Certainly, it starts with the driver. Also, the company itself is going to assume some liability for any truck accident damages. What a lot of companies do is call their drivers independent contractors rather than employees in an attempt to distance themselves from liability. However, in the trucking industry, that is sometimes a relatively simple workaround. If the trucking company itself has any control over the driver in terms of dispatching, then we are able to work around that, but the company itself is responsible for training. Each company has its own policy, separate and distinct from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.
Our Rock Hill truck accident attorney will want to see if any of their own policies are possibly breached. We are going to look to the driver, and we are going to look to the trucking company. If the load wasn’t secured properly, then we could look at whoever put the load on the trailer. Oftentimes we have a tractor pulling a trailer that is owned by another company, and it’s a particular reckless due to poor maintenance on the trailer. But generally speaking, when you are looking at the driver as an employee, they are an agent of the company. Failure to properly maintain vehicles is the cause of several accidents as well.
Independent Contractors in Rock Hill Truck Accidents
It certainly adds one more challenge to your claim, but typically, the trucking company is going to have quite a bit of control even over their “independent contractor.” If that’s the case, then they are not going to be able to simply say that it’s an independent contractor and then can be absolved of any liability.
For a free legal consultation with a commercial truck accidents lawyer serving Rock Hill, call 1-803-366-0333
Commercial v.s. Passenger Crashes
There are several ways that truck accidents are different than car accidents, and the damages can be horrible. Oftentimes there is a multi-vehicle wreck that involves more catastrophic injury or a fatality. We are talking about wrecks that are going to be governed by the motor carrier rules. So there is an additional very thick blanket of rules that are going to be in place that is just not in consideration in a car vs. car wreck. Those are two ways; and because of this, there is a lot more information we need.
In order to get that information, oftentimes it means that we are not able to simply send a demand and resolve a case. It means that we have to follow up right away in order to begin the discovery process to collect the evidence and information that we need. There is a laundry list of things that we would have to request from the trucking company right away in order to determine what went wrong and where, including how the truck was operated and maintained, how the driver was trained, the driver’s records, the trucking company’s safety records, and the trucking company’s own policies and procedures.
These are all things that we would need right away in order to properly assess liability and properly identify all of the parties involved. That’s the information we can’t just glean from the accident report, so it’s important in every tractor trailer or commercial vehicle case to move forward extremely aggressively in order to collect that evidence while it exists. In other words, time is not necessarily on our side in these cases, so we have to move very fast.
Rock Hill Commercial Truck Accident Lawyer Near Me 1-803-366-0333
Retain a Rock Hill Commercial Truck Accident Attorney for Help
Any time that you are dealing with catastrophic injuries and are on the plaintiff’s side, you are dealing with individuals or families whose lives have just been forever devastated due to a simple error, negligence or recklessness. When you have that, it certainly raises the stakes, and personally, it makes it so that you really want to fight hard for somebody. What it means for the case itself is that we have to move forward very quickly and aggressively in order to get everything we need.
For more information on liability in a truck wreck and how it may differ from a car accident, a free initial consultation with our Rock Hill truck accident lawyers is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (803) 366-0333 today.
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