Truck Accident Lawyers Helping Victims Nationwide and Across Texas including Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio
If you are intimidated when you’re driving your car in close proximity to 18-wheelers or other commercial carrier trucks, you have cause to be. Commercial trucks weigh on average 20 times as much as automobiles and can be five times as long. Therefore, if the two types of vehicles collide, the car’s occupants are generally in far greater danger than the truck driver.
If you have been seriously injured in a truck accident or a member of your family has been seriously injured or killed in such a collision, you need the legal guidance and compassionate support of the sharp personal injury attorneys at Leger Ketchum & Cohoon with offices located in The Woodlands, Dallas, and Boerne Texas. Serving across Texas and nationwide, our truck accident attorneys have a well-deserved reputation for efficiency, personal attention, and successful negotiation and litigation of truck accidents. We have won millions of dollars in damages for our clients in all kinds of personal injury cases and we never charge a fee until we win your case.
Truck Driver Negligence Takes Many Forms
In addition to being prone to the mistakes made by the general population of drivers, truck drivers are much more likely to suffer from fatigue and drowsiness. This is, of course, due to the fact that truck drivers drive for a living: they drive very long distances for long hours and drive under the pressure with few breaks. Not surprisingly, a sizable portion of all truck accidents can be attributed to truck drivers who have had insufficient rest. Combine this with the extraordinary skill involved in maneuvering a big rig and you have a recipe for disaster.
Truck drivers, like all drivers, can be dangerously distracted by eating, drinking, or using electronic devices. They may also be impaired by alcohol or drugs. In spite of the fact that federal law requires truck drivers to hold commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) and to be drug tested before hiring, after accidents, and randomly during each year, a certain percentage of truck drivers do drive while substance-impaired. Ironically, the drugs taken are often stimulants, used to combat drowsiness on long hauls.
Truck drivers, although professionals with well-honed driving and navigational skills, may also commit errors in judgment by speeding, taking curves too quickly, failing to obey traffic laws or signs, tailgating, or changing lanes without signaling.
No matter what the reason, if a truck driver is responsible for you or your family member’s personal injury or death, you can be sure that the truck accident attorneys at Leger Ketchum & Cohoon, PLLC will hold that individual responsible and fight with rugged determination to win you the compensation you deserve for your medical costs, lost income, property damage, and pain and suffering.
Shared Liability
Assuming the truck driver found to be “at-fault” in the accident is an employee of the trucking company rather than an independent contractor, our truck accident attorneys can also sue the company, as well as the driver, for damages on your behalf. This is fortunate because the company will undoubtedly have greater resources to make a claim against.
The trucking company may be held responsible for not training or screening their drivers properly, not allowing them enough time to rest, or not meeting safety standards in maintaining their trucks. There is also a possibility that the shipper who loaded the products onto the truck did so improperly, resulting in too heavy a load or an imbalance that contributed to the accident, in which case the shipper can be sued as well. In a similar vein, if the truck in question has been leased, the leasing company can be held liable for failing to keep its trucks properly maintained.
Hazardous road conditions, due to bad weather, poor road maintenance, or ongoing road construction, may certainly contribute to a truck accident. Nonetheless, truck drivers are trained to adjust to such conditions by traveling more slowly and being constantly aware that their vehicles are much harder to maneuver than smaller vehicles and are held to a higher standard of care than drivers without commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs).
Leger Ketchum & Cohoon, PLLC is fully prepared to investigate any and all causes for your truck accident and to sue all parties bearing some measure of liability for your injuries. We recognize how vulnerable you and your family are after the accident — physically, emotionally, and financially — and are eager to lift your legal burden so that you can concentrate on your recovery.
Types of Truck Accidents
In order to understand the complexities involved in dissecting truck accidents, it is helpful to know the most common types which include:
- Blind Spots — Trucks, especially tractor-trailers, have larger blind spots than cars and often have caution signs to warn drivers to be aware of potential danger. Even so, accidents can and do occur as a result of the truck driver being unaware of the car’s presence.
- Brake Failures — Brake failures, whether they result from a manufacturing defect, poor maintenance, improper installation, or the truck driver’s failure to reduce speed gradually, may result in catastrophic truck accidents.
- Jackknifes — Jackknife accidents are those in which the driver in the front portion of a tractor-trailer loses control of the trailer, resulting in the trailer swinging out at an acute or right angle. Because these trucks are so large, the trailer can stretch across several lanes of traffic, often resulting in collisions with multiple cars.
- Rear-end Collisions — Because of the extreme difference in weight between a commercial truck and a car, when a truck hits a car from behind there is a high level of risk to the occupants of the car who may be gravely injured or even killed.
- Rollovers — Because trucks typically have a higher center of gravity than the cars they share the road with, trucks are more likely to rollover as a result of hitting a slippery patch, taking curves too quickly, swerving suddenly, or being improperly driven up or down steep inclines. The risk of a rollover is, of course, heightened by excessive speed or improper loading.
- Under-rides — Though the image of such an accident may seem cartoon-like, there is nothing funny about an under-ride truck accident. This type of accident occurs when a tractor-trailer stops suddenly and the driver of the car behind it, without time to brake, travels forward, becoming pinned under the rear trailer.
- Wide-turn Accidents — Wide-turn accidents occur when a truck driver underestimates how much space is needed to negotiate a turn, resulting in a collision with a car or guardrail.
Contact Our Truck Accident Attorneys Serving Across Texas and Nationwide
If a truck accident has caused you to suffer a severe or catastrophic injury or put your family through the trauma of losing a loved one, the truck accident attorneys at Leger Ketchum & Cohoon, PLLC are ready and able to assist you in restarting your life. We understand that now, when you are dealing with physical pain, emotional trauma, and financial worries, you have no energy left to file lawsuits and fight courtroom battles. The attorneys at Leger Ketchum & Cohoon, PLLC, however, are well up to the challenge. Whether you are dealing with broken bones or spinal cord injuries, organ damage, traumatic brain injuries, permanent disability, or wrongful death, our job is to see that you are fully compensated for your ongoing difficulties.
Our mission is to come up with a successful strategy for your particular case. We will do this by thoroughly investigating police reports and medical data and by always remembering that winning meaningful damages for you and your family is our first priority. We can be contacted by phone at 832.764.7200, email at info@lkclawfirm.com, or by our online contact form. Because the wheels of justice turn slowly, and because there is a statute of limitations on truck accident claims, the sooner you get in touch with us, the better.