North Carolina Truck Accident Lawyer : Raleigh Truck Crash Attorney

North Carolina Truck Accident Lawyers

The Raleigh, North Carolina truck accident lawyers at Hendren, Redwine, & Malone are dedicated to helping victims of North Carolina truck wrecks. Mike Malone, Jason Hendren and Rebecca Redwine promise to handle your case with personal attention, aggressive advocacy, and professionalism.

The truck lawyers at Hendren Redwine & Malone have recovered millions of dollars for clients all across North Carolina for clients involved in crash with a truck as a pedestrian, bicyclist, motorcyclist and while operating a car. Our lawyers are well-versed in the federal and state laws that apply to truck cases. We know how to find the insurance that will help a truck accident victim. If you or a family member has been involved in an accident with a truck, contact the lawyers at Hendren Redwine & Malone today for a free consultation. There is no charge to you unless we recover for you.

Causes of Commercial Truck Accidents

According the the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, there are over 500,000 large trucks on the road. Each year, these trucks are involved in over 3,000 crashes that result in a fatality and over 60,000 crashes that result in injuries.

The competition within the trucking industry puts pressure on trucking companies to deliver goods cheaper and faster. This pressure often comes at the sacrifice of safety. According the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 87% of crashes involving large trucks resulting in injuries of fatalities were due to driver negligence. The most typical types of driver negligence included:

Driver Fatigue
Distraction
Excessive Speed
Drug Use
Failure to Brake
Driving Left of Center

Other crashes involved defects or maintenance problems such as worn out brakes or tires. Our lawyers have tremendous experience working with our state’s top engineers in order to determine the cause of a truck accident. Our lead truck accident attorney Mike Malone has a Bachelors of Science degree, a Masters of Science degree and a Ph.D. in civil engineering and has studied the mechanisms and physics of a truck accident. Our lawyers know how to speak the language of accident reconstructionists and engineers.

Injuries From Truck Crashes

In 2015, North Carolina had over 150 fatalities involving trucks and more than 4,000 injuries. A fully-loaded truck weighs up to 80,000 pounds. So the odds are stacked against any vehicle involved in a crash with a truck. A truck hitting a car is like a 200 pound football player running into a 10 pound child. This is why so many truck accidents result in serious injuries or the loss of life.

The injuries from truck accidents can be life changing. We have represented too many truck accident victims who either did not survive or never returned to their previous level of functioning. In each of these cases, the injuries or death could have been prevented had the truck driver exercised more care when using the road.

When someone is injured or killed in a truck wreck, it is very important to understand how to measure the loss to the victim. In wrongful death cases, our office regularly employs top economists to testify about the economic loss of the deceased to his or her family. In cases of serious injury, we routinely hire life care planners to testify about the future medical needs for a seriously injured truck accident victim. We also work with our clients’ doctors to understand our clients’ injuries. We believe our clients should receive the best possible medical care from physicians who will treat their injuries and support them in court should we call upon them to testify at trial.

Typical Types of Trucks Involved in Accidents

Not every truck on the road is the same and these differences can be important when evaluating a truck accident claim. The types of trucks typically involved in accidents include tractor-trailers, hazardous waste transport tanker trucks, dump trucks, tow-trucks, smaller delivery trucks called box trucks, and more the general commercial pickup truck.

Depending on the type of truck, there make be specific requirements for the process of retrieving data from the truck’s electronic data recorder, also known as the “Black Box.” The accident engineers hired by our truck accident lawyers are equipped to handle data collection from any type of truck – big or small.

Depending on the type of truck involved, there may be different requirements for liability insurance under the current federal regulations. For instance, a truck weighing less than 10,001 pounds that is hauling non-hazardous freight is required to have only $300,000 of liability insurance. Trucks weighing more than 10,001 pounds and carrying non-hazardous freight must have at least $750,000 of liability insurance. Any truck carrying oil must have at least $1,000,000 of liability insurance. Trucks carrying other hazardous materials must have at least $5,000,000 of insurance. Despite the listed requirements, many shippers and brokers require that carriers maintain at least $1,000,000 of insurance for long-haul trucks.

Your Challenges Following an Truck Accident

The power and size of the commercial trucking industry often makes accident victims feel like David versus Goliath. In many cases, the trucking company has unlimited resources to fight a case. Trucking companies frequently have their representatives at a crash site within hours of the crash to start gathering critical evidence. This is all happening while the victim may be in a hospital with serious or fatal injuries.

The lawyers at Hendren Redwine & Malone know how to move quickly on a trucking case to make sure a victim’s rights are protected. Within hours of being hired to help a truck accident victim, we will have our accident reconstructionists at the scene and ready to gather evidence to make sure the victim’s rights are protected.

How to Win Your Truck Accident Case

In order to win a truck accident case, a victim must prove two things:

That the driver (or company involved with the truck) was negligent; and
That the victim was injured (or killed) as a result of the negligence.

The term “negligent” is a relatively general term that can apply to many situations. In a truck accident case, a driver can be negligent if they were speeding. One way to determine if a truck driver was speeding is by downloading the truck’s on-board computer which may reveal the speed of the truck prior to the collision. There are many other ways a driver can be negligent including violating any number of rules of the road.

Another method of establishing the negligence of a truck driver is to establish that there was a violation of a law that specifically applies to trucks. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is a federal agency that regulates the laws applicable to the trucking industry. These laws are known as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMSCR) and they control virtually every aspect of the trucking industry.

As attorneys who handle trucking cases, we regularly use the detailed regulations found in FMCSR to establish negligence of fault on the part of the driver or trucking company. Among the more common portions of the FMCSR used in truck cases are:

Hours of service (which relate to driver fatigue)
Vehicle marking (which relate to the visibility of a truck)
Drug and alcohol testing
Load procedures
Weight restrictions

How the North Carolina Truck Accident Lawyers at Hendren Redwine & Malone Will Help You

The truck accident lawyers at Hendren Redwine & Malone have helped truck accident victims across the state of North Carolina. Click here to read about some of our truck cases.

If you have been injured or lost a loved one in a truck accident, you need to recognize that your case will likely face obstacles from the insurance companies that insure the trucking companies involved. In order to to recover what you deserve from the trucking company and their insurance company, you need to have an attorney who knows how to handle a truck accident case. Contact us today for a free consultation.

Where We Work

Our truck accident lawyers work across the State of North Carolina including the following communities: Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Apex, Wilmington, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point, Charlotte, Sanford, Kinston, Rocky Mount, Wilson, Roxboro, Asheboro, Pittsboro, Benson, Nashville, Elizabeth City, Newton-Conover, Hickory, Roanoke Rapids, Weldon, Goldsboro, Henderson, New Bern, Kittrell, Erwin, Dunn, Wake Forest, Wendell, Zebulon, Greenville, Snow Hill, Manteo, Leland, Lumberton, Nagshead, Asheville, Mount Olive, Archdale, Clayton, Youngsville, Stantonsburg, Morrisville. Indeed, the lawyers at Hendren, Redwine & Malone will not hesitate to address an important case anywhere in North Carolina.

In many cases, we meet with our clients in their homes to discuss how we can help them. At Hendren, Redwine & Malone, we pride ourselves on providing personal service and recognize that many people cannot travel to Raleigh to meet their attorneys. Many of our cases have been extremely challenging and were cases other lawyers turned away. We don’t run from hard cases. Call us today for a free consultation about your truck accident case.