Easton Truck Accident Lawyer
All car accidents have the potential to cause serious injuries that will affect the parties involved for years to come. Certain types of collisions, however, are known for being particularly devastating. Crashes between passenger-sized vehicles and commercial trucks, for instance, are notorious for causing catastrophic and often fatal injuries. Unfortunately, trucking companies are often unwilling to accept responsibility for these kinds of accidents, even when they, or their drivers, were at fault for the collision. In these cases, having an experienced Easton truck accident lawyer on your side can make all the difference when attempting to obtain compensation.
Why Truck Accidents are So Dangerous
According to the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA), at least 4,014 people died in large truck crashes in 2020 and thousands more were injured. Nearly 70 percent of those deaths were occupants of cars and other passenger vehicles, 16 percent were pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, and only 15 percent were truck occupants. Alarmingly, these numbers represented a 28 percent increase from ten years prior. As these statistics reveal, the occupants of smaller vehicles are simply more vulnerable to injury in the event of a collision with a commercial truck, which often weigh as much as 20 or 30 times as much as passenger cars.
Commercial vehicles are also much taller than passenger cars, with greater ground clearance, meaning that they are both more prone to rollovers (and blocking multiple lanes of traffic) and that smaller cars can even become lodged underneath the trucks themselves. Truck braking capability is also a factor in truck accidents. For instance, loaded tractor-trailers require between 20 and 40 percent more distance than passenger cars to come to a complete stop. The discrepancy is even greater on wet roads or with poorly maintained brakes.
Truck Accidents Cause Catastrophic Injuries
The injuries sustained in collisions between commercial vehicles and passenger cars are almost always serious, often reaching the level of catastrophic. Common injuries include:
- Lacerations and amputations;
- Crushed and broken bones;
- Head trauma;
- Spinal cord injuries;
- Organ damage and internal bleeding; and
- Burns
Treating these injuries can be prohibitively expensive, a problem further compounded by the fact that injured parties often require ongoing treatment and therapies for the rest of their lives. This is only one of the reasons why it is so important for injured truck accident victims to seek compensation from the parties who caused the crash. This could include a variety of parties, like the truck’s driver, or another third party driver, the trucking company that employed the driver, a vehicle parts manufacturer, or even a government agency.
Contact Our Experienced Easton Truck Accident Lawyer
The injuries suffered by truck accident victims are almost always severe and come with a very real risk of permanent disability and even death. Injured parties should not have to bear the burden of paying for treatment and rehabilitation on your own. For legal help, contact the experienced Easton truck accident lawyer at O’Donnell Law Offices by calling 570-821-5717 today.
