Rear-ended by a tractor-trailer while driving eastbound on Interstate 20 in Aiken County, South Carolina, a woman was sent to the hospital along with four passengers in her Toyota Corolla. The South Carolina Highway Patrol told local media that the semi-truck driver who crashed into the woman’s car from behind was cited for driving too fast for conditions. The driver of the big rig was a 39-year-old.
WRDW-TV reported that at least two of the injured car occupants suffered serious injuries. The crash happened Saturday, March 4, 2017 near mile marker 21 on Interstate 20. Highway Patrol Trooper Judd Jones told reporters that the injured woman was behind the wheel of her Toyota car, merging from the emergency lane back onto the highway when the tractor-trailer hit her from behind. The injured occupants of the car were taken to Augusta University Medical Center.
Driving too fast for conditions means a driver does not have enough command and control of their own vehicle to avoid a crash. The law states that no person shall drive a vehicle on a highway at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the conditions. It’s a basic rule of the road: speed must be controlled as necessary to avoid colliding with any person or vehicle.
According to highway safety engineers, driving too fast for conditions is one of the most prevalent factors contributing to traffic crashes. Speed is a factor in nearly one-third of all fatal crashes. It’s especially dangerous when the speeding vehicle is a loaded semi-truck or big rig that outweighs passenger cars by a factor of 20 or 30 times.
Who can I sue when rear-ended by a semi?
Many drivers do not view speeding as an immediate risk to their personal safety or the safety of others. Yet, speeding reduces a driver’s ability to steer safely around curves or objects in the roadway, and it extends the distance required to stop a vehicle in emergency situations. The probability of death, disfigurement or debilitating injury grows with higher speed at impact. Speed-related crashes cost society more than $40 billion a year, including truck rear end lawsuits.
Semi-truck accident lawyers Fred Pritzker and Eric Hageman have studied the human consequences of commercial trucking crashes on U.S. highways. Most people do not realize that collisions involving automobiles and trucks occur in daylight on straight and dry pavement under good weather conditions more often than at night and in inclement weather. Trucks are larger and heavier than passenger vehicles, and in four out of five fatal collisions it is the driver of the passenger vehicle, not the truck, who is killed or badly injured. This goes for other occupants in the passenger vehicle, as well. Your lawsuit can target the truck driver, his trucking company, owners of the freight and related insurance companies.
If Fred and Eric agree to take your case, their commitment to you is to investigate every aspect of the accident, including close reviews of the truck driver, the trucking company and the company tied to whatever freight was being hauled. Our lawyers are intensely familiar with federal motor carrier safety laws that govern driver rest, driver training, driver logbooks, truck maintenance, tire safety, illegal truck weights and other regulations. Another focus of these investigations is to determine not only the extent of injuries to each injured person, but to what extent and for how long the injuries will interfere with the person’s work life, their medical expenses, along with their pursuit of happiness as defined before the crash. Most truck accident clients at our law firm are interested in holding any and all parties responsible for liabilities of the crash, especially in instances when the guilty parties are trying to shift the burden of the accident onto the victims.
For a free case consultation with our lawyers, call our office to speak in person to an attorney. The office number is 1-888-377-8900.