Due to their weight and size, trucks can cause collisions that are often catastrophic and result in severe injuries that can significantly impact your daily life and livelihood. While truck accidents can happen in various ways, they are often the result of someone else’s negligence. If you were hurt in a truck accident caused by the carelessness or recklessness of another, you may be entitled to recover your economic and non-economic damages by pursuing a personal injury action.
Common Truck Accidents
A wide variety of reasons can cause truck accidents. For example, when drivers are distracted, fatigued, or not trained properly, they can lose control of their vehicle and cause harm to others on the road. Truck accidents can also be caused by poor maintenance, defective machinery, and hazardous roadway conditions. In addition, cargo that is loaded improperly can shift, causing the truck to become imbalanced — which can create dangerous conditions for others on the road.
Some common types of truck accidents can include the following:
- Truck rollovers — Rollovers are among the most fatal types of truck accidents that can occur. They are commonly caused by driver error, excessive speeding, poorly maintained brakes, misjudging the sharpness of a turn, swerving too quickly, and driver fatigue.
- Rear-end collisions — Rear-end collisions involving trucks can occur when a driver is operating the truck under the influence, is distracted, or speeding. They can also happen due to mechanical failure or defective brakes.
- Jackknife accidents — Jackknifing occurs when the trailer of a big rig pushes the front towing vehicle to one side or so that it faces backward, creating a pocket knife shape.
- Sideswipes — A sideswipe accident involving a truck can happen when the side of a vehicle strikes another in the adjacent lane. This can be caused by an improper merge or lane change, aggressive driving, fatigue, alcohol use, and various other circumstances.
- Wide turn accidents — Wide turn accidents may occur when a driver does not execute a turn safely. These types of collisions can arise when a driver fails to use turn signals, enters a turn lane too quickly, or doesn’t use their mirror properly. They can also be caused by defective turn signals, lack of experience, or unfamiliarity with the route.
- Head-on collisions — Also referred to as frontal impact collisions, head-on collisions can be caused by a driver going the wrong way or swerving into oncoming traffic. These types of crashes can be the result of things like drowsy driving, inattentive driving, inadequate lighting, poor road conditions, and other factors.
Truck accidents can result in a number of serious injuries, including spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injury, nerve damage, concussions, fractures, internal bleeding, soft tissue injuries, debilitation, and lifelong disability. These types of injuries often involve extensive medical treatment, time lost from work, and a considerable amount of pain and suffering. If another party’s negligence caused your damages, you may be entitled to compensation by filing a lawsuit.
Compensation for Truck Accidents
The injuries that can be caused by a truck accident are often serious, debilitating, or even fatal. To recover compensation for a truck accident in a personal injury action, you must be able to show that another party’s negligence caused you to suffer harm. This involves establishing that someone else (such as a truck driver, trucking company, cargo company, or manufacturer) breached the duty of care they owed to you, causing you to sustain injuries.
If your personal injury lawsuit is successful, you may be entitled to recover the economic and non-economic damages you suffered. Economic damages are meant to compensate for the financial losses you incurred in connection with the truck accident, including your unreimbursed medical bills, lost wages, and out-of-pocket costs. Non-economic damages are the intangible losses that are much more difficult to quantify — this category of damages is meant to provide compensation for the physical pain, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life you suffered as a result of your injuries.
In limited cases where another party’s actions were particularly egregious, punitive damages may be warranted. The purpose of punitive damages is to punish the wrongdoer and deter others from engaging in similar conduct. For instance, punitive damages may be awarded in cases where a truck driver’s intoxication by drugs or alcohol caused the accident. There is no cap on punitive damages in New York.
Contact an Experienced New York Personal Injury Attorney
If you suffered an injury in a truck accident, it is crucial to pursue compensation for your losses. A knowledgeable personal injury attorney can fight to recover the damages to which you’re entitled and work to hold the negligent party accountable. The Dearie Law Firm, P.C. has represented victims of negligence for three decades and strives to secure the best possible outcomes in each of their unique cases.
The Dearie Law Firm, P.C. has convenient office locations in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, as well as mobile locations serving Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, Westchester County, Rockland County, Nassau County, and Suffolk County. Contact us today for a consultation.