Atlanta, Georgia Truck Accident Injury Attorneys

Atlanta is at the junction of several Interstate highways feeding the entire Southeastern United States. These goods are transported by large trucks, often guided by well trained truck drivers. With Atlanta being the meeting point of many interstate highways such as rt. 285, rt. 20, rt. 75, and rt. 85, millions of dollars tons of goods flow through Atlanta every day.

Downtown Atlanta is particularly hectic, with trucks trying to reach State Farm Arena, Mercedes Benz Stadium, Georgia State University, and Underground Atlanta just within a few thousand feet of each other.

On occasion, however, these trucks put other Atlanta drivers at risk. At the law offices of Bailey, Javins, & Carter L.C., our lawyers know that a truck accident can change your life. If you have suffered serious injuries in a truck accident in Atlanta, or if you have lost a loved one in a truck accident, our lawyers can represent you in your claim for damages. Call us today to learn how we can help.

Drowsy Driving and Truck Accidents

Truck drivers are often under tremendous pressure to deliver material and goods to their destinations on a tight schedule. This might prompt a truck operator to forgo sleep, drive recklessly, and even take stimulants to stay awake on the road.

According to FMCSA rules, a tractor-trailer operator can drive up to 11 hours in a single 14-hour period. In a seven-day period, truckers can drive up to 60 hours or increase this to 70 hours in an eight-day period. Even within the rules, this is a lot of driving hours. Unfortunately, many truck drivers will break these rules for the sake of their jobs. And, when they do, the results can be catastrophic.

Truck Accidents Caused by Distracted Driving

There are three main ways that truckers can be distracted while driving:

• Cognitive: The mind becomes engaged in whatever the distraction is, so the things that are happening on the road are no longer at the top of their minds.

• Visual: The distraction captures the driver’s attention and their eyes become fixated on it rather than watching the road. Billboards have been known to have this effect on motorists, for example.

• Manual: A distraction causes the driver to take one or both hands off of the wheel to deal with whatever has drawn their attention away from the road.

While many truck driver distractions use one or two of these three faculties, texting while driving uses all three. And this is why this type of distraction is so dangerous.

Speeding is Another Problem in the Trucking Industry

Although there are numerous statistics people can point to that show that the risk of crashes vastly increases when motorists exceed the speed limits and that speeding-related accidents are more deadly, this data does not seem to be having much of an impact on the driving behavior of over-the-road truckers. Speeding has always been a problem in the trucking industry, and it does not appear that this issue will go away anytime soon.

One of the main sources of this problem is that truckers have an inherent incentive to break the speed limit. For many years, far too many trucking companies have made a regular practice of putting unrealistic deadlines on their drivers, which often leaves drivers with a choice between speeding and staying out on the road longer than they should in violation of federal hours-of-service regulations.

Truck Accident Injuries: Expensive and Devastating

Truck accident injuries aren’t just incredibly painful and scary, but also expensive and emotionally and physically devastating, too. To be sure, a person who is involved in a truck accident will face costs for:

• Hospital transportation (ambulance, helicopter);
• Hospital stay;
• Surgeries;
• Medications;
• Treatment and therapy;
• Doctors’ visits;
• Anesthesia; and
• More.

This is in addition to any property damage costs the victim incurs. What’s more, because truck accident injuries are usually very serious, it is very unlikely that the victim will be able to return to work anytime soon. This means that in addition to the financial burdens listed above, the individual will also suffer the financial strain of lost wages. And that’s not all – truck accident injuries are disabling. This means that the individual may not only be unable to do the things they love, like golf or jogging or playing with their kids, but they may not even be mobile at all. Sometimes, disabilities are permanent. Serious disabilities can give way to psychological disorders, like depression.

Things You Should Do Immediately After a Trucking Accident

The first step is to take a deep breath and gather your thoughts. Once you have done that, there are several other important steps that you should take:

Call 911

With any trucking accident that involves injuries, the first call should be to 911 to bring an ambulance to the scene. Be sure to tell the 911 dispatcher approximately how many people are involved in the accident, so they know how many ambulances to send.

Document Everything

Depending on the extent of your injuries, do what you can to obtain documentation of the accident for your own records. Take multiple photographs of the accident scene showing the various angles of the crash, the debris it produced, and the property damage the accident caused.

Obtain Witness Testimony & Contact Info

If there are any individuals nearby who saw what happened, be sure to ask for their eyewitness testimony and contact information. In many cases, a witness will allow you to record their testimony using the voice recorder or video camera on your cell phone. If this is an option, be sure to get their testimony while you are still at the scene.

Be Careful What You Say

As you exchange information with others involved in the accident and speak with the police, be courteous, but also be cautious about what you say regarding the crash. Any type of admission could be used against you later on during a subsequent legal claim. Leave the determination of liability for the experts to sort out.

Along these same lines, you should refrain from discussing your accident on social media or in any other type of electronic format that could be used against you later on. Insurance companies expend a lot of resources fighting truck accident claims, and they have been known to hire investigators to uncover the social media profiles of claimants.

Seek Medical Care ASAP

You should seek medical treatment as soon as possible after the crash, even if you do not feel like you were injured. The adrenaline rush people feel at the scene of an accident sometimes masks their injuries and they do not start to feel symptoms until later on. Always get checked out by a medical professional just to be on the safe side. Ideally, you should be checked out right away by the EMTs at the site of the crash after the ambulance arrives. But either way, make sure to go in and see a medical professional within a day or two after the accident so that any injuries you may have suffered can be diagnosed immediately and your doctor can implement a treatment/recovery plan.

Contact an Experienced Truck Accident Law Firm

After you have received medical attention, your next call should be to a reputable personal injury firm. Truck accident claims are far more complicated than standard auto accidents, and for this reason, you should work with attorneys who have extensive experience with these types of cases and the proven ability to recover maximum compensation for their clients.

Who Pays for Truck Accident Injuries?

If you’ve been in a truck accident and have been seriously injured, you may be looking at tens of thousands–or even hundreds of thousands–of dollars’ worth of economic losses. And that doesn’t even include the value of the non-economic losses you’ve suffered! You deserve to be compensated. In Georgia, drivers who cause accidents are responsible for paying for them. This means that if you did not cause the truck accident through fault of your own, you may be able to bring a claim against:

• The truck driver;
• The trucking company;
• The shipper or loader of cargo;
• The truck manufacturer; or
• Any other third party whose negligence was to blame for your accident.

Keep in mind that even if the accident was the fault of the truck driver, you’ll probably bring a claim against the trucking company due to the theory of vicarious liability.

Consider this scenario: you are hit by a truck because the driver swerved to miss an obstacle, over-corrected, and jack-knifed. Your attorney investigates and finds out that the truck driver had been fired from three previous trucking companies because of an inability to finish their training programs and prove that they could drive safely. This is information that would have come up on a background check, but the employer did not conduct a background check and therefore did not act reasonably. Had they acted reasonably while hiring, the accident could have been prevented.

It’s a bit more complicated if the driver of the truck is an owner-operator. If they are not an employee of any of the companies they contract with, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to sue those companies, although you should not rule that possibility out entirely.

In order to ensure that your right to seek damages is preserved, you must bring forth your claim within two years from the date of your accident. Waiting longer than two years to file a civil action is a bar to recovery in Georgia.

What Evidence is Needed to Win my Truck Accident Case?

To establish fault in your truck accident case, you must present solid evidence to prove your claim. Evidence is essential in personal injury claims, and there is a lot of it available after a truck accident. The truck company and their attorneys will swoop in quickly and catalog everything to try to protect their bottom line, so you need an attorney on your side immediately. They will get a thorough look at the evidence before any of it disappears and ensure they have the evidence they need to prove your side of the story.

Some of the most important pieces of evidence may include:

• Your vehicle: The condition of your vehicle is one of the strongest pieces of evidence to show what happened in the accident. The areas and extent of the damage to your vehicle will help demonstrate how the crash occurred, and what may have caused it.
• Visual evidence: After any type of motor vehicle accident, it is important to take as many photos as possible to show what happened. Dashboard camera can be very helpful.
• The police report: With any accident that involves injuries, the police should have been called to the scene. The police report will be one of the critical pieces that help establish fault in the case.
• Your medical report: If you were injured in the accident, you should have received treatment for the injuries, and there should be a report on file with the doctor or hospital. This report, as well as the possible testimony of your doctor or other medical experts, will help establish the extent of your injuries and the amount of compensation you are entitled to.
• Driving logs and other monitoring data: Truckers are now required to use electronic logging devices to keep track of their hours on the road. This and other available monitoring data must be preserved by the trucking company. If a driver violated federal hours of service regulations, the driving logs will help show driver negligence by establishing this fact.
• Vehicle inspection and maintenance reports: Big rig trucks log thousands of miles on the road per month. This is why commercial trucks must be inspected, serviced, and maintained on a regular basis. Inspection and maintenance reports will show whether or not those responsible for these duties were negligent.
• Cargo logs: A cargo log may show how much the truck weighed when it was involved in the accident. Tractor-trailers that are overloaded or unevenly loaded are more susceptible to accidents, especially when the driver encounters adverse road conditions.
• Other pertinent information: Any other information about the driver, trucking company, or any other parties involved that may be relevant to the case should be preserved for use in establishing the claim.

How Our Atlanta Truck Accident Attorneys Can Help

Our Atlanta truck accident attorneys empathize with you and truly care about the outcome of your case and your future. When you hire our law firm, we will build your claim, hire experts, investigate your accident, collect evidence and important data, determine the liable party, calculate your damages, issue a demand letter, and review your settlement. We will also be responsible for representing you during all settlement negotiations. Our lawyers have trial experience and will be prepared to go to court if need be. To get started today, please call us at 678-981-5370. You can also send us a confidential message through our website Contact Form.