Maison Law represents the victims of San Luis Obispo truck accidents. Our personal injury lawyers aggressively seek compensation for our clients from the truck driver’s insurer and the trucking company. Please contact us after an accident caused by a truck driver’s recklessness. We provide a free, no-obligation consultation for all local injury victims. It’s a no-risk opportunity to find out what your injury may be worth and how to hold trucking companies fully responsible for recovery costs.
Should I Call a Lawyer After a Truck Accident?
If you are struck by a truck and suffer serious injuries, you should speak to a skilled lawyer about your options. Injuries caused by a semi-truck, farm truck, or delivery van impact are often very serious. The extreme cost of medical care will have commercial truck insurance companies looking for ways to avoid liability. Businesses and their insurance providers can try to blame you for an accident that wasn’t your fault. They may also try to downplay the injuries you’ve suffered.
Your San Luis Obispo truck accident lawyer protects you from these tactics. And if a trucking company is also liable for your injuries, your Maison Law representatives are not afraid to stand up to trucking companies and big businesses like Amazon. We make sure your current medical bills and any care you might need in the future are fully covered.
How Many Truck Accidents Happen in San Luis Obispo Each Year?
In 2023, California’s Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS) recorded at least 38 truck accidents involving injury across San Luis Obispo County, with at least two fatalities recorded. Highway 101 was the scene for sixteen of those truck accidents and both of those tragic deaths happened in Highway 101 truck crashes.
San Luis Obispo sometimes serves as a crossroads of sorts for manufactured goods and shipping. That means motorists will see plenty of heavy trucks on the road. Some of them will be slow-moving, and some will be moving way too fast for comfort. It’s also a city surrounded by dairy farms, orchards, and ranches. There are plenty of farm vehicles and even tractors on the narrow, rural highways. A produce truck may have an unbalanced load and tip over to cause a scary obstacle for drivers.
Loaded-down delivery vans from companies like Amazon and UPS rush through neighborhoods like The Foothill Neighborhood and SLO South. Drivers trying to meet deadlines also make plenty of mistakes and cause frightening collisions.
Truck drivers can work too long and become drowsy at the wheel. Delivery drivers can stare at a cell phone screen and miss a traffic light changing to red. They may be unaware they’ve veered out of a lane. These and other careless mistakes can cause devastating accidents. Drivers and their trucking companies may carry insurance, but it’ll be up to a truck accident attorney to make sure you get the most injury support possible to cover you as long as necessary.
Devastating Truck Accident Injuries
Victims in truck accidents are often subjected to extreme blunt force trauma. They might end up struck underneath tall tractor-trailers. Victims can be made to wait for medical care while they are rescued.
Many victims end up at Adventist Health Sierra Vista Hospital. These are just a few of the truck accident injuries emergency room doctors often treat:
- Brain Injuries: A blow to the head in a truck impact can lead to a Traumatic Brain Injury. Mild to severe concussions are possible. Victims can experience a long or short-term loss of memory, nausea, mood swings, and could have trouble speaking.
- Cervical Spine Injury: This is an injury affecting the spinal column in the neck. The Shepherd Center reports that because these injuries are closer to the brain, they are usually the most severe type of spinal injury in an accident.
- Whiplash: This is another neck injury that can lead to extreme pain for victims. It’s caused by a quick movement back and forth of the head and neck. A rear-end truck collision often causes victims to suffer whiplash.
- Back injuries: Back muscles, ligaments, and tendons often receive microscopic tears in a collision. This can cause back pain that’s difficult to treat and very painful. Back issues can extend over years and require physical therapy decades after an accident.
- Broken Bones: Increased force released in an impact usually means more broken bones for victims. Trucks can crush smaller vehicles and leave victims’ arms and legs compressed to the breaking point. Skull fractures are another serious outcome victims might suffer.
- Organ Damage: The tissue that holds organs in place and connects them may suffer damage and threaten lives. Broken bones can dislodge and be forced into vital organs.
- Permanent Physical Disability: Truck collisions often unleash extreme forces and the injuries that result can easily turn into lifelong ordeals. Victims will need years of financial support to pay for medical equipment, therapy, and surgeries. Victims could also require home and work modifications.
Who is Liable for a Truck Accident?
When dealing with truck accident claims, there are many parties who could actually be to blame for a collision. Your attorney would investigate further to determine every individual driver or company that could be held liable.
Those responsible could include:
The Truck Driver: The driver of the truck involved in your accident is typically the first person you may think of when considering liability. Some truck drivers are owner/operators, meaning they work for themselves. They’ll have to carry commercial driver insurance, but a single driver’s insurance policy probably won’t cover as much in damages as a larger policy held by a company or corporation.
The Trucking Company or Delivery Company: Most truck drivers are hired to work on behalf of a trucking company. This would include shipping companies like Amazon and FedEx. These businesses will usually have commercial insurance policies covering their drivers. Companies might also be liable if they fail to perform proper inspections or fail to perform truck maintenance leading to a collision.
Farm Owners and Agricultural Corporations: The owners of farms, orchards, and ranches will be accountable for the recklessness of their drivers and their accidents. This might include an accident caused by a big rig coming from a packing or canning plant, or a piece of farming machinery traveling along a rural road.
The Manufacturer of Truck Parts: A manufacturer could be held liable for a truck accident if there was faulty or defective equipment at use in the truck and it led to the accident.
Compensation Available to San Luis Obispo Truck Accident Victims
Your Maison Law attorney would determine every party that might need to provide you with injury support. The more insurance policies you can file an injury claim against, the more likely it is that you’ll receive enough support to cover all of your medical bills now and down the road.
These factors should all help determine the amount of compensation you receive.
- Totals on medical bills.
- Life-long support for a permanent physical disability
- Support for the physical pain victims experience
- Support for the emotional trauma and accident and long recovery cause
- Medical travel costs
- Lost wages
- Vehicle repair or replacement
Families who lose a loved one in a San Luis Obispo truck accident are also empowered to seek support. Those left behind would file a wrongful death claim. This civil claim would seek help with funeral costs and remaining medical bills from those at fault.
A San Luis Obispo wrongful death lawyer could file this claim on behalf of the entire family. A lawyer would look to secure future support for families when they’ll be without the care and financial support the deceased can no longer provide in the years ahead.
Contact a San Luis Obispo Truck Accident Attorney
Contact Maison Law to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation with an actual San Luis Obispo truck accident lawyer. We want to hear what happened to you. We’re going to answer your questions and make sure you are fully aware of every party that should have to help you through recovery. A truck driver and the company the driver works for could be fully responsible for your hardships.
If you are seriously hurt and a truck driver is to blame, you may worry about having to take on a major trucking company or corporation. If you feel you’ll need Maison Law’s help to be treated fairly, you don’t have to worry about having the money to hire an attorney. We don’t get paid unless we win your case for you. Then, the attorney fee comes out of the settlement money a trucking company or delivery company must pay you.
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