Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

As part of our continuing series on what a Georgia 18 wheeler accident lawyer does, today we will look at a video reconstruction of the consequences when a passenger car going 65 strikes a tractor trailer going 35 in the rear. The driver of the passenger car claimed that the tractor trailer truck simply came into his lane. The video is interesting but the point is that this crash seemed like the truck driver's fault until the collision reconstructionist measured the skid marks. laser sited the gouge mark in the road, measured the crush damage to the vehicles and compared the crush damage to historical data on similar vehicles.

The damage to the front left of the passenger car was not consistent with a side impact and when the impact velocity was finally known, the math was fed into a computer and this simulation was created to show the jury exactly how the car ended up the way it did.

Continue reading "Georgia 18 Wheeler Accident Lawyer Demonstrates Value of Crash Reconstruction" »

We recently got a call from a client who had been hit from behind by a tractor trailer after midnight on the highway. His truck was knocked into a ditch and he sustained multiple fractures that required surgery. That would seem like an open and shut case right? Wrong, and that is where an experienced Georgia tractor trailer accident lawyer can make a world of difference.

Continue reading "Tractor Trailer Accident in Georgia Illustrates How Police Officers Can Get it Wrong" »

As a Georgia trucking attorney, I receive telephone calls from across the country from families that have been the victims of tractor trailer crashes and the most common request is for information on how the crash happened. In cases involving high speed collisions, the wreckage can be inscrutable to the common eye and the family's grief is compounded by their inability to understand how the crash could have occurred. Below is an image of some of the data that can be downloaded from the ECM unit.

I recently updated the Georgia tractor trailer crash page to include more specific information about what kind of information can be downloaded from the ECM (electronic control module) Commonly known as a "black box", these electronic components help law enforcement and private attorneys to accurately reconstruct how fatal trucking collisions occur.

The amount of information available after an Atlanta trucking crash varies with year make and model. As an Atlanta injury attorney, I want you to have the most information possible so that when you interview counsel you go in as an educated consumer. The best lawyers in Atlanta will all tell you that an educated, well prepare client is the best client.

Copyright © 2009 by Christopher M. Simon, All Rights Reserved

As an Atlanta trucking lawyer, I am often faced with complex insurance coverage scenarios and today we will be discussing the difference between trucking and non-trucking coverage. In the industry, especially among smaller carriers, after dropping off a trailer, a driver will often have to head back to the depot without a trailer attached or he may use the bobtail tractor as personal transportation when not under dispatch. In the industry this is known as "bobtailing." The situation can arise in a Georgia tractor trailer collision where the victim is struck by a tractor trailer running bobtail and in many situations a coverage fight can ensue.

If a truck accident in Georgia occurs because a bobtail truck strikes another vehicle, the trucking company will first want to analyze whose coverage is primary; the trucking or the non-trucking coverage. This is an important issue because in many cases the personality of the insurance company and the amounts of insurance coverage can differ. It is critical to resolve the coverage issue before the litigation goes too far because otherwise the insurance carriers will use the legal uncertainty as their reason for not paying full value on the case.

Continue reading "Georgia Truck Accident Attorneys Must Examine Coverage Issues When Bobtail Tractors are Involved" »

Like many of you in the past, I got called for jury duty in Fulton County today and even though I am an Atlanta Injury Lawyer, and wrote this is large bold Allcaps on the form, I still got to hang around until 6 p.m. waiting to be cut by the lawyers trying the case. No one puts a trial lawyer on a jury and I wish they would have done it this morning. However, some jurors wanted to know what to expect in the selection process for a trial so I thought I would put a few thoughts down for you so that your day is more enjoyable.

Continue reading "Fulton County Jury Duty Can be an all Day Affair even for an Atlanta Injury Lawyer" »

A Floyd County Georgia woman was killed on I-75 in a collision with a tractor trailer while she was trying to change her tire. According to this article by Kim Sloan, Help Sought in Fatal Accident" the Serious Collision Reconstruction Team of the Georgia State Patrol is looking for eyewitnesses to the incident.
Courtney Adcock, of Shannon, Georgia near Rome, Georgia was struck and killed by a passing tractor trailer in Whitfield County while helping a friend with a disabled vehicle on the highway at at night. The SCRT unit investigates all fatal accidents on state roads and they do an excellent job of examining the evidence to determine if the trucker was at fault for the collision. In this one, it sounds like they have not made a determination of blame yet and that is the reason for the search for eyewitnesses.

When I was defending tractor trailer companies, fully 30% of the fatal incidents I looked into had to do with disabled vehicles on the side of the road. Although it may seem obvious, many people with blown tires and other mechanical troubles chose to work on their vehicles or stay in their cars with tractor trailers whizzing by at 70 miles per hour and that is a terrible risk to run. The physics of an impact over 45 miles per hour are often fatal as passenger vehicles and SUVs are unable to absorb that kind of energy, especially when the mass moving at those speeds or above is close to the 80,000lb weight of many tractor trailers.

My plea to my readers is this; if something goes wrong with your car, do not stay with it on the side of the interstate. Gather your family and move as far off the roadway as possible and then call for help. The risks of staying next to a lane of travel are astronomical and please don't even think of trying to change a tire on the interstate. Risking your life to save a $50.00 tire change fee with a wrecker service is a bad way to save money. As a tractor trailer injury attorney I would rather go broke for lack of clients than see another senselessly wasted life. These accidents can be avoided with a little common sense.

As a Georgia trucking injury lawyer, I was saddened another pointless loss of life caused by a Georgia tractor trailer crash. Here, the family was struck when the tractor trailer crashed into them after cresting a hill. This article details the sad outcome of this Bainbridge Georgia collision on Friday. In the unattributed article in the local paper, it states that the trucker crested a hill on a rural highway and plowed into several vehicles, also striking a grandmother standing on the side of the road to walk her grandchildren home.

What infuriates me about this is how preventable this collision was. Georgia tractor trailer drivers operate on these roads on a daily basis and know exactly what time of day school buses pass through the area. They should know better than to come flying over a hill top. That area frequently has slow moving farm equipment, not to mention school buses. We can only hope that the trucker has his license revoked and the injured heal up. Atlanta trucking lawyers that deal with trucking cases can only shake their heads in knowing sadness because we see the same inattention leading to tragedy again and again.

The regulations on the number of hours a commercial truck driver can drive have been changed twice over the last 5 years but unfortunately Georgia drivers are continuing to die and suffer catastrophic injuries as a result of tractor trailer driver fatigue. The most recent study from 2005 shows that nationally 5,212 died as a result of tractor trailer collisions. When the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration revised the rules drastically in December 2003, they sold it to the public as a safety improvement but in reality it allows truckers to driver for 11 hours straight before having to take 10 hours off! I don't know about you but I cannot maintain my focus driving for even 7 hours before I have to take an entire day off and here the government is authorizing 11 hours.

To make matters worse, the government continues to play with their numbers and in December 2007, the FMCSA released a statement saying that despite the increase in hours since 2003, deaths per mile were down. The problem with that claim is the fact that they started counting the miles driven by passenger buses, which don't make long hauls like truckers do. This had the effect of diluting the fatality numbers and making them look better.

Continue reading "Georgia Drivers still Dying as a Result of Trucker Fatigue" »

It is stunning how often Georgia tractor trailer drivers fall asleep or pass out due to medical conditions while driving heavy commercial vehicles on Georgia roads. In a shocking AP story out this past week, the service revealed that hundreds of thousands of drivers with commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) also are qualified as medically disabled. As an Athens injury lawyer and a former trucking defense lawyer, one of the things that I am acutely aware of is the fact that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations include a requirement that the employer require a strict annual checkup that is supposed to screen out drivers that have dangerous health conditions like severe high blood pressure, diabetes and epilepsy.

The problem is that enforcement is lax. According the article the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has not completed any of the Congressional recommendations made in 2001 to enhance enforcement. Unfortunately Georgia was listed as one of 12 states that are responsible for more than half of the violations.

The end result of this is that there are unhealthy truckers and bus drivers operating 80,000 pound vehicles on our roads. When dealing with an injury or death case, be sure to consult with an Atlanta trucking injury lawyer before discussing the situation with the insurance company for the trucking company.

A DOT worker was killed in Augusta Georgia this week when a 200 pound tire flew off of a tractor trailer and struck the man. What concerns me is that the news service calls this a "freak accident" and yet it clearly is not. The only way wheels come off is if the lug nuts are not secured or the axle is horribly out of balance. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations require detailed pre-trip inspections and there are also regular maintenance requirements that should have spotted this. The sections of the Regulations pertaining to the duty to maintain and inspect the vehicle are very strict and this problem would have been spotted in a thorough pre-trip inspection. In short, this did not have to happen. DOT workers have a very dangerous job and it saddens me to see that the investigating officers appear to have shrugged this death off as a pure accident.

In the article "Flying tire kills man in freak accident in Augusta" by reporter Navideh Forghani, he desribes poignantly how the man was spray painting a line up until the second he was struck, leaving behind a timeline leading up to his death.

I am incensed at some of the blog posts after the article that focus solely on the immigration status of the decesed. Ask yourself this question...If the wheel came off and struck a four year old little girl in her family car, how would you feel about it? Is there a difference and why?

If you have any questions about injuries sustained due to the negligence of a trucking company, feel free to contact me as I represented trucking companies as an insurance defense lawyer for five years prior to becoming a trucking injury lawyer representing the injured victims.