Articles Posted in Trucking Accidents

Yesterday in the Savannah area, heavy rain led to two hydroplaning crashes involving tractor trailers. According to a report by Tuyaquen Mach on WSAV, In one crash on I-95 at Jimmy Deloach Parkway, a UPS truck pulling two trailers hydroplaned and hit two vehicles. One of the trailers, reported to be carrying hazardous materials, flipped…

  As an attorney representing people injured in tractor trailer accidents in Georgia, I often see how truck driver fatigue contributes to 18 wheeler, semi truck accidents. I’ve seen tragic cases where  truck drivers crashed when they fell asleep in their 18th or 20th hour behind the wheel,  cases where truckers tried to make it…

When a significant motor carrier collision happens, the pattern response is for the truck driver to immediately call the dispatcher, who calls the risk manager even at home in the middle of the night, who in turn calls in a “rapid response team” – a defense lawyer in the state where the crash occurred in…

Today I’m heading home from the American Association for Justice annual meeting in San Francisco. On Saturday, I was one of the speakers at the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group seminar.  I had a fairly dry topic, though one necessary in these difficult economic times, “Hard Times in Trucking Litigation: What to Do When the Trucking Defendant…

On Friday, 6/26/09, on I-44 near Miami, Oklahoma, a tractor trailer slammed into a line of stopped traffic, killing nine people. The tractor trailer driver apparently made no attempt to slow or stop. Whether the driver was fatigued or distracted was not immediately reported. Witnesses described the pileup in 100 degree heat as looking like…

Trucking is a dangerous occupation. A lot of my work as a trucking safety trial attorney in Georgia involves representing injured truck drivers and survivors of truckers who are killed due to someone else’s carelessness. An often overlooked factor is that a lot of trucking insurance policies include substantial uninsured motorist (UM) insurance coverage. That means…

A driver was killed when he struck the rear of a parked tractor trailer on the side of a highway in California on the night of  January 29th.  The news report does not mention whether the unoccupied tractor trailer was properly parked with flashing hazard lights and refrecting triangles deployed to warn drivers of it…

A tractor trailer driver lost control yesterday  morning on I-69 in Indiana, crashed through the high tension barrier cables in the median.  The trailer became detached and killed a man  driving the opposite direction whose car slid under the careening trailer.  According to a report by Rick Yencer of the Muncie Star Press, a state…

A trucking accident in New Hampshire today reminds me of one of the first interstate trucking personal injury cases I handled as a young lawyer roughly 25 years ago, before I gained much knowledge about things as crucial as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. In the New Hampshire accident this morning, a state snow plow…

A  federal court jury in  Kansas has returned a $23.5 million verdict arising from a 2006 wreck in New Mexico, according to an article by Ron Sylvester of the Wichita Eagle. The court cut the amount to $15.3 million because the jury decided the driver of the Swift Transportation was only 65 percent at fault…