Georgia Truck Accident Lawyers Blog

A Delaware truck driver met his death after crashing his tractor-trailer into some trees alongside Interstate 95 about 11 miles inside the Georgia state line. According to authorities 54-year-old Robert Earl Webb may have fallen asleep, but he also had a history of heart disease and there was evidence he may have suffered a heart attack just before Thursday’s crash. Authorities said Webb was alive just after the accident but died at the scene. The tractor trailer truck left the road and traveled 559 feet as it went down a banked roadbed and hit several trees before stopping upright in a water-filled ditch.

Cases like this one raise a lot of questions about tractor-trailer safety. Fortunately no one else was injured or killed as a result of this truck accident. Had it been otherwise, a competent lawyer representing the innocent victim would have been investigating to determine whether the driver was suffering from drivers fatigue or whether he was in adequate physical condition to have been driving a big rig.

Under federal law a tractor trailer driver can only drive a certain number of hours in a certain time period and must maintain an accurate record in the form of a driver’s logbook. In short there are many regulations governing the operation of a truck used in interstate commerce. If you or a family member has been injured in a tractor trailer truck accident you should contact the trial lawyers of Finch McCranie, LLP immediately to protect your legal rights.

As serious injury lawyers we are increasing getting calls from victims of motor vehicle accidents caused by debris on Georgia’s highways and even Interstate highways. It is bad enough to come up on road debris in an automobile but it can easily result in the wrongful death of someone on a motorcycle. In Atlanta, it is not uncommon to see old furniture, ladders and other objects which have fallen off of vehicles.

This week, a Nepali student was killed in a motor vehicle accident in Fairfax County, Virginia. Kritika Singh, 21, who was driving an Isuzu Rodeo, died in the accident while avoiding a mattress laying on the roadway on I-66 highway. According to Virginia State Police, a box truck, which was in front of her vehicle, turned sharply to avoid hitting the mattress. Singh’s vehicle traveling behind the truck, hit the mattress, ran off the road and hit the truck.

A Georgia resident was killed when he tried to avoid a pickup truck bed liner which had blown out of the bed of the truck onto the highway. In that case authorities were able to trace the bed liner to the owner of the truck and criminal charges were lodged against the owners.

It is often difficult to identify the person or entity who was responsible for littering highways with road debris; however, we have on occasion been successful in doing so. If you have been injured as a result of similar accidents, it is imperative to contact a lawyer at Finch McCranie, LLP immediately so that a good and timely investigation can be done.

As Georgia lawyers handling automobile accident and truck accident cases we have litigated many such cases against Georgia municipalities. I recently read about a case where a man and his wife in Columbus, Georgia filed a personal injury lawsuit against the City of Columbus and a former firefighter to recover for injuries sustained after he ran into their vehicle with a city fire truck. The former firefighter who reportedly tested positive for cocaine an hour and 15 minutes after the crash resigned his job shortly after the collision

What is interesting about the case is that under current Georgia law, city and county governments have sovereign immunity which is waived only to the extent of available liability insurance they may have in force. In this case, the City had $100,000.00 in liability coverage and therefore that was the extent to which the plaintiffs could normally recover from them even if a jury had awarded them substantially more. Fortunately for these injured victims the City of Columbus apparently saw fit to pay them an amount over and above the $100,000.00 in liability insurance and settled the case with them for $175,000, but it could have been different.

Georgia’s sovereign immunity law is unfair to victims of automobile and truck accidents which are caused by the negligence of government employees in the performance of their jobs. People should call their state legislators and ask that cities and counties be held accountable like a private person. It is outrageous to think that a person can be injured or killed by a negligent city or county employee and that the victim would be limited in their recovery to whatever insurance may have been purchased by the governmental entity. The state and the counties should be liable for injuries or death just like any other private citizen.

Truck drivers are required by Federal Regulations to limit the amount of hours during which they can drive in one day. This regulation is enacted to attempt to prevent serious injury and death caused by fatigued truck drivers. This is a major problem in the United States. In spite of the dangers posed by fatigued drivers, the trucking industry has been pushing for relaxed standards. Obviously more hours driven equal more money earned. The Bush administration has been all too eager to appease the trucking industry.

On Tuesday, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced its final hours of service rule, and they remain unchanged from the "interim" rule the trucking industry has been working under.

Truck drivers are limited to driving for only 11 hours and working for no more than 14 hours each day. The agency said it consulted with scientific and medical researchers, reviewed existing fatigue research and worked with organizations like the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies and the National Institute for Occupational Safety in setting the final rules. FMCSA Administrator John Hill, claims the final rule is based on an exhaustive scientific review and designed to ensure truck drivers get the necessary rest to perform safe operations and the quality of life they deserve.

The rule will become effective Jan. 19, 2009, the day before the Bush administration leaves office. Hill said he was confident the final rule would stand up to a court challenge because the agency had appropriately addressed all concerns raised by the courts.

The consumer protection group Public Citizen has been fighting the rule in court since it was first announced in 2005. In July 2007, a federal court remanded the Hours of Service rules to FMCSA, ruling that the agency must provide better explanations of its justifications for adopting the 11-hour drive time and 34-hour restart provisions of the rule. In December, FMCSA announced that it was keeping the 11-hour and the 34-hour provisions in an Interim Final Rule. In January, a federal appeals court denied Public Citizen's request to invalidate the Interim Final Rule.

Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook issued a statement denouncing the rule, saying, "FMCSA's rule, which ignores mountains of safety research, authorizes the exact same 11-hours of driving and 34-hour restart provisions of rules past - rules that the court deemed were inadequate. Under the rule, drivers may continue to log a physically and mentally demanding 77 hours behind the wheel in a seven-day period, take a mere 34 hours off, then hit the road to do it all over. In addition, drivers can be required to work 14 hours a day, which includes loading and unloading cargo. The rule also fails to require electronic on-board recorders that are essential to assure effective enforcement of the rule."

Last month there was a meeting in Atlanta of The Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America and The Georgia Trial Lawyers Association. One of our trucking injury attorneys attended that meeting where there was a presentation on Traumatic Brain Injury. Our law firm has handled many cases involving brain injury that resulted from either a tractor trailer truck accident or automobile accident.

Because many brain injuries occur as a result of tractor-trailer accidents and are frequently overlooked, because lawyers are concentrating on the obvious orthopaedic injuries sustained in those accidents, one of the presentations was devoted to educating attorneys on some of the signs and symptoms of brain injury and concussions. It is important to understand that many symptoms following a concussion are not immediately evident and may take days or weeks to become apparent. Accordingly, many times there is a need to have a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment to assess and document the long term consequences of this invisible injury.

Each year over 5,000 men, women and children are killed on America’s highways as a result of a crash with a big truck? Far too often these truck wrecks were caused by the violation of government safety laws which are designed to regulate tractor trailers and other interstate trucks. These regulations govern truck speed, truck safety devices, proper truck maintainece, truck driver training, the number of hours the truck drivers can remain behind the wheel and proper back ground checks by the trucking company on their drivers both before being hired and thereafter on a periodic basis.

The law firm of Finch McCranie, LLP is well versed in these trucking regulations and has experience in representing the victims of interstate truck accidents.

It has been estimated that 13% of all truck collisions in this country occur during bad weather conditions. Obviously, on many days it will rain, sleet, or snow. On certain days, fog conditions are also likely to exist in many parts of the country. Regrettably, as demonstrated by these statistics, when bad weather conditions occur, it is more likely that a serious truck accident will also occur. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations which address this topic should reduce the number of these accidents but regrettably have failed to do so. The reason: The extreme caution guideline provided is routinely ignored.

49 C.F.R. § 392.14 requires that drivers of commercial motor carriers use “extreme caution” in the operation of a truck during hazardous conditions, such as those caused by snow, rain, etc., which could adversely affect visibility or traction. This section also states that “speed shall be reduced when such conditions exist.” While it goes without saying that speed should always be reduced during adverse weather conditions, experience indicates that oftentimes this is not the case. Many state commercial driver’s license manuals, like the State of Georgia, require that speed be reduced by as much as one-third (1/3) during rain or adverse weather conditions and yet the general public knows that this very rarely occurs. What is interesting legally is that this reduced speed is mandated by law but nonetheless, oftentimes, this mandate is tragically ignored.

Obviously, it takes much longer to stop a tractor-trailer in adverse weather conditions. Any truck driver must be able to stop his vehicle on wet conditions in the same distance as he would do so on dry road. Wet roads can double the required stopping distance. By reducing speed on a wet road, stopping distances can be decreased as well.

Because Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations specifically state that extreme caution must be used in the operation of a truck during hazardous weather conditions, experienced counsel are often able to use these regulations to impose liability on those carriers and drivers who disregard their duties to the motoring public. The 13% figure referenced in this article is obviously much greater than it should be. If truckers were always utilizing extreme caution during adverse weather conditions, one would think that the number of accidents occurring during adverse weather conditions would be substantially less than we see. Again, with respect to those unfortunate victims of truck drivers who fail to exercise the appropriate standard of care during adverse weather conditions, it appears that litigation and money damages may be the best deterrent available to reduce these statistics which adversely effect us all.

Georgia injury lawyers who represent victims of spinal cord injury (SCI) see the devasting results of truck accidents, automobile accidents and on-the-job or workers compensation accidents. According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, as many as 450,000 people in the United States are living with a spinal cord injury (SCI). Every year, an estimated 11,000 SCI's occur in the United States. Most of these are caused by trauma to the vertebral column, thereby affecting the spinal cord's ability to send and receive messages from the brain to the body’s systems that control sensory, motor and autonomic function below the level of injury.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), SCI costs the nation an estimated $9.7 billion each year. Pressure/bed sores alone, a common secondary condition among people with SCI, costs an estimate $1.2 billion. While there are advances in emergency care and rehabilitation which allow many SCI patients to survive, methods for reducing the extent of the injury and for restoring function are still limited. Currently there is no cure for SCI. Therefore, prevention of SCI from happening in the first place is key.

In Georgia it seems more and more that there is not enough insurance to take care of people hurt in automobile accidents. As Georgia injury lawyers representing the injured victims of automobile accidents and truck accidents we are acutely aware of the fact that the other driver too often has low or no liability insurance limits. Review your own coverages. Two critical coverages are Medical Payments Coverage and Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist (UM) Coverage. Medical payments covers you and your passengers for your medical expenses regardless of who caused the accident. It is very inexpensive coverage compared to any other health insurance. Uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM) coverage acts the same as if the other driver had liability insurance and pays you for all of the damages you would be entitled to recover from the other driver up to the limits of the coverage. It also is much cheaper than the cost of your liability coverage and can be purchased in the same limits as your liability insurance. Georgia requires that this coverage be provided if you buy liability coverage unless you waive it in writing. Many times agents don’t mention that you can buy additional coverage. Take a look at your automobile insurance policy and call your insurance agent to review your coverage.