If you or someone you love has been injured in a truck accident, it’s time to explore your legal options. The team at Reeves & Mestayer can guide you through this process and advocate for you every step of the way. Get started now by calling us at 228-374-5151.
How We Can Help
While you should have an attorney after any type of personal injury, it is especially important to seek legal assistance when you have been hurt in a truck accident. Since a fully loaded tractor-trailer is often more than 15 times heavier than a car or van, serious or fatal injuries are very likely.
On top of that, there are many parties involved in a truck accident. When you’re involved in a crash with a car, van, or SUV, all of your communication will go through the other party’s insurance company. It’s not quite that simple in a truck accident. You may have to fight for compensation from:
- The insurance company that covers the trucker’s commercial driving
- The employer’s insurance provider
- The owner of the truck
- The owner of the load being carried
- The cargo company that loaded the truck
As you can imagine, this can be stressful and time-consuming. No one wants to take full responsibility for an accident, especially one that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Each insurance company will be more than happy to point you to someone else who mightbe liable, without actually doing anything to help you get the compensation you need to pay your medical bills and meet your financial obligations.
The truck driver and their employer have a legal team defending them and protecting their best interests in an accident. If you do not have the same, you could end up with a paltry settlement that doesn’t even cover your medical bills—or worse, no settlement at all.
Our team knows how destructive a truck accident can be, leaving behind financial and physical devastation. We fight aggressively on behalf of every single client to ensure that they have a fair chance against the insurance companies.
Common Types of Truck Accidents
The odd shape and size of tractor-trailer trucks lends them to specific types of collisions. Some of the most common types of truck accidents in Pascagoula include:
- Blind spot collisions. Trucks have extremely large blind spots, and when cars sit in those blind spots for a long time, crashes are likely. These are often sideswipe accidents, which can cause enormous amounts of damage to cars, vans, and SUVs. To avoid these, it’s important to move out of a truck’s blind spot as quickly as possible.
- Head-on crashes. Head-on crashes tend to occur when vehicles cross the median and a truck is unable to stop in time. These collisions are often fatal.
- Rear-end crashes. While a rear-end crash involving two passenger vehicles might only cause minor damage, it often leads to severe or fatal injuries when a truck is involved. A truck rear-ending a car can completely crush the car and its occupants.
- Jackknife collisions. When a truck driver has to brake unexpectedly, the trailer may swing out to the side of them. This pulls the tractor and causes the driver to lose control of the vehicle. This may cause a multi-car crash or shut down an entire highway.
- Underride crashes. Underride crashes are often severe or fatal. They happen when a driver behind a truck does not stop in time and their vehicle gets stuck under the back of the truck.
Truck Accident Evidence
There are some types of evidence in truck crashes that are not available in other types of collisions. On top of photographs, video footage, witness testimony, and other types of evidence used in vehicle crashes, your attorney will use these options to strengthen their case.
- Black box. A truck’s black box maintains an enormous amount of information that is useful in an accident. It might identify the truck’s traveling speed, how long it was driven without a break, how long it was stopped, whether the driver was braking or speeding erratically, and if the car was drifting.
- Inspection reports. Trucking companies may occasionally skip inspections or falsify reports if they are backed up and want to get a truck on the road as quickly as possible. These reports can help attorneys determine whether the trucking company or repair facility is to blame.
- Trucking log. A trucking log is used to document mileage, breaks, the length of breaks, and other important data. This is useful if the trucker was driving in violation of federal laws regulating breaks and mileage limits.
- Tracking devices. Many new tractor-trailers have other types of devices that track their behavior, such as their location, speed, the slope they’re driving at, and other data.
Fighting for the Compensation You Deserve
You shouldn’t expect the liable party to pay up without a fight. Their goal is to pay you as little as possible while getting you to waive your right to sue them in the future. Your attorney knows just how expensive truck accidents can be, and they will fight to make sure you aren’t ignored or mistreated by the insurance company.
After a truck accident, you may be entitled to compensation for your medical bills, time away from work, any disabling or disfiguring injuries you have, your pain and suffering, and property damage. Choose an attorney you can trust to assess your accident, determine the value of your damages, and go up against the insurance companies.
Find Out How Reeves & Mestayer Can Help You At Reeves & Mestayer, we are committed to helping injured victims get the compensation they deserve from careless drivers and their insurance providers. To take the first step in your Pascagoula truck accident claim, call us at 228-374-5151 or contact our team online
