Orange County Personal Injury Lawyer - Tractor-Trailer Accidents

Modesto Truck Driver Killed in Truck Accident

Chrissie Cole — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:01:21 GMT

A man was killed in a truck accident, on Thursday, when he became pinned between a tomato trailer and his truck, according to authorities.

The man, 51, of Ceres, was an independent contractor who had been hauling tomatoes for Antonini Expressfor the past two seasons, according to the owner.

Firefighters responded to the scene at about 7:35 a.m. and found him wedged between the cab of the tractor and the frame of the truck.

He was likely trapped for about a half-hour before someone noticed and called for help, Patino said. He owned the truck that pinned him and was either picking up or drop- ping off trailers in the yard when the accident occurred, Patino said.

"It appears he got out of the cab and failed to set the brake, or something happened mechanically to cause the truck to roll back and trap him between the tractor and the trailer," Patino said.

He was pronounced dead at the scene. A Cal-OSHA spokeswoman said they will not investigate the accident due to the truck driver being a self employed contractor. Cal-OSHA has jurisdiction only when there is an employee-employer relationship.

For more information on this topic, please visit our section on Truck Accidents.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Chrissie Cole

Truck Hauling Rotten Meat Crashes and Overturns

Chrissie Cole — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:30:56 GMT

A trucking accident on a California highway turned into one big stinky mess on Monday night. A dump truck transporting several tons of expired meat overturned before bursting into flames, sparking a brush fire.

When the truck and ten-ton load of rotten meat overturned, it caused the trailer to split open and the load was strewn all over the highway.

200 firefighters were on the scene to contain the fire resulting from the accident, which quickly spread, charring over forty acres.

The truck driver was transported to the hospital. No further details are available at this time.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Chrissie Cole

Fatal Parked Truck Accident In Irvine On 405 Freeway

IB Contributor — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 17:48:37 GMT

Driver of a parked truck and his employer may be liable for traffic death.

A truck accident on the San Diego Freeway last Wednesday took one life and injured another. The driver of a 1990 Ford Econoline died when his van veered off the southbound 405 Freeway in Irvine, the morning of June 29 and collided with a truck, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The Times reported that the unidentified van driver drifted off the right shoulder of the freeway near Culver Drive and struck a parked, stake-bed truck which was carrying electrical equipment. The driver of the parked truck, William Cortez, 24, of Santa Ana, was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana with mild to moderate injuries.

The driver of the parked truck could be liable for millions in dollars in damages, depending upon the facts. The Times report stated that the truck was not blocking traffic.

If the truck was parked illegally in a vehicle recovery zone, their is a substantial chance that the truck driver could be charged criminally and civilly for the death of the van driver. Even though the van driver hit a parked truck, if the van driver would not have died if the truck had not been illegally parked, the truck driver would be civilly liable for the van driver's death.

If the truck driver is on the job, moving electrical equipment for his employer, then his employer will likely be economically responsible for the death of the van driver as well. In many situations, an employer is legally responsible for the acts of his/her employees. If the van driver was a wage earner with a family, his heirs could be entitled to millions of dollars in damages.

If the truck was legally parked and not otherwise an unreasonable danger, than it is unlikely that there would be any liability on the part of the truck's driver or his employer. Again, it will depend upon the facts. The driver of the van could certainly be responsible for the truck driver's injuries. If the truck driver was on the job at the time of the accident, the truck driver will be entitled to workers' compensation benefits as well as his rights against the van driver.

The parked truck accident scenario is more common than you may think. We have handled a number of them. Some have been on freeways and highways and others have been on surface streets. We have been successful in recovery money for our clients in everyone of them.

Presently we are representing the wife and children of a man killed when his vehicle struck an illegally parked big rig. Based upon our investigation and our experts reconstruction of the accident, it is clear, but for the illegally parked big rig, the deceased vehicle driver would have continue to skid out until it came to a stop. There would have been no collision and no death.

Generally, we are able to quickly determine who is fault in an accident by conducting an immediate professional investigation and having the accident reconstructed by our experts.

For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Car and Motorcycle Accidents.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by IB Contributor

Fatigue factor in trucking accidents

IB Contributor — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:30:31 GMT

5000 people are killed in truck-related accidents every year.

When that chartered bus, carrying the baseball team from Ohio's Bluffton University, went over a Georgia highway overpass recently, 6 baseball players on that bus died, and 29 were injured, but Danny Lloyd escaped-even though the chartered bus hit his truck. At 57, Danny Lloyd, a retired, disabled, Vietnam veteran has experienced a lot in life. "I've had just about everything they could throw at me, thrown at me. But, it's the first time a bus jumped off the interstate at me", Lloyd said.

Lloyd had been in Ohio to visit his 26 year-old son, and because he liked to drive at night, he left Cincinnati about midnight, and ten miles outside of Atlanta he stopped to gas up his truck. Lloyd was traveling on Interstate 75 when, after emerging from under the overpass, he saw something dropping from the sky. Initially, Lloyd said he thought he saw some concrete falling, likely from a decaying bridge.....that was until part of the chartered bus hit his roof and windshield, then hitting and tearing off his front bumper.

Lloyd thinks it just wasn't his day to die, and after two tours in Nam he should know. Philosophizing, Lloyd said, "It all makes a vicious circle. You gotta be born, and you gotta die sometime."

Truck and bus drivers often suffer from not only a lack of sleep, but demanding schedules, which force them to continue to drive when it is unsafe to do so. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), after performing a new analysis of data for the proposed hours of service rule, found that fatigue directly contributes to about 15 percent of all fatal trucking accidents.

While investigators are still pouring over the evidence in this bus accident, it is believed that the driver was fairly fresh and it seems at this time that he either didn't notice or was confused by what he thought was only an HOV lane, which is especially strange because players indicated that this driver had carried the players to tournament in the past-taking the same route. Both the driver and his wife were killed in the crash, when the chartered bus drove into, and over the overpass, landing below in the traffic lanes.

The Truck Safety Coalition indicates that over 5000 people are killed in truck-related accidents every year, and that fatigue has been, and continues to be a major factor in these fatalities .

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by IB Contributor

101 Freeway truck accident

IB Contributor — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:42:43 GMT

It was 4:30AM and a big rig was nearing the Coldwater Canyon Exit when a vehicle hit the big rig, causing it to crash into the center divider on Freeway 101, which resulted in lanes being closed in both directions. The truck driver was taken to the hospital, and the driver of the vehicle was cited for suspicion of driving under the influence said, Leland Tang, a spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol in West Hills.

It is not unusual for truck drivers to drive their long hauls at night, hoping to avoid traffic. Unfortunately, the person driving their vehicle at 4:30 in the morning, and sharing the road with the big rig, was drunk.

And, while trucks are often cited as causing accidents for a variety of reasons, truck drivers also have complaints about the vehicles with which they share our roadways and highways. Drivers who become annoyed at being behind a truck often pass the truck with insufficient room to pass, causing truck drivers to hit their brakes to avoid a rear-end collision with the car, according to The American Trucking Association. Drivers who pass without sufficient room can cause trucks to be in an untenable position. According to Phillip Gould, a certified truck driver, who has no chargeable accidents against his 2 million driving miles, "If you can't see the driver's face in the mirror, he can't see you," he said. "Seventy-five percent of fatal accidents involving large trucks are initiated by passenger drivers. Thirty-five percent of those are in blind spots."

Highway/Freeway 101 is known as one of California's most dangerous roads any time of the day. Formed in 1926, this approximately 1540 mile stretch, which begins in Los Angeles, and ends at the Oregon border, consists of a combination of road, highway, and breathtaking scenery that can at times be deceptive and very dangerous. Known as the Pacific Coast Highway in California, and affectionately known as PCH by many locals, this route has claimed many lives over the years.

Regardless of what highway you drive, and regardless of what time of day you decide to drive-you owe it to the rest of us to DRIVE RESTED and DRIVE SOBER!

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by IB Contributor

101 Freeway Closed Due to Big Rig Accident

IB Contributor — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 23:01:11 GMT

At fault driver arrested for DUI.

A passenger vehicle vs. a big rig accident early this morning prompted a temporary closure of the 101 Freeway near the Coldwater Canyon Avenue exit near Studio City. The tractor trailer was left straddling traffic lanes in both directions and caused long delays throughout the morning commute until late morning according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.

The truck driver apparently sustained minor injuries and was taken to a local hospital. The passenger vehicle's driver was charged with suspicion of driving under the influence and was cited by police for causing the accident, according to Leland Tang, a spokesman for the California Highway patrol in West Hills.

The anti-drinking driver technologies discussed in my previous blog article could have prevented this accident and about ten hours of freeway tie up.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by IB Contributor

Tougher Trucking Laws

IB Contributor — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:51:06 GMT

Last week, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed a rule that truck and bus companies with a history of hours-of-service violations may be required to install electronic on-board recorders for at least two years.

Such a violation essentially means that these trucking companies have been caught working their drivers beyond the maximum number of hours, putting the rest of us in the extreme danger of being involved in a traffic accident with a big rig, caused by their exhausted, sleepy truck drivers. Wy aren't they simply getting their licenses pulled. That would stop the violations.

Several consumer advocacy groups are calling this so-called new rule proposal "weak." Many say that it was the government agency's knee-jerk reaction after being criticized by a federal court for failing to consider mandating electronic devices to monitor the trucking companies.

Joan Claybrook, a former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, now President of advocacy group, Public Citizen had this to say: "FMCSA has squandered a real opportunity to protect the public. We know that many more companies violate those rules because their drivers keep fake log books, but they are not detected. Under the FMCSA rule, these scofflaws can continue to violate the law without consequences and put the public at risk."

Claybrook maintains that the recorders are most effective in detecting such violations and must be made mandatory in an across-the-board standard that treats all companies equally.

I absolutely agree that this new rule does nothing to enhance public safety. We have represented numerous clients who have been victims or reckless or negligent truck drivers. In the United States, truck accidents take place every 16 minutes, many times resulting in serious physical injuries and fatalities to the people involved.

If your truck accident injuries were the result of recklessness or negligence on the part of the rig driver, you have the right to hold the driver and his or her employer, liable for your injuries.

There is a special vengeance that comes over me when I am pursuing a trucking company who has been intentionally pushing their drivers to driver longer than what is safe and/or the law allows. They have victimized my client and they point the blame on their driver. Seeking punitive damages is my response to the grossly negligent trucking companies.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by IB Contributor

Family Files Truck Accident Lawsuit

Staff Writer — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 07:34:44 GMT

The family of a woman killed in a truck accident last year has filed a lawsuit against the truck driver, the owner of the truck's cab, the owner of the trailer and the trucking company for whom the driver worked. Corrine Bartels was killed when the semi she was driving collided with another tractor-trailer driven by Steven Helinski who was going the wrong way and was trying to make a U-Turn to correct the problem.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Staff Writer