Philadelphia Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

A serious crash involving a flatbed truck has left one person dead and forced the closure of northbound U.S. 130 in Bordentown Township early in the morning on Tuesday October 11, 2011.

The road is closed between Ward Avenue and Groveville Road.  Details were scarceut the crash occurred about 4:30 a.m. and involved multiple vehicles. The flatbed truck was carrying heavy equipment and collided with a limousine.

Source

Due to their colossal sizes and massive weights, trucks can cause serious damage and death, should they be involved in an accident.  About 130,000 individuals are injured each year in truck collisions.  Of the 15.5 million trucks in the U.S., nearly 13 percent are semis, big rigs, 18 wheelers and tractor trailers. 

If you are the victim of a trucking accident, the questions of who is responsible and what actually caused the accident are often much more complicated than in a simple traffic accident.  The players involved most likely include the truck driver and owner of the truck, which is most likely a trucking company.  Getting information about what went wrong often requires some industry know-how.

Federal laws and regulations govern the trucking industry. These laws establish specific standards that trucking companies, owners, and drivers must meet, and often determine who is responsible for a trucking accident. The bulk of federal regulations dealing with the trucking industry can be found in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

Agencies that regulate truck driving include the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).  Every state also has a department of transportation with its own set of trucking regulations.

Because of the complexities in truck crash cases, it is important to hire an attorney who has experience handling truck accidents claims, specifically.  If you or a loved one has been injured in any type of truck accident, or if your loved one has died in a truck crash, contact me for a free consultation.  

Five people remain unaccounted for in an Amtrak train crash in the Nevada desert, authorities have reported.

However, despite those still unaccounted for, the death toll from the crash between a big rig and an Amtrak train remains at six, and investigators have said they have yet to find more bodies in the wreckage.

Source:  The Christian Post.  Jun. 27 2011

The big-rig driver who slammed into a Bay Area-bound Amtrak train in Nevada, killing himself and at least six people on the train, was identified Monday as a 43-year-old man who was blamed for a freeway crash in 2007 and racked up numerous traffic citations after getting work as a school bus driver in California.

Source:   San Francisco Chronicle.  June 23, 2011

One out of every eight traffic-related deaths and four percent of all injuries in auto accidents involve large commercial trucks -- also known as tractor-trailers, 18-wheelers, semi-trucks and big rigs.  In this case, the unthinkable happened when one of these big rigs wasn't able to stop before crashing into a train.

It is reported that the tractor trailer skid 320 feet before hitting the train.   Because big rigs are much longer and heavier than passenger vehicles, they are much harder to steer in evasive actions or to bring to a complete stop.  At 65 mph, it takes a car about 160 feet to stop.  A tractor-trailer going 65 mph needs approximately 420 feet to come to a complete stop (that's almost 1 ½ football fields!).   Unfortunately for all, the truck did not have enough room to stop and its momentum carried it directly into the train's path.

This tragic accident shows just how deadly and devastating these behemoth machines can be if not operated with extreme caution.  Usually, the biggest vehicles on the road, semi-trucks operating at high speeds are the cause of many disastrous accidents.  However, in this accident, the collision between the train and a semi-truck is comparable to the collision of a car and a water balloon - the size and weight of a train moving even at what might seem to be slower speed created a devastating physical impact that ignited an intense fire and demolished the truck.

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