Liability When a Truck Driver Is Injured and Not at Fault

 Posted on February 24, 2022 in Workplace Injury

You may often hear about careless truck drivers who injure careful drivers of smaller vehicles. It may even seem like when there is an accident involving a truck, the truck driver is at-fault 100% of the time. This simply is not true. Truck drivers can get hurt in accidents they did not cause, just like every other driver on the road. Even in truck verses car accidents, the truck driver is not always to blame. Truck drivers sometimes find themselves facing lawsuits after a crash, even when a more detailed investigation would reveal that they did nothing wrong - and the other driver did.

If you are a truck driver and you were injured in your line of work during a crash, you may want to speak to an attorney of your own. A qualified lawyer can take a closer look into your accident and identify your options for pursuing financial compensation.

Who Might Actually be Liable When a Truck Driver is Injured?

Truck drivers can sometimes be automatically and unfairly blamed for any accident they are involved in. Workers’ compensation may be difficult to get if you, like many other drivers, are considered an independent contractor. There are ways to correct this situation, but it will take a skilled attorney’s help. The party who is actually responsible could be:

• A truck manufacturer - Car crashes sometimes occur because a defective part abruptly failed. This can happen with commercial trucks too. When designing and building a big rig, there is very little room for error. Even a slight defect can be deadly. If you got in a crash because your tire blew out suddenly, your brakes failed, your truck accelerated uncontrollably, or some other mechanical issue occurred, you could have a case against the company that designed or manufactured your truck.
• Your company - Trucking companies should put safety first and foremost. These companies have a duty to use appropriate care to keep both their drivers and everyone who encounters their trucks safe. It could be that your employer failed to conduct appropriate maintenance on their fleet, or that they neglected their duty in some other way.
• Another driver - It is somewhat rare - but probably not as rare as you think - for the driver of a smaller personal vehicle to cause a truck accident. Maybe they cut you off and gave you zero chance to stop in time. Maybe they forced you to run off the road to avoid a collision. Quite a few drivers fail to respect the space truckers need to navigate the streets safely.

If you get hurt in an accident in the course of your work, you do have options for recovering compensation. You will likely need an experienced attorney to help investigate the accident and identify the liable party or parties.

Call a Larimer County Truck Driver’s Injury Lawyer

Hoggatt Law Office, P.C. is experienced at helping injured truck drivers receive workers’ compensation or otherwise recover damages from a liable party. If you are a truck driver and were hurt in an accident that was not your fault, reach out to our Ft. Collins truck driver’s injury attorneys. Call 970-225-2190 to arrange a free consultation.

Source:

https://www.osha.gov/trucking-industry/vehicle-maintenance