trucking accident

State Had No Duty to Enforce Vehicle Size Restrictions on Narrow Road, Court Rules

May 22, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

The Kentucky Supreme Court recently considered whether a state government has a responsibility to enforce vehicle weight restrictions on portions of its highway. The question arose in a case that resulted in the death of a school bus driver whose bus collided with a tractor-trailer on a narrow non-designated portion of the highway.

The most recent data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reveals the number large truck and buses involved in fatal crashes increased by 8 percent between 2014 and 2015. The 4,311 large vehicles involved in collisions in that latter year represents a 20 percent increase since 2009. During that same time frame (2009 to 2015), the number of injury crashes involving large trucks and buses spiked by 62 percent.

Of the approximately 415,000 police-reported crashes involving large trucks in 2015, there were nearly 3,600 (or 1 percent) that proved fatal and another 83,000 (or 20 percent) that resulted in injury. About 60 percent of all fatal crashes involving large trucks happened on rural roads (like the one that is the center of the Kentucky case) and 25 percent occurred on interstate highways. Continue reading ›

NHTSA: Florida Truck Accident Number Highest in Nation

March 21, 2017 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

Large truck accidents in Florida are on the rise, mirroring a national trend. The impact is out-sized here, though, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports the Sunshine State has one of the highest number of truck crashes in the country.

The latest report from the federal agency covers 2015 data. What researchers found was that 4,067 people were killed in crashes involving large trucks that year, marking a 4 percent increase from 2014. Additionally, there were 116,000 people injured in crashes involving large trucks, which was also an uptick of 4 percent.

The vast majority of those killed in large truck crashes were occupants of other vehicles. That didn’t include the number of pedestrians and bicyclists struck. Continue reading ›

Trucking Accident Lawsuit Targets Effectiveness of Underride Guards

May 14, 2016 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

One of the greatest dangers in a Fort Myers trucking accident is the risk of a smaller vehicle ending up underneath a large commercial trailer. So serious was this problem that in 1998, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) implemented a requirement that vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or more and manufactured after 1998 must be equipped with underride guards. These steel features are supposed to prevent other vehicles from ending up underneath a large truck, which is associated with catastrophic injuries.

The underride guard requirement only pertains to certain trucks and even then, only to the rear. The issue still affects a significant number of cases. For example, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that all the advances in modern vehicle technology are not effective if a vehicle ends up under a truck. The way most underride guards are designed, a passenger vehicle that rear-ends a semi-truck at an angle can still end up under the truck.

In 2011, of the more than 2,200 passenger vehicle occupant deaths in large truck accidents nationally, 260 died when the front of their vehicle struck the rear of a truck. It’s not clear exactly how many of those instances involved underride, but a 2011 study by IIHS found that of 115 fatal truck crashes, about half indicated severe or catastrophic underride damage. Continue reading ›

Moreno v. TLSL – Trucking Accident Lawsuit

April 13, 2016 | Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner

Eyewitness testimony – whether in a criminal or civil trial – must be weighed carefully by all involved. On one hand, the word of someone who witnesses an event firsthand is powerful in a courtroom. On the other hand, it can be notoriously inaccurate.

Last year, researchers published an article in the journal Memory that analyzed the capability of adult and child witnesses to accurately recollect events from the past and provide reliable testimony. They concluded there were gaps in what the science of memory says about reliability and how such testimony is used in trial. It’s not that firsthand accounts aren’t valuable, but they need to be properly weighed and, if necessary, challenged.

It was the fallibility of an eyewitness account that resulted in summary judgment in favor of the defense in a trucking accident case before the Mississippi Supreme Court recently. In Moreno v. TLSL, Inc., the only one independent witness who saw the trucking accident that killed two people and seriously injured a third. Unfortunately, key elements of her recollection proved unreliable, and ultimately sunk the case. Continue reading ›