I have handled many truck accident cases. Because trucks are heavy, large vehicles carrying heavy loads, not only do they cause significant personal injuries, but many clients sustain emotional injuries as well. Often times, the injured party suffers post traumatic stress from the incident which causes them to seek help from a therapist or psychiatrist. Many truck accident cases result in death because the impact from the oversized truck is deadly.
One of the truck cases that reflect these emotional injuries was when a young girl who just received her driver's license was cut off by a truck and her car somehow caught onto the truck and her vehicle was dragged almost one block by the truck. My young client suffered minimal physical injuries but sustained post traumatic stress as a result of the incident. She would not drive after the incident and was fearful when she was able to sit as a passenger in a vehicle. Her mom sought psychiatric treatment from a psychiatrist for her. The truck company thought her emotional injuries were "fake" and would not pay on the case. The truck company admitted that the truck accident was it's fault but denied my client was injured and claimed her injuries were "made up."
We finally settled the case after a few years when the psychiatrist gave his deposition. The psychiatrist testified to the medical findings for post traumatic stress and correlated my client's symptoms to the findings of post traumatic stress. Ultimately, the trucking company acknowledged my client's injury of post traumatic stress and we settled the case.
Truck drivers consistently cause accidents because their vehicles make wide turns, they exceed the speed limits and travel in excess of speed limits during bad weather conditions. Truck driver's are supposed to deliver their loads at a specific time which puts pressure on them to exceed speed limits and travel in bad weather.
I remember handling another case where I was able to see a truck driver's driving log which is required of all truck driver's to keep. We were able to show that the speed of the truck driver and the weather at the time which showed terrible weather conditions was traveling at an excessively high speed for weather conditions.
Truck driver's follow too closely, have slow stopping speeds, switch lanes constantly and may even have unsecured loads. Truck driver's also may have more blind spots then passenger vehicles. Fatigue may also enter into a truck driver's sleep and alertness while driving. Because of time constraints they drive long hours and become fatigued.
In many truck accident cases an accident reconstruction expert is needed to recreate what happened at the scene using evidence including the police report and witness accounts from the accident site as well as remaining debris at the scene. Truck Accident cases involve serious injuries and proving fault in truck accident cases takes an attorney with knowledge about the trucking industry so make sure you chose a lawyer with this knowledge because EXPERIENCE MATTERS!