Follow the Weekly News, and There Are Always Commercial Truck Crashes
On Saturday morning, a big rig carrying a tanker filled with gasoline suddenly flipped over on the Long Island Expressway and blew up. The heavy truck rolled, the gas exploded, and the truck driver was killed in the blast.
It was a big, big explosion: the heat was so intense that the posts holding up the interstate’s overhanging road sign melted — and the signage fell on top of the freeway, blocking all eight lanes of traffic. Big, big wreck.
Last Wednesday, over in Michigan, two big rigs jackknifed on opposite sides of the Interstate 94 overpass in Port Huron, three cars crashed into the commercial trucks, and while no one was killed, the two jackknifed semis effectively stopped traffic going both ways on that wintery Michigan roadway for a long, long while.
What’s Happening Here?
Within the past week, there have been these two truck crashes that have made the national news. Undoubtedly, there have been other big rig accidents that happened, but these two will serve as our focus today. What’s going on here?
In all three situations, large commercial trucks crashed on congested interstate highway systems together with motorcycles, sedans, and minivans carrying people like you and me.
In These Cases, You Have To Consider All Sorts of Possibilities
Big rigs are huge, and heavy, and sometimes they carry hazardous materials, like the flammable gasoline in the Long Island expressway accident. Rarely is any kind of commercial truck accident a minor one, and there are many different reasons why these crashes happen, such as:
1. winter driving hazards
2. roadway not maintained properly
3. truck cargo shifting
4. exhausted truckers (HOS regulations being ignored by the trucking company)
5. truck driver not sufficiently trained for the rig he’s driving by the trucking company
How Can These Be Prevented?
The federal government puts in lots of time and money into researching the reasons for commercial truck crashes and how best to prevent them in the future. CSA 2010 is the result of one such effort.
However, it has been the experience of this firm that regardless of how often the Powers that Be attempt to thwart Big Rig crashes, those commercial trucks on the roadways are still extremely dangerous vehicles roaming the roads with families ignorant of the risks they may be facing.
One of the purposes of this blog is to explore the causes of these trucking industry crashes and how they can best be curtailed — and how some regulations are faulty or failing. For example, the HOS regulations are sometimes laughable. Trucking companies operate on a profit motive, and deadlines must be met — forget the trucker shuteye requirements.
From our years of successfully representing victims of severe trucking crashes throughout Indiana and Illinois, we understand how horrific (and often fatal) these accidents can be. And we want to do our part to prevent them in the future.
