Missouri Truck Accident Lawyer Blog

After a serious accident, all you will probably want to do is make sure you and anyone you were with are healthy and get back to your normal life. You'll want to put the accident behind you as quickly as possible. Life, as we all learn, is not so easy and serious car and truck accidents could lead to lots of investigation and dealing with insurance company representatives. Fortunately, you can take some steps to make this period less stressful.

The first thing you should do is learn as much about your own insurance policy as possible. Even if you weren't just in an accident and happened upon this blog by chance, you should look over your policy to make sure you know when you will be covered and for how much. You will have different coverage for medical payments, property damage, bodily injury to the other party and collision. Be sure to read the fine print and call your agent if you have any questions. It's better to have the information before you have a car accident rather than after the fact.

If you were injured in a car or truck accident, take meticulous notes and keep multiple copies of any documentation. Make sure you get the contact and license info from the other driver and the truck number and trucking company info if it was a tractor trailer crash. If you were injured by someone else's poor driving, their insurance company will be looking to limit their payout to you and having all the pertinent evidence on hand is the first step to protecting yourself.

Representatives from the other insurance company may also try and contact you for a recorded statement. It is in your best interest to avoid talking to them until you have consulted a personal injury attorney. Even if you are absolutely sure that the accident wasn't your fault, anything you say can be used to limit the payment you receive which could leave you in a dire financial situation. A skilled personal injury attorney will be able to advise you on your rights and help you make your statement to the insurance company if you even have to make one at all.

Michael Braudrick, 48, was seriously injured Monday when the pickup he was driving was involved in a crash with a Mack truck on Missouri 86.

The accident occurred about one mile south of Wheaton, Missouri. The Mack truck, driven by Harold Roberson, 53, was making a left turn onto Missouri 86 from a country road. The large Mack truck pulled into the path of Braudrick's smaller pickup and he was unable to avoid a collision.

Braudrick was taken to St. John's Hospital for emergency treatment. Roberson was uninjured and the Mack truck was able to be driven from the scene.

Braudrick was wearing a seat belt.

Some more details need to emerge about this Missouri truck crash before liability can be determined. The speeds of the vehicles will need to be calculated as well as how, exactly, did Roberson make the turn onto Missouri 86. Investigators will determine if he should have yielded to the pickup or if Braudrick should have been able to avoid the crash. Should Roberson be found to have been negligent in this instance, Braudrick may be able to collect damages to cover his medical expenses.

People injured in a Missouri truck accident should think twice before handling these claims on their own or just accepting the answer from the insurance company. Many times, the best way to learn about your rights as a victim and get the repayment you deserve is to contact a Missouri truck accident attorney.

By now, you've probably heard about the two pilots for Delta Air Lines who have been dismissed after they overshot their destination by 150 miles due, supposedly, to them being distracted by their laptops. Fortunately, no serious incident occurred and the plane landed safely in Minneapolis-St. Paul. FAA regulations prohibit the use of laptops in the cockpit for this very reason and more deadly incidents are prevented because of these stricter rules.

This is not so on our roadways. Every year, thousands of people die in car accidents and tractor trailer crashes caused by distracted drivers who were talking on a cell phone or playing with some other electronic device. While some individual states and cities have taken the lead on reducing the distractions by banning cell phones while driving, in most areas there are no such laws and seeing someone multi-tasking when they should simply be driving is a regular occurrence.

The dangers are multiplied for tractor trailer drivers who have to maintain control of vehicles stretching dozens of feet long and weighing thousands of pounds. Yet still, even commercial truck drivers are regularly guilty of losing focus on the road because they are talking or texting and sometimes this has fatal consequences. One of the larger tractor trailer crashes in the St. Louis area occurred on Highway 40 last year when a truck driver, apparently distracted by his cell phone, plowed through ten other cars that were stopped for traffic. Three people were killed and more were seriously injured.

Despite tragic incidents like the Highway 40 crash, the FMCSA has not completely banned the use of cell phones or other electronic distractions by tractor trailer drivers while driving. In fact, many big rig drivers regularly use on-board computers to update their company of their progress and track their routes.

Studies have repeatedly shown that these types of distractions are dangerous. Drivers using those on-board computers are approximately ten times more likely to be involved in a crash. Texting drivers are 23 times as likely to crash. Even drivers who use hands-free phones have been proven to be as impaired as drunken drivers.

Drivers and their companies that continue these negligent policies of allowing distractions in the cabin must be held accountable when those same distractions result in serious accidents. If you or a family member has been involved in such a crash, contact an experienced Missouri tractor trailer accident attorney as soon as possible so that they can begin to investigate your case.

Tractor trailer drivers are responsible for safely driving an extremely large vehicle that could be hauling thousands of pounds of cargo. Because of their size, these large trucks can cause significant personal injury in an accident. These risk factors mean a truck driver has to remain extra alert and vigilant. Unfortunately, driver fatigue is a problem that leads to hundreds of Missouri tractor trailer crashes each year. Drivers, who are paid by the mile, were giving up sleep and driving on short rest in order to complete shipments faster.

To help control driver fatigue, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration set the Hours of Service guidelines for drivers. Some of these rules include:

- Truck drivers can only drive up to 11 consecutive hours and only after 10 consecutive hours off duty.

- Truck drivers can be on duty (working but not necessarily driving) for 14 consecutive hours and are not able to drive after the 14th hour.

- In a 7 day span, the maximum on duty time is 60 hours. Drivers may also choose to work 70 hours across 8 days.

- After a 7-8 day working period, the driver must take 34 consecutive hours off duty.

The FMCSA says these rules will prevent thousands of accidents nationwide and ultimately save lives. One in five truck drivers have admitted to driving under extreme fatigue or even nodding off at the wheel.

In order to make sure drivers adhere to the hours of service rules, they must keep an accurate log of their driving. After an accident, it is essential that this log is quickly investigated by a tractor trailer accident lawyer since many companies will destroy these logs after a certain of amount of time.

Wading through statistics at sites we’ve mentioned in previous posts and articles on other injury sites, we’ve discovered some more sobering statistics about tractor trailer crashes in Missouri.

Depending on what statistics you look at and your definition of a large truck, they make up around 3% to 7% of traffic on the nation’s highways. Not surprisingly, they also account for a disproportionate amount of traffic fatalities. Semi trucks and tractor trailers are involved in 15% of all traffic deaths in Missouri.

There are several reasons for this overly high rate of deaths in Missouri tractor trailer accidents. The most obvious is simple physics. Tractor trailers are large, imposing vehicles that do more damage to other, smaller passenger cars when an accident occurs. If you examine many of these accident cases, you will also see that truck drivers and trucking companies are often guilty of violating Federal regulations meant to prevent accidents.

While many truck drivers do the right thing and follow these regulations, those that don’t need to be held accountable. Victims of tractor trailer crashes should have their case reviewed by an experienced Missouri tractor trailer accident attorney. A skilled lawyer will be able to examine your case and find any violations of federal law that contributed to your accident. Many attorneys even offer free legal consultations to explain your rights with no obligation to hire.

Photo from the Columbia Missourian

New information is surfacing about a Monday morning crash in Columbia, Missouri that injured five people and could link a third vehicle, a tractor trailer, to the wreck.

According to local media reports, this Missouri car accident occurred near the intersection of Paris Road and Highway 63 and involved a 2007 Cadillac Escalade and a 1989 Dodge Pickup. The two vehicles collided near the exit ramp and the Escalade was sent into a roadside ditch. One of the men in the pickup was ejected from the truck.

Authorities are now saying that a tractor trailer was also on the ramp to Highway 63 and may have caused the pickup driver, Robert McBaine, 51, to swerve out of control. The tractor trailer did not stay at the scene and may not have been hit in the wreck, but local police are still trying to identify the driver so he can be interviewed.

McBaine and four others were hospitalized, including the driver of the Escalade, Carolyn Mosley, 71.

An investigation into the accident is ongoing. If the tractor trailer driver is located and found to be at fault, the injured parties may be able to contact a Missouri tractor trailer accident lawyer to help recover damages to pay for medical expenses.

Regardless of whether the truck driver caused the accident or not, he did leave the scene of an accident which is against the law in Missouri. Whether you are a commercial truck driver or just an average person in a passenger car, you absolutely should not leave the scene of an accident even if you believe you aren’t at fault. It’s possible the driver could face charges if found. If you have any information about the tractor trailer, please contact the Columbia Police Department at 573-874-7404.

In data released by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Missouri and Illinois are shown to have a higher number of tractor trailer crashes than the national average.

Illinois actually comes in third behind Texas and California for having the most tractor trailer and large truck accidents in the United States.

Missouri had 4,407 total crashes involving a tractor trailer in the last year. This includes fatal Missouri tractor trailer accidents and less serious wrecks. Illinois had 7,156 crashes in the same time span.

When looking at the data, state population clearly has an effect on the number of accidents and for obvious reasons. Sparsely populated states such as Wyoming have less people and fewer trucks so naturally they will have fewer accidents. Even when you adjust for population, however, Missouri and Illinois have accident rates higher than the national average. Both Missouri and Illinois have more tractor trailer crashes than other states of similar size and population.

Many of these crashes didn’t have to happen. They were the product of negligence and if some drivers had been a little more conscious or a trucking company did a better job of inspecting its fleet of vehicles, maybe some of these accidents could have been prevented. Most drivers are responsible, but the ones that aren’t need to be held accountable.

One of the ways to do that is by contacting a Missouri or Illinois truck accident lawyer after a crash. In addition to recovering damages to help you pay back medical bills and lost wages, a personal injury attorney can help send a clear message to the company and maybe prevent future accidents and injuries.

Julius Moore, 23, an officer with the St. Louis Police Department, died Thursday evening from injuries sustained when his patrol car crashed into a tractor trailer last week.

According to a St. Louis Post Dispatch report, Moore had never regained consciousness after the crash and his family made the difficult decision to take him off life support.

The crash occurred last Tuesday when Moore’s patrol car hit a tractor trailer at the South Broadway and Arsenal intersection. Moore was responding to a call and had lights and sirens on while racing to the scene of a burglary. Moore was traveling southbound along with the tractor trailer when the truck driver attempted to make a right turn. The tractor trailer hit Moore’s car and forced it off the road and into a traffic light.

The truck driver was not injured in this St. Louis tractor trailer crash, according to the Post Dispatch. He has been cooperative with authorities and sources cited in the report don’t expect him to face any charges, though the investigation into this incident isn’t complete. An accident reconstruction team is still working on a report and will examine the vehicles’ speeds, debris patterns and computer simulations to determine the specifics of the crash. A full report probably won’t be done for up to 12 weeks.

Police officials have said that it is too early to assign fault to either Moore or the truck driver. Once the reconstruction team's report is finished we will know more, but at the moment, we don’t know how fast the vehicles were going or when Moore turned on his sirens. Many other details need to be fleshed out before liability can be determined.

By all accounts, Moore was a dedicated officer and he died from injuries sustained while performing his heroic duties. This is no doubt a hard time for the Moore family and the St. Louis Police Department.

This case, like most Missouri tractor trailer injury accidents, is very complicated. If you have been the victim of a tractor trailer crash, you should contact a St. Louis personal injury lawyer as soon as possible to learn your rights as the injured party. Keep in mind that any information you divulge prior to talking to a lawyer may be used to limit the payment you receive to cover medical expenses.

One of the most powerful tools to have as a victim of a tractor trailer accident is information. Doing just a little research for yourself will lessen your chances of being taken advantage of by those in supposed positions of power. Having knowledge can level the playing field between the little guy and the big corporation with lots of professional backup.

Fortunately, many resources can be found online to help educate you about the commercial trucking industry, their laws, and who can help you if you or someone you love is injured in a Missouri tractor trailer crash.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s website is a great place to go for basic information on the commercial trucking industry in the United States. The FMCSA oversees the industry and has regulations that all trucking companies should follow to avoid accidents. Unfortunately, all too often these rules aren’t followed and the results are tragic.

Within FMCSA’s site, be sure to check out the Analysis and Information section for all the statistics on tractor trailer accidents.

Another section of the site that you should pay close attention to is the Rules and Regulations page. Here you’ll find a comprehensive listing of the rules that a truck driver must follow.

If you want to look up a particular company’s profile to see how many safety violations they have, you can check the SAFER database. Be aware that the basic information is free, but comprehensive company details do cost a fee.

Finally, if you believe that you were the victim of an accident that was caused by a truck driver’s negligence or an oversight on the part of his company, contact a Missouri truck accident lawyer as soon as possible to discuss your rights. Many offer free consultations to discuss your tractor trailer accident case and will be able to advise you on your next step.

Mechanical failures are the number two cause of tractor trailer injury accidents in the United States, according to data compiled by the National Highway Safety Administration. Driver error is still the most common contributing factor to crashes, but some studies show the rate of mechanical failures is on the rise here in Missouri.

Of the different types of mechanical failures that could cause a Missouri tractor trailer crash, the most common, by far, was brake failure. Brakes on a vehicle that could be hauling thousands of pounds of cargo should be the most scrutinized mechanical device on the road, but every year we see drivers and trucking companies skipping inspections to save on costs or time. As a result, we also see lots of accidents, injuries and fatalities that could have been prevented.

There are already regulations provided by the federal government designed to prompt drivers to have their trucks inspected. These regulations save lives and in areas where truckers are strictly held accountable to these rules, we see a sharp decline in accidents. During the 1990’s, Georgia stepped up its enforcement of tractor trailer inspection laws, specifically on logging trucks. As a result, the rate of accidents by mechanical failure was cut in half. The lesson is that industries held accountable for their actions will respond.

Aside from federal regulation, another way to hold negligent trucking companies accountable is through the civil justice system. In the wake of a tragic accident, your first thought might not be about hiring a Missouri truck accident attorney. While you and your family’s medical care come first, it is important to begin any legal investigation into your case as soon as possible. These matters are time sensitive and it is imperative that the truck inspection records, the driver’s log book, and other important info is gathered before it is lost forever.

Many parents are counting their blessings this morning after what could have been a serious and tragic accident.

A tractor trailer crashed into a school bus in Branson on Tuesday morning, according to a Branson Daily News report. Fortunately, no injuries were reported in this Missouri tractor trailer crash.

The accident occurred on Missouri 248 as the school bus was traveling westbound on its route to pick up students for the start of the school day. It had stopped to allow some children to board when a tractor trailer that was following behind was unable to stop. When the truck driver, who was not identified, realized he wouldn’t be able to slow down in time, he swerved to try and avoid a collision. Despite the evasive maneuver, the front of his big rig still hit the left rear of the bus.

According to Missouri Highway Patrol officials cited in the Branson Daily News report, the tractor trailer driver had suspected there might have been some mechanical problems prior to the crash. Specifically, there seemed to be some issues with the brake lines that prompted the driver to inspect them in a parking lot earlier in the day.

Local authorities are still investigating the accident and a full detailed report is not yet available.

While we should all be thankful that no serious injuries came of this Missouri school bus accident, these situations occur all too often to ignore. Working as a tractor trailer accident attorney I hear stories all the time of a truck driver, under pressure from his company to deliver a shipment on time, who ignores mechanical red flags that later turn into devastating crashes.

We will have to wait for the full report to determine whether the driver should have performed maintenance on his brakes before driving, but even if that is not the case in this accident, the fact is nearly 30% of tractor trailer crashes are caused by improperly maintained brakes.

If you have been involved in an accident with a tractor trailer that may have been improperly maintained or driving in violation of Federal Motor Carrier Regulations, you should find a personal injury lawyer as soon as possible to learn your rights and see what steps you can take to hold the trucking company responsible for their negligence. Many attorneys offer free personal injury consultations that can help you become better educated on the law before making such an important decision.