We can help you get your life back

after an 18-wheeler truck wreck

Being involved in a car wreck of any kind can be a tragic, life-altering event, no matter who is at fault. It’s not always easy to get insurance companies — even your own! — to pay for your damages but when someone else is at fault, you could have a real fight on your hands.

Our team of experienced car wreck attorneys can help you understand how to make the most of your legal rights and get the money you need to help recover after a truck wreck or accident involving a drunk or distracted driver.

18-Wheeler Accidents
No matter where you are in Texas, truck traffic can be a nuisance. But, because nearly a quarter of all 18-wheelers on the road today fail to meet some basic truck safety requirements, that annoyance could turn deadly.

Accident reports often blame the truck driver in these cases but the truth is often much more complex.  Especially in the oil fields along the Eagle Ford Shale, it’s not uncommon that truck drivers are forced into working a 20-hour shift and be provided a rig with bad brakes, bald tires and other defects that would fail even the most cursory of safety inspections.

In that particularly dangerous area of South Texas, fatalities that involved a commercial vehicle more than tripled from 2011 to 2012.

This situation is repeated on our busy Interstate highways where semis often out number passenger cars.

Each summer, Texas DPS troopers conduct Operation Road Check, a weekend-long project where specially trained troopers stop big rigs at random and inspect them in an effort to improve highway safety. Despite the event being held at about the same time each year, nearly a quarter of all the trucks stropped fail the inspections. In 2012, DPS stopped more than 8,000 trucks and placed 1,763 out of service for safety violations.

There are 450,000 truck wrecks each year nationally. Nearly 1 in 10 fatalities on Texas roads involve an 18-wheeler.

“Buzzed” Driving:

• Nearly 1 in 5 drivers who were killed nationally in car wrecks in 2009 — 18 percent of the nearly 22,000 drivers killed — tested positive for drugs.
• Researchers said the numbers could be higher because only about 3 in 5 drivers who were killed in car crashes were tested for drugs after the crash and testing varied from state to state. Among all the drivers who were killed in 2009 and later tested by authorities for drugs, about one-third had drugs in their systems.

Distracted Driving:

• People who text while driving are 23 times more likely to have a crash than those who don’t.
• The average response time for returning a text message is six seconds — about how long it takes to go from one end of a football field to the other at 55 miles an hour.
• Texting is more dangerous than driving under the influence of alcohol or marijuana.
• Texting is more dangerous than actually talking on the phone.
• Nearly half of teenagers acknowledge that they text while driving.
• The National Safety Council found that 28 percent of car crashes, or 1.6 million accidents per year, happen because of the driver was texting while at the wheel.

If you or someone you love has been injured or killed in a car wreck, especially one that involved an 18-wheeler or a drunk or distracted driver, it’s important that you preserve the evidence right away. A truck wreck attorney can take care of this so please contact a lawyer right away.

Our team of tough, trustworthy, experienced injury lawyers can help you make sure you get the money you need to get your life back.