The Seattle Times reported on Friday that an overturned concrete truck caused the 520 bridge to close. It was re-opened later that evening. This was the third commercial vehicle accident in Seattle in two days with two semi-truck rollovers occurring on the I-5 offramp to 405 and an eastbound onramp to I-90 near the stadiums.
For obvious reasons, crashes caused by semi-truck drivers cause some of the worst vehicle-related injuries in Washington. The determination of fault in these truck accidents is more difficult than in a car accident case. The truck driver’s insurance company and investigators will very quickly get to the scene of the crash and will document facts and gather evidence before any injured persons have a chance to get out of the hospital. Then the trucking company will get their lawyers involved very early and will aggressively defend the case.
Claims against a truck driver and the trucking company involve different rules and regulations at the state and federal level, which are in place to ensure safety and hold drivers accountable when they are negligent. This can be complicated by multiple layers of insurance and various insurance carriers.
Trucking accident injury law cases are therefore best that they are handled by an experienced personal injury attorney. Factors that come into play in trucking accidents often are:
- Truck driver training;
- Truck driver fatigue;
- Negligent truck maintenance;
- Negligent hiring/supervision;
- Improperly maintained log books which show that the driver spent less time on the road than he really had;
- Speeding;
- Various layers of insurance coverage and multiple insurance carriers;
- Multiple negligent parties;
- Mechanical failure;
- Inclement conditions and failure to adjust for them;
- Trucks are the largest occupants on the highway;
- Human error;
- Neglect;
- Oversight; and,
- Mechanical failure.
All of these can and do result in serious, preventable, injuries on the roads every single day. GLP Attorneys truck accident injury team has resolved many trucking accident injury cases in our 36 years of representing injured people. If you have been injured in a trucking collision, please contact us today at 1-800-273-5005.