The roads in and around Houston are filled with truck accidents which injure thousands of Texans every year. Truck accidents cause more injuries than car accidents do. A larger, heavier vehicle will sustain less impact from the crash than a smaller, lighter vehicle. Unfortunately, this is a physics lesson that many drivers learn the hard way.
Truck accidents can result from many different factors which cause many different types of injuries. One such example is the truck accident on Highway 288 which was caused by an eighteen wheeler going too fast. Local ABC affiliate 13 Eyewitness News reported that the driver attempted to take a left turn but lost control of the tanker truck due to the speed. The tanker turned on its side and began to spill its contents. Luckily, only about two hundred fifty gallons, of the eight thousand gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel being transported, leaked onto the road. This crash is an example of the many ways in which a single truck accident can injure other drivers on the road. In this case, other drivers could have crashed into the truck, or lost control of their vehicles after driving over the gas spill. The spill itself could have caused small fires, or even worse, an explosion of the tanker truck itself.
Equipment malfunction is another common cause of truck accidents. In a bizarre case from Uptown Houston, a dump truck became trapped under the Loop 610 overpass while driving on the Interstate 69. According to the Houston Chronicle, the dump truck had a hydraulic lift for its bed, which was activated as the driver went under the overpass. The bed was raised and the truck–now too high for the listed sixteen foot, five inch clearance–became stuck. It crumbled the guardrail, took down chunks of the overpass structure, and sent pieces of the dump truck flying into nearby traffic. Houston police expected to issue the truck driver citations for improper securing of a load and failure to properly operate a trailer.
Legal Liability in Texas Trucking Accidents
This case illustrates that both a truck driver and the transportation company which hires him or her can be legally responsible for causing a truck accident. In this case, the employer may be negligent in its training of the driver, or by failing to make regular safety inspections of its trucks and equipment. If the trailer was later discovered to malfunction as the result of a design defect, the manufacturer of the dump truck could also be found responsible for causing the accident.
An experienced Texas truck accident attorney will ensure that crash victims receive full and fair compensation for their injuries. The Law Offices of Gene S. Hagood have been protecting Houston residents from negligent truck drivers for over fifteen years. Our skilled attorneys ensure truck accident victims receive full and fair compensation for their injuries, and that transportation companies are held responsible for their negligence – and the negligence of their drivers.