Trucking Accidents

Our firm handles personal injury and wrongful death claims arising out of collisions with tractor trailers.  If you or a loved one have been injured as a result of a collision with a tractor-trailer, it is important to contact an attorney experienced in this area as soon as possible as it is critical that an investigation is initiated immediately after a collision.  Evidence may be lost or destroyed following a collision and there is a limited amount of time that trucking companies must maintain many records related to their drivers, including evidence regarding driver hours, miles were driven and violations.

The federal government regulates the trucking industry by enacting and enforcing the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.  These regulations govern all aspects of the trucking industry from pre-employment screening, inspections, safety plans, driver hours, reporting requirements and maintaining drivers’ logs.  These regulations also provide a framework for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to determine a carrier’s safety rating.  The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations were recently updated in 2010 to improve the reporting requirement for carrier regarding safety concerns involving commercial motor carriers.  This new system, called the Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA) replaces the SafeStat system the government had utilized for years to collect information on motor carriers.  The new system evaluates the carrier in seven areas that the government has determined are critical to crash prevention and uses a motor carrier’s data from roadside inspections, including all safety-based violations and state-reported crashes to identify high-risk motor carriers.