Galveston truck accident attorneys know that Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations limits the number of hours truck drivers may legally drive in a single day. These regulations provide that truckers may drive no more than 11 hours after a rest break of 10 consecutive hours. In an effort to prevent truck driver fatigue, regulations permit truckers to drive no more than 60 hours in 7 consecutive days.
But despite these rules, many truck drivers stay on the road for long and tedious hours. Indeed the average trucker drives more than 125,000 miles each year. Long hours of monotonous highway driving leads to truck driver fatigue. But drivers might feel pressured to skip breaks and drive extra long hours for many reasons.
The need to earn extra income through extra deliveries. Trucking industry revenues total in the hundreds of billions of dollars each year. But the industry remains highly competitive. And individual truck drivers may not be highly paid for their labor.
The competitive demands of a tight job market. If a trucker insists on complying with mandated rest periods to avoid truck driver fatigue, an unscrupulous trucking company might well fire him and hire another driver who’s willing to drive as long as they demand.
A desire to get home at the end of a long route.
A desire to push on and avoid rush hours or other potential delays.
Galveston truck accident attorneys know of situations where truck drivers might put in 100-hour work weeks on the road. The truck driver fatigue that results from such long hours causes hundreds of accident fatalities and tens of thousands of accident injuries each year. Approximately a third of fatal Galveston truck crashes result from truck driver fatigue.
Overworked truck drivers can become drowsy or inattentive, or just plain fall asleep at the wheel. When the truck driver no longer consciously directs his vehicle, the 80,000 behemoth becomes a deadly missile aimed at the innocent victims around it. The horrific Galveston truck crash that results might claim several lives and destroy the quality of life for those who survive.
Government agencies simply don’t have the manpower to regularly inspect trucks and check truck drivers for compliance with regulations. So truck drivers know that they can often get away with driving for as long as they want to drive. Unfortunately, their disregard for federal safety regulations can lead to devastating Galveston truck crashes from truck driver fatigue.
A Galveston truck crash caused by truck driver fatigue might not injure the sleepy truck driver. But it might kill or maim innocent victims occupying smaller vehicles. If you were injured in a Galveston truck crash, or your loved ones were injured or killed by the negligence of a sleepy truck driver, you might be entitled to a large amount of financial compensation. An experienced Galveston truck accident attorney could accurately evaluate your case and help you understand its value for you and your family.
The Galveston truck accident attorneys of Denena & Points could help you obtain full personal injury damages when you have been negligently injured in a Galveston truck crash. A Galveston truck accident attorney from our office could help you win just wrongful death damages when your loved ones were negligently killed as a result of truck driver fatigue. Call today for your free consultation and initial case evaluation.
Truck wrecks are complex. Many causes might have contributed to a Pearland, TX truck wreck. In fact, it’s more than likely that several of the following factors combined to cause the truck wreck.
These questions represent just some of the many factors for which you want to account before bringing a claim for accident compensation. Our experienced Pearland truck wreck lawyers at Denena Points, PC could help you cover all your bases to ensure that you present a strong and valid claim for financial compensation.
You deserve just recompense for your losses from a Pearland, TX truck wreck. Call us today for your free legal consultation. Let us put our knowledge and experience to work for you so that you could make a full recovery for your accident injuries.
Pearland, TX truck rollover accidents tend to cause catastrophic, even fatal, injuries. Government agencies like the NHTSA and the FMCSA have attempted over the years to promulgate safety standards to enhance vehicle rollover resistance. But fatal truck rollover accidents still occur on an alarmingly regular basis. And Pearland, TX truck rollover accidents still present many life-threatening hazards.
After a Pearland, TX truck rollover accident has injured you or a family member, you need to have your own dedicated Pearland truck accident lawyer investigate the wreck and discover its true cause. Your chances of recovering financial compensation hinge on the cause of the wreck and the sources of the negligence behind it.
At Denena Points, PC, we’re highly experienced, Texas Board Certified Pearland truck accident lawyers. For more than a dozen years, our diligent investigations, thorough case preparations, and well thought out legal strategies have been helping injured victims recover the monetary compensation they need to become financially whole again after their undeserved accident losses.
Get the information and the help you need to recover on your accident claim. Call today for a free legal consultation an case evaluation.
Trucking companies know the risks of sending massively loaded vehicles out onto busy roadways under the command of often overworked and fatigued drivers. So they create elaborate layers of subsidiaries, holding companies, parent companies, sister companies, and brokers to help protect themselves from liability in the event of a costly Houston truck crash.
In fact, there exist cadres of trucking liability defense lawyers that teach trucking companies how to create these confusing layers of corporate relationship in order to shield themselves from liability for your injuries. Just one catastrophic Houston truck crash can result in millions of dollars in damages.
If you suffered devastating injuries from a Houston truck crash, you might have lifelong medical conditions and impairments from the truck wreck. You might have lost beloved family members to the same Houston truck crash that injured you. But you might be confused about who’s actually responsible for paying for your injuries and the other massive costs from the truck wreck.
Separate subsidiary companies might be responsible for various functions related to the operations of the truck and its driver.
In many cases, these varied companies will all operate out of the same building and use the same address, even though they register themselves and operate as separate entities. And one parent company, to which much of the companies’ profits flow, sits at the top, quietly supervising everything behind the scenes.
You’ll need a Houston truck accident attorney with years of experience in complex trucking liability cases to help you pierce this elaborate corporate veil and obtain the financial compensation due to you. Your practiced Houston truck accident attorney could pursue an alter ego theory of liability to get you the full amount of compensation you deserve from your traumatic Houston truck crash.
Call us at Denena & Points to schedule a free consultation and case evaluation regarding your devastating Houston truck crash. We’ve been delving into complex Houston truck crash cases for more than 12 years. We know how to find the evidence you need to pierce the shielding corporate veil. We could help you find the controlling companies with the assets to pay your high value claims from your Houston truck crash case.
Call us today. We’re here to help. Our goal is to get you the full financial recovery you deserve after a horrific truck wreck caused by trucking company negligence and deception.
Punitive damages intend to punish the defendant for unacceptable behavior. Punitive damages should deter the defendant and others who might engage in negligent, bad acts similar to the one that injured you in a Houston truck accident. A jury considers the following factors when deciding on the amount of punitive damages.
A punitive damages award that doesn’t make a dent in the defendant’s net worth also doesn’t have a deterrent effect. Your Houston truck accident attorney should perform some focused and diligent research to uncover the extent of the defendant’s wealth.
Many defendants, especially profit-oriented entities like trucking companies, go to great lengths to hide both their assets and their liabilities. So your Houston truck accident attorney may have to delve pretty deeply into corporate books and government records to find the assets you’re seeking to pay for your injuries from the accident the defendants caused. SEC data serves as a good resource for corporate financial data.
Some of the Houston truck accident cases where you could seek punitive damages include these examples.
In most instances, the trucking company becomes vicariously liable for its employee’s behavior while on the job. So you would be able to ask punitive damages from the trucking company as well as from the actual truck driver.
Contact the skilled Houston truck accident lawyers at Denena & Points for a free legal consultation regarding your Houston truck accident case. We’ve been helping the innocent victims injured by heinous truck wrecks to successfully recover full financial damages for over 12 years. We could help you too.
In the wreck between the dump truck that ran a red light and the oncoming Houston Metro train, Houston Metro spokesman Jerome Gray took care to distance Houston Transit from the driver of the dump truck. It’s important to note that the dump truck driver, Paniagua Espino, was employed to haul sand for a project related to the construction of the Metro’s East End light rail line. So, in essence, Espino worked for the very transit agency whose train he wrecked on Tuesday morning.
But Jerome Gray carefully disclaimed responsibility by saying that a firm hired by a subcontractor of Houston Rapid Transit employed Espino. That chain of contractors may not be enough to save Houston Rapid Transit from legal liability for the dump truck-train wreck and the injuries it caused.
Recent years have seen a reaction by the courts against employers that would negligently hire the cheapest available labor without regard to safety. Many times, the ultimate employers don’t even check who’s hired further down the chain or the status of their safety records. Then, when these carelessly hired employees cause injuries through a reckless disregard for others’ safety, the ultimate employer tries to hide behind the chain of subcontractors.
In a case rapidly becoming a landmark in accident liability law, Davies v. Commercial Metals Company, the court’s opinion laid out some parameters for ultimate employer liability. The opinion and commentary stated that “an employer is liable for physical harm to third persons caused by …failure to exercise reasonable care to employ a competent and careful contractor …to do work which will involve a risk of physical harm unless it is carefully and skillfully done, or to perform any duty which the employer owes to third persons.” The court further stated that operation of a large truck upon the roads carried such a risk of physical harm.
Since the FMCSA website records extensive data on a trucker’s qualifications and prior safety record (or lack of same), an employer’s failure to look into this easily accessible information appears particularly egregious.
So, when you’re injured in a Houston wreck caused by a reckless (but not wreckless) trucker, you need to hire an experienced Houston truck wreck lawyer at once to begin investigating. He could examine the ultimate employer’s knowledge of, efforts to gain knowledge of, or complete ignorance and disregard of, the trucker’s prior safety record and qualifications for the job. If you’re injured by a reckless truck driver’s actions, call us today for a free legal consultation and case evaluation. We could help you hold the trucker and his ultimate employer financially accountable for their disregard of your safety.
It isn’t easy to get the evidence and information you need to prove your case. In a wreck between a Houston Metro light rail train and a dump truck, for instance, probably both the train and the truck will have EDRs (Electronic Data Recorders). These devices can tell you fast a vehicle was going before and during an impact, whether the driver tried to brake, and if the vehicle changed course.
But the trucker and the Houston transit authorities might both seek to delay your case and your access to the data, during which time the data may become lost or spoiled. You need an experienced Houston truck wreck attorney to help you gain the access you need. Once your attorney files your claim, he gains the legal right to subpoena the records and the data you need as evidence. Your attorney would also be able to trace the chain of liability and bring a charge of negligent hiring or vicarious liability against the ultimate employer of the truck driver.
An experienced Houston truck wreck attorney will also have access to professional accident investigators and accident re-creation specialists that can help reconstruct the sequence of events that led to your injury. If a defendant claims, for instance, that he ran a red light because the sun’s reflection kept him from seeing the color of the light, specialists can examine the light in the accident context to see to what extent this might be true. (Of course, if the driver can’t tell the color of the light, he should not just “run” the light. He should stop and look until he can see its color.)
In addition, you and your Houston truck wreck attorney could find some information about previous violations on the FMCSA website. The FMCSA site includes information in several categories.
Carriers subject to FMCSA regulations keep professional teams of lawyers and accident investigators always at the ready to defend them from liability. They fiercely contend accident claims. So you need to get your own Houston truck wreck attorney delving into the case on your behalf immediately. Delay allows the other parties time to lose, spoil, destroy or hide necessary evidence. Don’t take the chance of losing your case to inaction. Call today for a free truck wreck consultation.
In a recent Montgomery County fatal road wreck, a pickup truck suddenly crossed several lanes of FM 1314 to crash head-on into an 18-wheeler. The driver of the pickup truck suffered fatal injuries in the crash.
A Justice of the Peace ordered an autopsy to determine if medical conditions were behind the unexplained veering of the pickup into the big rig’s path. Authorities determined that cell phone use, a common culprit in fatal road wrecks, did not cause this crash. The pickup truck driver’s cell phone was still in his pocket at the time of the crash.
Several medical conditions can contribute to sudden, fatal road wrecks.
In about 50% of road wrecks caused by heart attacks, the victim of the cardiac arrest had no prior knowledge of a heart condition. A stroke or an a aneurysm may occur with no prior warning or symptoms. Drivers might pass out from low blood sugar or other causes.
The NHTSA estimates that at least 20,000 road wrecks from medical conditions occur each year. The drivers with the medical conditions experience elevated chances for serious or fatal injuries from these crashes.
If you’ve suffered a collision caused by a medical condition, or if you’ve lost a loved one with a medical condition to a fatal road wreck, call us for a free legal consultation. We could help you in your efforts to obtain a fair financial recovery for your traumatic losses from the wreck.
We’re experienced Montgomery County collision attorneys with specialized expertise regarding medical issues involved in road wreck personal injury and fatality cases. We’ve helped many other injured victims, and the families of fatally injured victims, recover just compensation after their sudden, undeserved road wrecks. We could help you too.
Government estimates place the number of road accidents caused by driver fatigue at more than 50,000 annually. The government statistics show that driver fatigue kills at least 1,550 victims each year and causes approximately 71,000 injuries.
But those figures don’t reveal the true magnitude of the problem of driver fatigue on our roads. Driver fatigue remains under-reported as a cause of accidents. Police might choose to attribute a collision to a more directly observable cause than driver fatigue. And in road accidents where the driver behind the collision suffers fatal injuries, finding out whether fatigue caused him to lose control of his vehicle becomes difficult.
In a fatal Montgomery County collision between a pickup truck and a big rig, the pickup truck veered across several lanes of roadway before striking the 18-wheeler head on. The driver of the pickup truck suffered fatal injuries from the two-vehicle crash. The driver of the big rig survived uninjured. Investigators at the scene could not immediately find an obvious cause for the pickup driver’s loss of control of the vehicle.
A standard culprit in such wrecks, the cell phone, remained in the man’s pocket. So officials ordered an autopsy to determine whether medical causes or intoxication might be behind the sudden collision. Driver fatigue stands out as another factor that might have caused the wreck, which occurred in the wee hours of the morning around 1:15 a.m.
As Houston truck wreck lawyers, we need to mention another factor that often causes road crashes. This factor didn’t get mentioned in the news accounts of the incident, but it involves vehicle defects. Government web pages provide long lists of manufacturers’ vehicle recalls for defects that can cause all kinds of problems.
1. Sudden fires.
2. Explosions.
3. Loss of steering control.
4. Rollover accidents.
That short list provides just a few examples of the many manufacturing defects that can lead to serious injuries or fatalities in the vehicle accidents that result from the defects. So I hope that authorities investigating the Montgomery County crash take a good look at the pickup truck that crashed, just in case the wreck resulted from a product defect.
One sleep study shows that truckers with severe sleep apnea (OSA) have a 7 times greater risk of severe truck accidents than truckers without the disorder. That same study also found that:
* Of 53 truck drivers referred for sleep studies because screenings indicated possible OSA, 33 did not comply with the referral; and
* Sleep studies on the remaining 20 of the 53 truck drivers confirmed OSA in all of them, but only 1 of these drivers complied with treatment of the disorder.
Sleep apnea increases truck drivers’ risks behind the wheel.
Because of generally increased awareness of the dangers of motor vehicle crashes in those drivers with sleep apnea disorders, truck drivers diagnosed with the disorder have an increased risk of losing their jobs. Tests show that drivers with severe sleep apnea perform about the same on driving tasks as drivers with a blood alcohol content above the legal limit. But studies also show that the experience of older, less healthy drivers provides an edge in avoiding wrecks that younger, healthier, but less experienced drivers might not possess.
Trucking companies don’t want to take chances on injuries and liabilities stemming from sleep apnea-related truck accidents. So the trucking companies take the easy way out and fire, or refuse to hire, responsible truckers who have sought diagnosis and treatment of their fatigue problem. So most truckers avoid diagnosis or treatment of sleep apnea for fear of losing their jobs. Unfortunately, this just increases the risks to everyone driving in Pearland, TX from trucker fatigue.
Even truckers without sleep apnea have increased risks of fatigue. They’re under pressure to drive long hours and meet strict delivery deadlines. Long haul truckers drive many hours on long stretches of monotonous highways and experience elevated risks of “road trance” and resulting truck accidents.
If you suffer a truck accident caused by a fatigued trucker while driving in Pearland, TX, call us for a free legal consultation. Our Pearland, TX truck accident lawyers, Chad Points and Tony Denena, have more than 12 years of experience helping the injured victims of truck accidents. We have extensive knowledge of the legal requirements involved in truck accident cases revolving around the issue of trucker fatigue. We could help you win fair financial compensation for your injuries caused by the problem of trucker fatigue or sleep apnea.