Trucking Accident Attorneys

Very High Risk of Death or Injury In Trucking Accidents

The risks to occupants of passenger cars in truck accidents are so great, nearly 78% of the people killed and 84% of the people seriously injured in 2-vehicle crashes involving a passenger vehicle and a large truck are occupants of the passenger vehicle.

So if someone you know has been injured in a large truck accident, an attorney at Casey, Gerry, Reed & Schenk may be able to help if you contact us now.

The three most common risk factors for large truck accidents are:

1. Reckless Driving
2. Mechanical Failures
3. Driver Fatigue

Reckless Driving

Reckless driving includes (but is not limited to) excessive speed, improper lane changes, following too closely, failure to yield right-of-way, illegal turns, and failure to obey traffic signals.

Of those, speeding alone (whether exceeding the speed limit or driving too fast for conditions) accounts for 20% of all the fatal crashes involving large trucks and over 17% of the injury accidents. Speeding is usually the cause of rollover and jack-knife accidents.

Mechanical Failures

This cause of large truck accidents can involve something as simple as inoperative truck taillights that cause a rear-end collision on a dark highway, or as obvious as brake failure on a long downhill grade.

Driver Fatigue

Driver fatigue is a critical factor in over 30% of heavy vehicle accidents. Fatigue is called "the silent killer" because it cannot be revealed in accident scene tests, like those for alcohol or other drugs -- which surprisingly, play a statistically minor role in most large truck accidents.

According to a two-year accident report analysis by the National Transportation Safety Board, the most important measures in predicting a fatigue-related accident are the duration of the last sleep period, the total hours of sleep obtained during the 24 hours prior to the accident, and split sleep patterns.

Truck drivers with split sleep patterns get about 8 hours sleep in a 24-hour period, however, they obtain it in small segments averaging 4 hours at a time. The NTSB's research suggests that sleep accumulated in short time blocks impedes recovery of performance abilities.

Learn more about trucking accidents in news articles.