Admit it. You’ve driven while talking or texting on your cell phone.
We’ve all done it. We just can’t help ourselves.
We need to read an email or check social media.
We think it won’t hurt anyone because we’re at a red light but the truth is that sometimes we don’t put the phone down when the light changes.
Just one more email or one more minute talking on the phone.
It’s the same for semi-truck drivers.
The Difference between You and a Semi-Truck Driver
You don’t need a degree in physics to know that big, heavy things that are moving fast take longer to stop than smaller things moving at the same speed. There’s more of them to stop!
A semi-truck filled to capacity weighs as much as 80,000 pounds compared to your tiny 3,000-pound car – you might be able to stop quickly with a small skid if caught by surprise. It’s a different story with a fully loaded truck.
A trucker, waiting to hear about the birth of his daughter, hears the chime of his phone that a message just came in. He knows that he needs to keep his eyes on the road, especially during rush hour traffic, but he’s been on pins and needles all day.
It’s just a quick glance, he reasons. Snagging the phone with his right hand, he opens the display and sees a picture of his beautiful new baby girl. A smile crosses his face when he glances back up. The river of moving cars has turned into a stopped sea of red taillights.
His heart jumps up in his throat – he’s going too fast. There’s no way to stop in time so he swerves to avoid hitting the car in front of him.
The swerve of his semi-truck quickly turns into a jack-knifed vehicle blocking two lanes of traffic on a rush hour freeway.
One driver gets past but the next driver isn’t so lucky. The truck hits them.
The next car can’t react fast enough to avoid the semi-truck accident and barrels into the already stopped vehicles. And on and on.
Semi-truck driver common distractions
Besides the typical distractions of checking phones, semi-truck drivers deal with a broad number of other distractions that can result in an injury accident.
The most common situations involving distracted semi-truck drivers are:
- Poor sleep – Truck drivers have a tough schedule to keep when getting products to the stores and warehouses. Even though there are strict federal guidelines around their sleep behavior, truck drivers have been known to push it to meet deadlines. One minute their eyes are drooping, the next minute they’re veering into your lane.
- Checking directions – Truck drivers have sophisticated systems that help them get from point A to point B but many of them are driving unfamiliar roads. The distraction of looking for a hard to see destination can result in a truck driver failing to see that you’ve stopped your car just ahead of them.
- Impaired driving – All it takes is misreading the label of a cold or allergy medication for a truck driver to end up being impaired on the road.
- The “quick glance” – It’s a quick glance away from the road to papers inside the cab. In that moment you merge into the lane in front of them and they don’t see your car.
Unraveling Your Semi-Truck Accident
Because semi-truck accidents involving a distracted driver are complicated by their very nature, it becomes even more challenging to deal with them when the root cause is a distracted driver.
It requires a lot of investigative work to uncover what caused the semi-truck accident, a process that is complicated by the layers of legal representation shielding the trucking company and their insurance companies.
Fortunately there’s a secret weapon to help you breakthrough the barriers and straight to the facts, the Silkman Law Firm Injury & Accident Lawyer.
We have a lot of experience successfully pursuing semi-truck accident cases.
Gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, and negotiating settlements with trucking and insurance companies takes more than just knowing what to do.
It takes patience, persistence, and an unstoppable commitment to protecting our client’s rights!
When we work with you, we dedicate our team reviewing your case and getting you the compensation you deserve in your semi-truck accident case.
If you or a loved one were involved in a semi-truck accident, we want to help.
Call Silkman Law Firm Injury & Accident Lawyer at 602-535-5899 for a free case review.
