Practice Areas / Catastrophic Injury

Truck Accident Lawyer Nebraska

When truck accidents occur, the effects can be devastating due to the size and weight of commercial trucks. Many commercial trucks, like tractor trailers, can have up to 18 wheels and a fully loaded large commercial truck can weigh over 80,000 pounds. Compare that to the average 3,500 pound passenger vehicle. This is the main reason injuries sustained in truck accidents are so much more severe than accidents involving only passenger vehicles.

In addition to their size and weight, many commercial trucks carry hazardous cargo, which can spill over onto the roads in an accident and cause illness as well as injury.

Some truck accidents are caused by passenger vehicles
While there are many factors that can contribute to a truck accident, the following are the most common:

• Passing a truck and then being blown aside by high winds or turbulence from the truck
• Driving between two trucks
• Driving in the blind spots behind or beside a truck
• Failing to speed up or slow down as a truck merges onto the freeway

 

Truck accidents can also be caused by truck drivers
Although truck drivers are highly skilled and trained in being patient and careful drivers, there are times where truck accidents are caused by the truck driver.

Sometimes drivers are in a hurry due to the unrealistic expectations of their company to meet or exceed impossible timelines. Also, many drivers are offered bonus compensation for meeting these impossible deadlines, which requires the drivers to increase their speed beyond the safe limits.

If you have been involved in a truck accident with a commercial vehicle (like a big rig), you’ll want to contact a truck accident attorney to discuss your options and to file a claim.

To prove your case
In most personal injury cases involving motor vehicle accidents, the main argument is negligence. In order for a case to be won in a truck accident, the injured person must show that the defendant failed to exercise reasonable care and that failure was the direct cause of the injury.

The truck driver is not the only defendant
Something many people are unaware of is that in order to collect compensation for injuries sustained in a truck accident, you’ll want to identify as many potential defendants as possible. This includes the driver of the truck as well as the trucking company, any employers, insurance companies or contractors or anyone else who may be legally obligated to provide compensation in the case of a truck accident.

This is one of the biggest reasons for hiring an attorney to handle your case. An attorney will know the potential defendants which will help you recover damages from another source in the case that one potential defendant is determined to not be at fault.