If you take a two thousand pound vehicle and put it up against an eighty thousand pound tractor trailer, which one do you think is going to end up losing that fight? The tractor trailer is going to crush your car like a sand pebble. You want to have someone on your side that understands the federal regulations that relate to these tractor trailers, and knows how to investigate and prove your case.
Experience is important in these cases from the very start of the investigation. You have to know about modern trucks and what they are capable of these days. Many of them have black boxes and GPS systems that can tell us a lot about what happened in the wreck. Many trucking companies can track their drivers in real time and tell us how fast the truck was going or when the driver last took a federally required break.
Was the accident due to fatigue? Was it due to alcohol or drugs? Did load shift because it wasn’t loaded properly or was the tractor trailer poorly maintained? From the get-go, we have to be asking these questions. And if I don’t have the answer, I have to know which expert to contact and where to go for the answers. I have access to those resources because I’ve done it time and again.
Experience with the federal regulations that relate to tractor trailers is also essential to handling a case.
Are we going to go after them for failure to properly train their drivers? Some of the guys out there in these giant rigs are not even qualified to drive them. There are laws about companies calling prior employees, checking licensing, and medical, drug and alcohol histories. They have a duty to look at all of that.
Perhaps the wreck occurred because the driver was forced to drive such long hours that they didn’t take the amount of time to rest that is required of them by law. There’s a very complex formula for calculating that time, and if you don’t understand it, you won’t be able to figure out whether or not the law was violated.
I was recently investigating a tractor trailer wreck here in West Virginia that paralyzed a middle aged woman. Because we knew where to look, we found a whole bunch of data that was not recorded by the police. We were able to help that family with evidence that they didn’t even realize existed. We’re in the process of doing that for that family now and I think they’re very relieved that our experience allowed us, at the very first meeting, to explain what it is we need to do and how we’ll get through this lawsuit.
It takes it experience to know where to start. And we’ve got it. Call us toll free at 855-344-9100.