San Antonio Truck Accident Attorneys

Truck Accidents in Texas

Trucks crisscross the interstates and surface roads of San Antonio, Bexar County, and the entire state of Texas every single day. Unfortunately, the drivers of many of these trucks and the companies that operate them often fail to conduct important safety checks, perform maintenance, or follow the regulations set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). This negligence can cause serious accidents, where anyone in a smaller vehicle can be catastrophically injured while the truck driver walks away.

If you or a loved one has been in a tractor-trailer, 18-wheeler, or commercial truck accident, you need a San Antonio truck accident attorney with the experience to pursue your truck accident case and the reputation to make the trucking company and its insurance carrier treat you fairly. Count on Maloney Law Group, P.L.L.C.

Give our San Antonio truck accident lawyers a call at (210) 361-2997 or contact us online to get started on your case.

What are the Most Common Causes of Truck Accidents?

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), there were 4,119 fatalities in 2019 that were caused by truck accidents. Specifically, the statistics reflect fatal traffic accidents involving large trucks like semi-trucks, big rigs, tractor-trailers, and 18-wheelers. To say that large trucks are oftentimes a danger on American highways is an understatement.

To start bringing the number of truck accidents down, it will take every driver and trucker knowing more about the causes of truck accidents, so that they can then be avoided or prevented. Among the most common causes of truck accidents are trucker fatigue, distracted driving, insufficient training, defective truck parts, poorly loaded cargo, and commonplace driver mistakes like lingering in a truck’s blind spot.

Truck Driver Exhaustion

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) allows most commercial truck drivers to stay on the road for 11 hours in a 14-hour shift. Truckers who do not leave a 150 air-mile radius from their depot can drive for even longer due to a special exception.

Truck driver exhaustion is believed to be one of the most common causes of truck accidents because of the likelihood of a trucker becoming fatigued towards the end of their shift. Think of the last time you had to drive for five or six hours. You were probably fighting heavy eyelids by the time you reached your destination. Now imagine trying to drive for twice as long and how exhausted you would probably be.

Preventing Exhausted Driving

Trucking companies will play the largest role in preventing exhausted driving. Only they can give truck drivers shorter routes and shifts that allow them to get enough rest between drives. However, until the FMCSA requires such scheduling to become the norm, it is unlikely this will happen. Profits are often placed before people in such situations.

Distracted Driving

Just like any other driver on the road, truck drivers can find themselves distracted by a variety of things. Smartphones are the most likely distraction these days because everyone has one and there are so many different forms of entertainment provided by one. On long trips and stretches of highway, truck drivers might be tempted to busy themselves with their smartphones and falsely think that putting their truck in cruise control is enough to safely drive.

Other forms of truck driver distractions include:

Preventing Distracted Driving

Truck drivers need to hold themselves accountable whenever they are behind the wheel. Engaging in any form of distraction is unacceptable. No matter how long their shift that day, a truck driver needs to pay constant attention to the road around them.

Insufficient Training

Some truck accidents are caused by insufficient training. Novice truck drivers will have greater difficulty controlling their large vehicles than truck drivers with more experience and training. Just understanding the size of a big rig and how much space it occupies while in motion can be a challenge for untrained, inexperienced truckers.

How to Correct Insufficient Training

Trucking companies must only hire truck drivers who have been sufficiently trained and who have commercial driver’s licenses. When they hire someone who needs more training, the trucking company should ensure that training is provided and completed before routes are given to the trucker. When a truck accident can be traced to insufficient training, the liability could be placed on the trucking company, too.

Defective Truck Parts

A truck accident can be likely if any of the following parts become defective:

Brake and tire failures are among the most common types of truck part defects, which is unfortunate because they are also among the most likely to cause a crash. When the brakes fail or a tire bursts, the truck driver could suddenly lose control of their vehicle.

How to Identify & Fix Defective Truck Parts

To prevent dangerous truck defects from causing a crash, truck drivers should regularly inspect their vehicles. The FMCSA has a lenient inspection regulation for truck drivers, though. Parts of a commercial truck only need to be kept in a workable condition. Due to the vagueness of that requirement, truck drivers might inspect their trucks for defects anywhere from once per trip to once per year.

Poorly Loaded Cargo

Did you know that the cargo placed on or in a semi-truck can be the source of a terrible accident? If cargo is not loaded correctly, then it can come loose and fall into the road, striking any driver behind the truck. In other situations, cargo can be loaded top-heavily, which makes the entire trailer prone to tipping over. Jackknife accidents are also more likely when a trailer is overloaded beyond the 80,000-pound federal weight limit as set by the FMCSA.

Preventing Cargo Mishaps

The crews that load cargo onto tractor-trailers have the most important role in preventing cargo-related accidents later. They must always be careful not to put too much freight in a truck or over a particular axle or set of axles. All cargo must be secured to FMCSA regulations and in a way that prevents anything from coming loose in transit. Failing to load cargo correctly can make the loading company – which is often not the same as the trucking company – liable for a truck accident.