What Happens When a Truck Driver Has a Fatal Car Accident?

Crashes between large trucks and passenger cars are often fatal. A commercial truck can weigh over 25,000 pounds and tow a fully loaded trailer weighing 55,000 pounds. In distinction, a passenger car usually weighs between 4,000 and 6,000 pounds. In a collision, that enormous size and weight disparity often translate into catastrophic injuries to occupants of smaller cars.

According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), around 5,000 individuals yearly die in large truck crashes. Most are motorists or passengers in cars, SUVs, and light (pickup) trucks. Just as problematic, most of those casualties result from errors and negligence on the part of truck drivers or unsafe conditions within the truck driver or their employer’s control. Many do not seek compensation and miss out on receiving what is owed to them. Hiring a truck accident attorney can help with the process.

Commercial trucks, such as tractor-trailers (or load trucks), tanker trucks, and dump trucks, haul hefty loads and weigh much more than other vehicles. Due to the length and weight, intense damage can transpire during truck crashes, including enduring injuries, extreme property damage, and even death.

Companies can terminate truck drivers for an accident, but an accident doesn’t ensure that a trucking company will do so. Whether or not a trucking company terminates a driver for a crash depends on the damages, any injuries, and who caused the accident.

Why Truck Drivers Lose Their Jobs After an Accident

A truck driver should lose their job after an accident when they caused significant damage.

You can hold the business that owns the vehicle and uses the driver liable for the driver’s actions. A truck driver contracting with the truck owner should lose their contract after a significant accident they caused.

If this doesn’t happen, or another trucking company hires the driver, you may have a strong negligence claim against the company that puts a dangerous driver on the road.

Typical Truck Accidents

Truck accidents vary from car accidents. Since tractor-trailers and other big trucks run into additional problems on the highway, many types of truck accidents can happen, including:

• Underride truck accidents, when a car rolls underneath a tractor-trailer
• Jackknife truck accidents, when a cab and tractor-trailer tuck into a 90-degree angle, which can include multiple cars
• Side-impact truck accidents, which often happen at stoplights and other intersections
• Cargo accidents happen when cargo drops out of a trailer and causes an accident with one or more cars
• Head-on truck collisions
• Rear-end truck accidents
• Multi-vehicle truck accidents
• Rollover truck accidents
• Defective tires

These different types of truck accidents can create a wide range of results. Occasionally, these accidents can clump together during one excruciating accident, such as a rollover truck accident that causes a cargo accident involving multiple cars. The more intense the accident, the more likely the trucking company will fire the driver.

Common Truck Accident Injuries

Injuries from a truck accident will help resolve whether or not a driver will lose their job after the accident. Truck accident injuries can be more intense than car accident injuries since trucks often weigh tens of thousands of pounds.

Some of the most common truck accident injuries include but are not limited to:

• Traumatic brain injuries
• Internal bleeding
• Whiplash
• Concussions
• Head, neck, chest, shoulder, rib, and knee injuries
• Emotional stress/psychological injuries

Seeing a physician fast is essential if you’ve suffered an injury in a truck accident. In circumstances of broken bones or painful injuries, seek medical attention instantly. In some circumstances, truck accident injuries can be “hidden” and may not manifest immediately, so see a medical provider if you have any symptoms at all after a truck accident.

Sufficient documentation and evidence are extremely important to your case to recover costs due to injuries from a truck accident. This can include treatment programs, equipment acquisitions, appointment details, bills, etc.

Recovering Damages From a Truck Accident

Damages from a truck accident will play a considerable part in whether or not the driver will be removed or terminated after the accident. If you’ve been involved in a truck accident and need to recover substantial damages, you may need to pursue a lawsuit to get the settlement you deserve.

A lawsuit is the best way to recover all of the damages you deserve in cases with extreme injuries, significant damages, and long-term results.

Typical damages that victims seek after a truck accident include:

• Medical costs
• Lost wages and future wages
• Car and property damages
• Pain and suffering and other non-economic damages
• Wrongful death

How Deadly Truck-on-Car Collisions Occur

Most deadly crashes between commercial trucks and passenger cars are preventable, and they occur because someone made a mistake or a risky choice that led to disaster. In many crashes, that someone is the truck driver or a person responsible for the truck’s safety and condition.

Some standard causes of fatal truck-on-car casualties are attributable to the truck driver or the truck’s condition.

Speeding and Driving Too Fast for Road Conditions

Trucks need more space than other vehicles to operate and stop safely. As a truck’s speed increases, so do the chances of the truck driver losing control and causing a deadly crash. For instance, a truck that overreaches the speed limit or travels too fast for highway conditions cannot slow in time to avoid rear-ending a car stopped up ahead. Dangerous speeds also boost the chance of a truck rolling while navigating an abrupt curve, like a highway on/off-ramp.

In addition, the more elevated the speed of a truck, the more dangerous it’s crash with another vehicle. A passenger car will usually sustain disastrous damage in a crash with a fast-moving big rig, with fatal results for the smaller car’s occupants.

Truck Driver Fatigue

Unsafe levels of driver fatigue plague the trucking industry. Truckers routinely take the wheel of semi-trucks on inadequate rest, and they regularly convey feeling tired while driving, according to FMCSA research.

Exhaustion degrades driving ability the same way drinking alcohol delays reaction times, harms judgment and decision-making, meddles with the perception of speed and distance, and deteriorates motor control. A fatigued truck driver runs a heightened risk of causing a fatal crash with a car, SUV, or light truck.

Federal and state regulations set limitations on the number of hours truck drivers can spend on duty daily and over a week. Still, even truckers who observe those rules can toil to stay awake.

Multiple elements contribute to unsafe truck driver fatigue. Long-haul truck driving can be a grueling profession, at once stressful and tiresome. Drivers are continuously scrutinized, receive somewhat low pay, encounter continued pressure to remain on schedule, and often have no option but to drive in inadequate conditions or late into the night.

As a group, truckers are also older and worse in health than the U.S. working population. These characteristics make exhaustion a significant challenge for truck drivers and a significant hazard for causing deadly crashes between trucks and passenger automobiles.

Truck Driver Inexperience

In recent years, demand for trucking services has increased dramatically, driven by online shoppers who expect products delivered to their doorsteps. But with its aging workforce, the trucking industry has struggled to recruit and maintain enough drivers to keep pace. Turnover of the trucking workforce is exceptionally high.

Some trucking operators reduce their hiring criteria for new drivers to keep trucks moving. Others have cut back on the time they spend on driver training. And a few have cut corners and sent drivers out on the highway without the required credentials.

It’s a perilous state of affairs. An uneducated truck driver stands a more heightened chance of causing an accident than a seasoned one. A driver who lacks on-road experience is more likely to lose track of a vehicle in their truck’s blind spot, enter a strong curve too fast, or misjudge the distance the truck needs to slow down for a traffic jam.

In other words, the more under-qualified or unqualified truckers the industry sends out on the highways, the more it puts the public in danger of fatal truck-on-car crashes that take blameless lives.

Aging Infrastructure and Inadequate Truck Maintenance

The aging, sometimes crumbling, interstate highway system also represents a severe risk factor for fatal truck accidents. As the grade of road surface decays, it takes an increasingly weighty toll on the condition of trucks and trailers. Trucking businesses must keep their trucks in good working order, but some put off essential restorations and maintenance to meet increased demand.

As a result, many trucks and trailers take to U.S. highways in an unsatisfactory condition, with tires, brakes, and other critical components in disrepair and at risk of failure. Blown tires, defective braking systems, or malfunctioning hydraulics can readily lead to a loss of control and a deadly crash with a passenger car.

Who’s At Fault for a Fatal Car Accident Involving a Large Truck?

One of an experienced truck accident lawyer’s most crucial jobs is determining who should face legal and economic responsibility for a deadly crash. It’s not always a clear question. Truck accidents can have numerous intertwined causes and may feature multiple parties with crossing privileges and interests. Separating them needs talent, industry understanding, and a dedication to seeing justice done for the families of dead impact victims.

One or more people or entities can have legal liability for contributing to the cause of a deadly car-on-truck accident.

In any given case, they may include:

• Truck drivers who make reckless, harmful mistakes behind the wheel that lead to fatal crashes;
• Employers of those truck drivers, both because regulations often hold the employer responsible for the wrongful actions of their employees and because employers may themselves contribute to the cause of a deadly crash by failing to employ, train, or manage their drivers responsibly;
• Truck owners/operators if they fail to preserve trucks in secure working order or create unsafe working conditions for drivers that lead to a collision;
• Cargo owners/loaders, if their dangerous practices in connection with shipping or loading cargo play a part in causing a catastrophic accident, such as when inadequately secured cargo makes a truck dangerously unsafe;
• Truck and truck part manufacturers, if their defective products make a truck dangerous to operate and cause a catastrophic accident;
• Local and state governments, if they fail to take appropriate steps to keep roads safe for truck transit or if they fail to stop truckers or other motorists from traversing unreasonably treacherous roads.

To determine which of these or other parties may have legal liability for a catastrophic truck-on-car crash, lawyers for crash victims’ families often work closely with forensic and trucking industry experts to reconstruct an accident and identify its root causes.

Often, they can discover contributing elements that may not have appeared evident at first but which, if established, can extend the options victims’ families have for seeking justice and compensation.

Wrongful Death Actions for Fatal Truck-on-Car Accidents

In every state, a deadly truck accident victim’s surviving spouses and family members can seek financial compensation for their tragic loss. The legal action they can seek is known as a wrongful death lawsuit.

Of course, money cannot substitute a life tragically cut short when a truck collides with a passenger automobile. But significant financial compensation can help a spouse and family rebuild after that loss, and it can give them the power to see some form of justice done. Wrongful death actions can also be a strong force for bringing about change in the trucking industry by pushing trucking companies and industry stakeholders to bear the expenses of their negligence and wrongdoing.

Depending upon where a deadly truck accident occurs, the parties at fault may owe compensation to pay for:

• Medical costs incurred in treating the crash victim before death from crash-related injuries;
• Other costs incurred by the spouse, family, or victim’s estate as a result of the crash and resulting death, such as funeral and burial expenses or costs of replacing damaged or wrecked vehicles;
• Loss of the deceased victim’s income, if the victim was a wage-earner who supported dependents such as a spouse or children;
• The loss of companionship and society endured by the family members of the deceased truck-on-car accident victim

How a Truck Accident Attorney Can Help

In the wake of a deadly truck accident involving a passenger vehicle, grieving spouses and family members may not prioritize calling an attorney. But a professional truck accident injury attorney can offer valuable guidance, counsel, and assistance during this challenging time. And in many cases, having a lawyer on your side is essential to safeguarding your family’s rights and interests.

Schedule A Free Consultation