Jacksonville Truck Accident Injury Lawyers
Truck Accident Injuries
Imagine 80,000 pounds of metal, 18-feet long, heading toward you at 70 miles per hour with no indication of slowing down. What happens next can be devastating.
Every year, more than 5,000 people are killed and approximately 100,000 are injured when passenger vehicles collide with large trucks, tractor-trailers, 18-wheelers, and big rigs.
A disproportionate number of accidents result when trucks are involved. While three percent of vehicles on the road are large trucks, they are involved in approximately nine percent of fatal crashes. This translates to about 100 people a week killed in large truck collisions.
People who have been involved in crashes with large trucks say the agency that oversees safety, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, has "failed miserably" in assuring safety for Americans.
Consider the following examples from the Truck Safety Coalition:
- A collision with a Winn-Dixie tractor trailer in 2004 killed the son of Jane Mathis of St. Augustine. Her son, David, and his new wife, Mary Kathryn, were on Interstate 95 near the Kennedy Space Center. The truck driver fell asleep at the wheel and rear-ended their car as the couple drove home from their five day honeymoon.
- Jennifer Tierney's father was killed on a rural road in North Carolina when he came upon a tractor trailer that had been trying to back into a field when it jackknifed. The truck had no lights and her father had no opportunity to stop upon coming around a curve in the road. He went under the truck and died of massive head injuries about 20 minutes later.
- Daphne Izer co-founded Parents Against Tired Truckers (P.A.T.T.) in 1994 after a fatigued truck driver killed her 17-year-old son Jeff and his three close friends.
- Dawn King's father, William Badger, was killed on December 23, 2004 when a tractor trailer driver fell asleep behind the wheel and collided with his car. She joined Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH) and is a participant in the Truck Safety Coalition.
There are many stories like the ones you just read. Innocent people behind the wheel of a vehicle lose their lives in a split second when they collide with large trucks.
Our condolences go out to the families involved in these tragic accidents. It is the loved ones of those who have been lost that have done the most work through non-profit truck safety advocacy groups to try and keep our roads safer and prevent this sort of tragedy from happening to anyone else.
In 2008, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that 11,674 lives were lost in speeding-related crashes.
Nearly one-quarter of all large-truck drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2008 had at least one prior speeding conviction, as did 18 percent of passenger car drivers.
263 people lost their lives in 2008 in Florida collisions alone involving large trucks, a number that has been in decline since 2004.
When a fully loaded tractor-trailer weighing in at over 80,000 pounds, collides with an automobile weighing about 3,000 pounds, 98 percent of the fatalities occur to people in the passenger vehicles.
For those who survive these accidents, the end results are catastrophic.
The most difficult injury to recover from is a head injury that can rob an individual of their personality, their memory, their cognitive abilities, and their motor skills. A traumatic brain injury, if survived, can render an individual disabled for the rest of their life.
Other serious truck accident injuries include spinal cord injury, paralysis, burn injuries causing disfigurement and scarring, amputations, and much more.
After a traumatic injury, many people find a lifetime of care is not covered under their insurance policy.
In these cases, an experienced Florida truck accident attorney can help you pursue a settlement for fair and just compensation. Farah and Farah has been helping people injured in large truck accidents for more than 25 years and we know that it takes aggressive teamwork to investigate the accident and hold negligent parties responsible. We have the legal resources and knowledge to thoroughly investigate and reconstruct your accident. If you or someone you know has been injured or killed in an accident involving a large truck, call our offices at 1-800-533-3555 for a consultation with one of our skilled Florida truck accident injury attorneys.
The truth is that a lot police departments do not have the expertise to conduct a thorough investigation of an accident involving a large truck. The immediate investigation must be launched to preserve evidence and begin reconstructing the accident.
If you or someone you know has been injured or killed in an accident involving a large truck, call our offices at 1-800-533-3555 for a consultation with one of our skilled attorneys.