed in these crashes while the truck driver survives. The presumption is that the truck driver is able to give “his side” of the crash circumstances and persuade the reporting police officer that the other driver was mainly at fault.

In 83 percent of the crashes the truck driver survives and the passenger vehicle driver is killed, while in only 2 percent of the crashes the passenger vehicle driver survives and the truck driver killed. In 15 percent of the crashes in the study, both drivers survived and are able to describe the crash to the investigating officer. In 73 percent of these cases, the passenger vehicle driver is coded with a factor, while the truck driver is coded with a factor only 34 percent of the time.

A truck accident attorney hired to collect damages will probably have to face the fact that only 1 percent of the drivers of large trucks involved in fatal crashes are intoxicated, compared with 19 percent for passenger cars, 20 percent for light trucks, and 27 percent for motorcycles.

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