Truck crash lawsuit attorneys at Pritzker Hageman, P.A., support a new Minnesota Safety Council campaign calling for everyone in our society to change how we talk about traffic crashes — specifically, not using the word “accident’’ to describe them. Already in 2017 on Minnesota roads, 25 crash deaths were recorded through February 2, including fatal truck accidents, according to the Minnesota Office of Traffic Safety.
Truck crash lawyers Fred Pritzker and Eric Hageman are all too familiar with the struggles of crash victims, having represented them in case after case where truckers have been negligent in the operation of semi-trucks, 18-wheelers, tractor trailers and big rigs that outweigh passenger cars, pickup trucks and motorcycles by 20 or 30 times.
The Minnesota Department of Public Safety has long stopped using the word “accident’’ to describe the collisions and wrecks that cause mayhem in the lives of Minnesota families and families everywhere. That’s because accidents are only inconvenient and annoying, the Safety Council said this month in a written statement. Whereas, “crashes are heartbreaking, painful, expensive, sometimes deadly, and preventable.’’
“Truck accident,’’ for instance, suggests a random, unavoidable sequence of events. When in reality, truck accidents that cause injury or death are preventable, predictable and almost inevitable if the operator is not practicing good traffic safety. That’s the message the Minnesota Safety Council is driving home, especially through employers as the agency assists them in spreading the word. Wrongful death truck lawsuits, for instance, should no longer use the word “accident” to describe what happened when someone was run over by an out-of-control tractor trailer.
As the Minnesota Safety Council notes, a staggering 40 percent of lost work hours are due to traffic crashes. Together, including truck crash deaths, they cost employers nationwide $47 billion annually. The message to trucking companies and all other motorists is that even when weather and road conditions are challenging, drivers can control what they do and how they prepare and react for the person who cuts you off or the driver who slows down in front of you. Commercial truck drivers can choose for themselves whether to be distracted, or impaired or speeding or driving too fast for conditions. When a semi-truck rear-ends a passenger car, or causes his rig to jackknife or when the truck turns into a car in another lane, it’s not an “accident.’’ It’s a crash. It was preventable. They didn’t react accordingly or pay attention.
In support of this campaign, we have started going through the 2000+ pages of our website to change “accident” to “crash” or “collision”. We have been using “accident” because that is generally the term used in the law.
Contact our law firm about a lawsuit against a trucking company. We are listed in the current U.S. News & World Report list of “Best Law Firms.” We help people throughout the United States get justice and recover damages and our attorneys go into great detail in their investigations to win cases:
- Spoliation Letters: Correspondence to the trucking firm requesting that the company preserve evidence related to the accident. It’s important for this to happen soon after the crash.
- Police Reports: Our attorneys scour police reports and Highway Patrol reports of the crash and they often find errors or omissions or improper conclusions based on the facts. Checking reports also means doing background checks on the truck driver and the driver’s accident history, chemical abuse history, criminal history and regulatory licensing.
- Eyewitness Interviews: Witnesses need to tell the story before memories fade.
- Accident Reconstruction: We have relationships with the best forensic engineers in the business, and we have the resources to hire them. We are not paid unless you win your lawsuit against the trucking company and truck driver. In past cases where our attorneys have won settlements of more than $1 million, computer animation has been used by our law firm to clearly show that the crash was no accident.
- Examine Crash Vehicles: All vehicles involved in the crash should be inspected for dents, scrapes, other evidence of the impact and defective parts (brakes, steering, tires, etc.). We always do this with our accident reconstruction experts to determine direction, speed, evasive action, angle of impact, force of impact, etc.
- Compliance Check: Semi-trucks and commercial truck drivers are governed by state and federal safety laws, including truck maintenance protocols and log book entries. Often we have found that truck drivers who crash into cars, pedestrians, motorcycles or other trucks were exceeding federal limits on hours spent behind the wheels. All of these facts are salient to your case.