One of the biggest changes on the highway in this century is the rise in crashes caused by distracted driving, and the trucking industry is no exception. Unlike accidents involving a passenger car, when a commercial truck is involved in a distracted driving crash, it isn't necessarily just the driver's fault. So who may be liable when a distracted truck driver causes an accident?
Answer: When a distracted truck driver causes a serious accident, that driver, their employer, or even a third-party dispatch service may be liable for victims' injuries or death.
In this article we'll examine the possible role of each potentially-liable party.
The Truck Driver
In most traffic accidents, the driver who caused it is one of the primary parties to hold accountable for the damage done. That holds true in commercial truck accidents too; as much as I'd like to say otherwise, trained professional truck drivers are still wholly capable of causing devastating crashes.
In those situations, it's often most prudent to assume that the driver will not readily accept liability for the damage of the wreck. Anyone hurt by the truck driver's negligence will need clear evidence showing he was preoccupied by one of the many activities that constantly distract commercial drivers.
Example: Not long time ago we had a case that involved a distracted truck driver. In that situation, a young man's car was disabled during a fender-bender in the middle of a rural Texas highway. An approaching semi-truck driver didn't brake in time to avoid the scene, and the truck hit the victim's car and killed him. The trucker swore up and down to police that the car's original wreck happened right in front of him and that he had no time to brake.
After our team of investigators looked into the accident and got hold of the truck's internal video surveillance footage, we found that the trucker was actually hundreds of yards away when the young man's initial accident happened. As it turned out, the trucker had plenty of time to stop, had he been looking at the road in front of him instead of watching a video on his phone.
Examples aren't always that dramatic, but commercial drivers tend to make the same mistakes at the wheel as anyone else. Just like anyone else who lets their focus get pulled away from the task at hand, truckers should be held accountable for their errors if they hurt or kill someone. Unlike non-commercial drivers, however, responsibility for the damage may extend beyond the person at the wheel.
The Trucking Company
People don't always realize that when a professional truck driver negligently causes a crash, his employer may be partly responsible for the damage he inflicts. Keep in mind that the company doesn't just hire the driver—they're also in charge of training him, setting the policies he must follow, and ensuring he actually follows them. If they're lax in those responsibilities and their employee hurts someone on the job, any injuries he causes may be their fault too. Because of that, it's best to find out who employs any trucker that triggers a wreck; people would be surprised how often a jury decides that company could or should have done a better job keeping tabs on their employee.
Example: Consider the trucker we mentioned in the previous section. People may think there's no way his employer could know their new hire would get distracted by a cell phone, but trucking companies are required to vet their new hires by checking their driving history. In that case the driver had several concerning violations on his record, but the company was understaffed and so desperate to "get the load on the road" that they hired almost anyone with a pulse. In such cases of negligent hiring, a jury may also find the company liable for any injuries caused by the driver they should never have put on their payroll.
We've also litigated cases against trucking companies who never enforced their rules about handheld phone use, and still others that simply had no such policies on the books—despite hand-held use being banned by federal law.
Third-Party Dispatchers
People may think a trucking company is more or less a self-contained system, where the owners of the trucks also handle everything else (drivers, maintenance, accounting, routing) internally. That may be true in some cases, but in many others companies outsource some of their logistical needs to other companies. One contracted company might service the trucks, for example, while another handles driver dispatch and monitoring. When those dispatchers lead a driver astray or make unreasonable demands, though, things quickly go south. If the dispatcher communicates with drivers in ways that distract them—such as demanding an immediate response by phone or radio—they can bear the blame when their distraction leads to a crash.
Grossman Law Can Help
The key takeaway is that commercial truck accidents aren't just really big car accidents. The complexities of industry require a different skillset when it comes to investigating and litigating these cases. An officer's crash report likely isn't going to get the job done. On-scene investigators rarely have access to trucking company policies or the time to investigate beyond the crash scene itself. In fact, in our more than three decades of litigating commercial truck accident cases, we have never once not had to conduct our own investigation to obtain evidence the on-scene investigators missed.
This is where an experienced truck accident attorney can make a world of difference. The Texas attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have a long track record of identifying everyone responsible for a truck accident, as well as holding each one accountable for their part. If you were hurt or lost a loved on in a commercial truck accident, call Grossman Law anytime for a free and confidential consultation.