Tire blowouts are one of the most devastating defects a commercial truck can experience. Even though 18-wheelers have so many wheels, losing just one tire so abruptly can make the truck driver lose complete control of the vehicle and cause a crash.
Contributing factors to tire blowouts include:
The most common types of large truck accidents are:
Truck accident injuries resulting from these kinds of collisions are often very serious.
Large trucks can be difficult to maneuver quickly, especially when they are carrying a heavy load (or are overloaded trucks). It is not easy to brake and stop a large truck when it is moving at freeway speeds. When a large truck hits the back of a smaller vehicle, it often runs over the smaller vehicle. Such truck accident injury cases often involve fatalities.
At Carter Cullen, our Las Vegas truck accident attorneys have decades of experience in representing catastrophic personal injury victims whose lives have been disrupted by devastating 18-wheeler accidents.
The most common truck accident injuries include:
Semi-trucks can weigh up to 80,000 pounds, making a passenger vehicle no match for its size and force. When truck accidents occur in Las Vegas, our experienced lawyers want to help hold the negligent person or party accountable for their reckless or wrongful behavior.
Depending on the severity of your injuries, your need for medical care and the time you spend away from work can last weeks, months, or even a lifetime. Recovering the total expenses related to your injuries without an accomplished Las Vegas truck accident lawyer by your side will be difficult, if not impossible. Do not let the insurance company take advantage of you! Allow our experienced attorneys to help speed up the recovery process and pursue results on your behalf.
This is a complicated issue, which is why having a skilled truck accident attorney by your side is so important. There are several factors that can lead to a truck accident and, in most cases, only a legal professional can investigate the cause thoroughly to determine who is at fault for the accident.
Some of the leading causes of truck accidents include:
This is not an exhaustive list. As you can see, proving what happened can be extremely difficult, as can proving who is legally liable. However, each of these factors will be explored by our Las Vegas truck accident attorneys to ensure each party is investigated thoroughly. This allows us to hold all liable parties responsible for their role in the crash.
Your injuries are evidence. If you have been hurt in a truck accident, someone is responsible for your well-being going forward, and our partnerships with industry professionals will help us thoroughly build your case.
Our firm employs a skilled team of:
Together with these experts, our attorneys can uncover the full extent of your injuries and associated damages. From there, we can aggressively negotiate a settlement that is intended to cover you for all of your current and ongoing costs. If a fair settlement cannot be reached, we are ready to take your case to trial.
Our truck accident attorney in Las Vegas work with our clients to ensure their injuries are fully accounted for; we do this by partnering with a team of physicians and medical experts to assess the full extent of our clients’ injuries. This allows us to then build comprehensive personal injury cases that cover all of our clients’ damages, including current and future medical costs and related expenses.
If you are hurt in a truck accident in Las Vegas and do not have health insurance, you are likely worried about the type of medical care you will be able to receive, as well as how you will be able to pay for that care. Our experienced truck accident lawyers can provide the legal advice you need to get the medical care you deserve. Your injuries should never go untreated—our truck accident lawyers in Las Vegas will provide the representation you need to recuperate all of your medical costs, starting from the time of the collision through your entire recovery.
Negotiating with a single liable party requires an aggressive approach to producing results, and our truck collision attorneys have decades of experience producing results that have positively changed our clients’ lives.
When there is more than one party involved in the mediation process, the goal is to obtain the compensation our clients deserve from each party at the same time, so we are not leaving any detail to chance.
These damages often include:
Additionally, victims might be eligible for compensation related to loss of consortium, which involves the loss of companionship or relationship benefits due to an injury. This aspect is often overlooked but is critically important as it addresses the non-economic impact on victims’ personal lives. Compensation may also encompass vocational retraining if injuries prevent a return to previous employment, ensuring victims can pursue new career paths without financial burdens.
Trucks that are considered “large” are over 10,000 pounds. This category of trucks includes semis (tractor-trailers), single-unit large trucks, and some heavy cargo vans. There are thousands of large trucks in motion on the roads and highways around Las Vegas and throughout Nevada everyday, including tractor-trailers with huge loads and logging trucks. Some trucks are carrying hazardous materials that are flammable, explosive, poisonous, or radioactive. Other trucks can weigh upwards of 80,000 pounds (40 tons).
According to a 2019 study conducted by the Federal Highway Administration, there are more than 158 million semi-trucks registered in the country.
Additionally, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recorded that, in 2020:
Additionally, statistics consistently show that occupants of other vehicles are far more likely to be injured or killed in truck collisions.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, of the people killed in large semi-truck accidents in 2020:
The NHTSA also reports that large trucks, on average, are responsible for 9% of all vehicles involved in fatal crashes.
Truck accident injuries have tremendous costs in terms of loss of life, permanent injuries, loss of jobs and future income. The grave losses suffered by a family whose member(s) have been hurt in a truck accident are both financial and emotional.
Truck driver fatigue is a major cause of truck accidents. The Las Vegas law firm of Carter Cullen represents individuals and families injured in large-truck collisions, many of which are caused directly by a truck driver’s fatigue, which is common among long-haul drivers on U.S. roads today.
Truck drivers are under pressure to “deliver the goods,” literally – to get their cargo to its destination as soon as is safely possible, and sometimes sooner. In many cases, the more deliveries that a truck driver can make, the more money he or she can make. This results in drivers trying to drive too many hours at a stretch. Too many hours on the road is one of the factors that can produce driver fatigue.
A tired truck driver is an impaired driver. He or she may make mistakes in judgment or become an outright driving hazard. We’ve all heard the reports of exhausted, snoozing truck drivers who plowed into cars on a freeway or at a toll booth. An 80,000-pound, 75-foot-long truck can do a huge amount of damage when it’s being driven by a fatigued trucker.
Large trucks carry thousands of tons of hazardous and non-hazardous materials across the U.S. each day, and any impairment of the drivers in charge of this cargo is a problem for everyone on the road.
Although spokesmen for the trucking industry have stated that the rate of drug use among truck drivers is essentially the same as or lower than that of drivers of other vehicles, this is small consolation and debatable at best.
Two factors that may account for drug and alcohol use by truck drivers:
Truck drivers are routinely tested for alcohol and drug use by federal laws monitored by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Some 30,000 drivers test positive for drug use each year in the U.S. However, there are many ways for truck drivers to cheat these tests, and there are probably thousands more drug-using truck drivers on the road each day around the Las Vegas area and across the country.
The National Transportation Safety Board studied a large set of fatal truck accidents and found that in about one in eight of these accidents, the cause was marijuana use by the truck driver. Another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that of the many truck drivers stopped by police for driving recklessly, of those who did not have alcohol in their blood, 45% had marijuana, and 25% had cocaine in their blood.
At Carter Cullen, we represent the victims of all types of truck accidents, including ones caused by truck driver drug use. If a drug-impaired truck driver has hurt you, contact our Las Vegas truck accident lawyers for more information about your legal rights.
