Readers of the above post headline are unsurprised by what it stresses, of course. Anyone who has ever spent a moment taking a discerning look at a large commercial truck and truly considering its commanding presence in traffic can well imagine its devastating impact in an accident.
And there is no imagining at all for actual victims of big-rig crashes or for their loved ones. Lives are often flatly upended in the wake of serious truck accidents, with serious and frequently catastrophic results attaching permanently.
Big trucks, big crash repercussions: key reasons why
The research and safety advocacy organization Insurance Institute for Highway Safety routinely provides the general public in New York and nationally with germane crash data relevant to large trucks. It points to a number of notable reasons why comparatively serious results feature in collisions involving semi-trucks, tractor-trailers and other varied 18-wheel configurations. Here are a few key crash catalysts:
- Big trucks “often weigh 20-30 times as much as passenger vehicles”
- High ground clearance poses a real risk for smaller vehicles that sometimes slide under trucks having inadequate or absent underride guards
- Trucks’ outsized dimensions understandably make them comparatively hard to maneuver or to stop/slow quickly
- Truckers operate with considerable blind spots
- Unforgiving schedules often keep unduly tired drivers behind the wheel
- Trucking industry has a noted problem with drivers’ impairment and substance abuse
- Commercial trucks are not always maintained/serviced per best-practices industry standards
Those bulleted points spotlight just a few reasons why any given large truck can be a safety nemesis at any time and on any road.
Injuries commonly suffered in truck accidents
There is no sugarcoating the adverse outcomes that often link with truck crashes. One authoritative New York source on accidents and legal remedies underscores that such crashes “often are permanently disabling and are accompanied with a lifetime’s worth of detrimental consequences.”
The types of injuries that accident victims suffer are many and varied. They range from serious head trauma and whiplash to spinal/back complications, broken bones and more.
Pursuing a meaningful legal remedy in the wake of a crash injury
A proven personal injury legal team will take all possible steps to ensure that a client injured in a truck or other motor vehicle accident secures both full accountability and maximum compensation for harms suffered. Workers’ compensation benefits can come to the fore in a job-related accident, and a separate personal injury lawsuit can sometimes be filed when third-party negligence plays a role in a crash-tied injury.
Injury victims are far from powerless. They have strong legal rights and an opportunity to exercise them fully when harmed in a vehicle crash.
