Laurel Underride Truck Accident Lawyer

If you need a Laurel underride truck accident lawyer, the secretary the TV lawyer assigned to your file has never read Section 393.86 covers the bar that was supposed to stop a car going underneath. She does not know what a rear impact guard is. She does not know the federal dimensional and strength requirements that guard was supposed to meet. She does not know how to evaluate whether the guard on the truck that your vehicle slid under on US-84 or US-11 was compliant with federal law at the time of the crash. She does not know that a non-compliant rear impact guard is an independent negligence per se claim against the trucking company that exists whether or not the driver made any driving error. She is going to wait for the trucking company’s adjuster to call with a number, present it to you, and call it her professional advice on your case. An underride crash on US-84 or US-11 in Jones County is one of the most catastrophically injurious events a person can survive. The TV lawyer’s secretary is the least qualified professional you could put on that file. She is also the one who has it right now.

This part is not comfortable reading. The plan specifies advance warning distance, taper length, device spacing and an escape route for the flagger. Each of those numbers comes from a published manual rather than from somebody’s judgment.

A worker struck in a corridor is covered by workers compensation and may also have a claim against whoever struck him, and the two run together with rules about repayment. Coordinating them properly is where a large part of the recovery is kept. Temporary entrances onto a highway are built for the duration of a job and abandoned afterwards, and they rarely have the acceleration room a loaded truck needs. Mud tracked onto the pavement from them is its own hazard.

Modern collection vehicles carry cameras covering the sides and the rear because the industry knows where the risk is. Where those cameras were fitted, the footage exists until the retention period runs out. Streets designed for cars carry delivery vehicles because routing software sends them there. The software’s decisions are recorded, which makes the route a company decision rather than a driver’s.

Laurel Underride Truck Accident Lawyer: Rules The Hauling Company Had To Follow

Section 393.86 governs rear impact guard requirements for trailers and semitrailers. The regulation specifies the horizontal and vertical position of the guard relative to the trailer frame, the ground clearance limits, the lateral extension requirements to protect the full width of the vehicle from underride intrusion, and the minimum strength standards the guard must meet to absorb impact energy and prevent a passenger vehicle from sliding under the trailer. A rear impact guard that does not meet the Section 393.86 dimensional requirements is a guard that will not function as designed in a rear-impact collision. A guard that meets the dimensional requirements but was improperly maintained, bent from a prior collision, or corroded to the point of structural failure is a guard that cannot absorb the impact energy required to stop a passenger vehicle from underriding. Both failures are independent regulatory violations. Both are negligence per se claims against the trucking company regardless of what the driver did or did not do in the seconds before impact.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety publishes fatality statistics and crash data on large truck underride crashes at IIHS large truck underride fatality statistics. The data is unambiguous: underride crashes produce fatality and catastrophic injury rates significantly higher than other commercial vehicle collision types. The reason is physics. A passenger vehicle roof is not designed to resist the underside of a trailer at highway speed. The occupant compartment intrusion that occurs when a vehicle slides under a non-compliant guard is not survivable at the injury severity the collision produces. Nobody at the television office knows the IIHS data exists or how to use it to build a damages case in Jones County Circuit Court.

Some plain talk about the next month. Delivery vehicles stop repeatedly on the traveled portion of rural roads, pulling partly onto a shoulder that may not exist. The stopping is the job rather than an interruption of it.

Short-duration work attracts the least protection because setting up a full closure takes longer than the job. That trade-off is made deliberately, by somebody, and it is the trade-off that produces the collision. A stop sign at a rural crossroads relies entirely on the approach being visible and the driver being alert. Vegetation, crops and buildings shrink the triangle of visibility through the year.

Agricultural equipment moves between fields on public roads at a fraction of highway speed and wider than the lane it occupies. The closing speed between that and a loaded truck is enormous. Animals in a trailer shift constantly, so the load never settles and the handling changes through every corner. The driver feels it and compensates, which is a skill rather than a certainty.

The Secretary Who Is Handling Your Underride Case Has Never Read The Guard Standard

Your name and accident date are what the TV lawyer’s secretary knows, plus approximately nothing about Section 393.86. She is very organized. She is also the only voice you have, up against a trucking company whose defense team has already inspected the rear impact guard, already assessed whether it was compliant with the federal dimensional and strength standards, and already decided how to argue the guard issue at trial if one is ever demanded. Their assessment of the guard’s compliance is in the file right now. Her assessment of the guard’s compliance does not exist because she does not know Section 393.86 sets a standard against which the guard is measured.

The post-crash inspection of the rear impact guard is a time-sensitive investigation. The guard in a post-crash state may not preserve the pre-crash condition accurately. The trucking company’s investigators photographed and measured the guard at the scene. If the guard was non-compliant before the crash, the post-crash damage may make that non-compliance harder to establish from physical evidence alone. The pre-crash maintenance records, prior inspection reports, and any prior collision reports involving that trailer are the documentary evidence of non-compliance. Those records are in the trucking company’s file. The date on the letter is the line every later argument about missing material is measured against. The TV lawyer’s secretary has not sent that demand. She is going to find out what a rear impact guard is when the trucking company’s defense lawyer explains it in the deposition she is not qualified to take.

Some plain talk about the next month. Rotating between day and night work leaves the body clock permanently out of step.

An inaccurate history taken in an emergency department causes trouble for years. Performance is best at a middling level of arousal and worse at either extreme.

A witness who cannot remember can be shown a document to prompt recollection. Where a system behaves differently in different modes, a driver who has lost track of the mode behaves wrongly.

The party taking an expert’s deposition generally pays for the expert’s time in it.

Eggshell Plaintiff And Pre-Existing Conditions In Laurel Underride Cases

Expect the claim that a bone spur on your imaging came first, so the pain must have too. Nothing obliges you to accept a reduction for an old injury. The adjuster is bargaining. Treating physicians distinguish chronic change from acute injury every day, and they say so in the notes. What the person could lift, carry and do is established from the job they held rather than from an image. The questions that would have mattered were never on the sheet.

Mississippi Statutes And The Damages Picture In A Laurel Underride Case

Section 15-1-49 sets the limit for getting a suit on file. Fault here is a sliding scale, and Section 11-7-15 built it. The damages picture in a serious underride crash routinely involves TBI, spinal cord injuries, crush injuries, and wrongful death at a severity level that frequently reaches or exceeds the minimum $750,000 federal coverage requirement. Many carriers carry higher limits. An insurer that reduces for medical history reduces for being human.

The other case types are written up on the Laurel truck accident lawyer hub explains each claim type and the rules that decide it. An underride truck case out of Laurel surfaces inside my Mississippi truck accident lawyer page. Every underride truck claim I open is covered from day one by the Foster Fair Fee Guarantee: you walk away with more money than I receive in fees, in writing, before I touch your file.

If you want the rear impact guard standard and the eggshell doctrine handled by a secretary who has read neither, the TV lawyer is perfect for you. If you want the book first, fill out the form below.

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What People Actually Ask A Laurel Underride Truck Accident Lawyer

P.S. The rear impact guard maintenance records and prior inspection reports on the trailer that your vehicle slid under on US-84 or US-11 are in the trucking company’s file right now. They document whether that guard was compliant with Section 393.86 before the crash. Nobody in the TV lawyer’s office has requested those records. They do not realize these are the central liability document in an underride case. Get the book first. Learn what the rule in Section 393.86 demands and what the maintenance records ought to show, because the adjuster for the trucking company will phone with a number that bets you never looked.

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