Personal Injury Law

Truck Accident Causation - Critical Factors for Crashes Involving Large Trucks, Buses, and Trailers - St Louis Missouri Truck Accident Lawyer - Study Concludes Driver Behavior Causes Most Truck Accidents

By Benjamin J. Sansone, Esq.

A truck accident injury lawyer needs to be aware of the primary causes of truck accidents as thees causes and statistics become relevant when investigating a truck accident and determining causation and the specific act of negligence by a truck driver. The Large Truck Crash Causation Study (LTCCS) was conducted by the US highway safety administration in an attempt to define the cause of most truck accidents, specifically large trucks, i.e. Semis, tractor trailer, 18-wheelers. The study covered over 900 crashes involving more than 1,100 large trucks and about 950 cars. Out of these 963 crashes there were 249 fatalities and 1,654 injuries.

What are the primary causes of large truck accidents? The primary cause (about 32% of the accidents) were from the truck driver drifting or leaving their lane of travel into another or off the road entirely. The second largest cause (about 29%) is traveling too fast for conditions, cargo shift, mechanical failures, or claimed poor road conditions. Lastly, about 22% were the result of rear end accidents, specifically the truck causing and accident by running into the vehicle in front of it.

Truck accident causation is important to injury lawyers in the prosecution of their client's claims because often the statistics ring very true to us when handling truck accident cases and pining down the cause of the accident and thus the liability on the truck driver's shoulders.

In addition to the critical factors above there are also high risk factors for truck accident causation, specifically, the highest risk factor, cargo shift. To an untrained accident lawyer may mean no fault on the driver, however, cargo shift is often the result of loading the trailer improperly or failing to secure the truck cargo to avoid the cargo shift and the leading cause of truck operators to lose control and cause an accident.

Most of the remaining factors when combined, make up a majority of the high risk factors resulitng in large truck accidents involving injury or death and those are:

1. Truck driver making an illegal maneuver - (9% of truck accidents)
2. Truck driver inattention - (9% of truck accidents)
3. Truck following too close - (5% causation of large truck accidents)
4. Truck driver Over the Counter Drug Use - (17% of truck accidents)
5. Truck driver speeding or traveling too fast for the conditions - (23% of truck accidents)
6. Truck driver failing to keep an adequate lookout - (14% of truck accidents)

LARGE TRUCK CAUSATION STUDY

DOT PRESS RELEASE - Study Concludes Driver Behavior Causes Most Truck Accidents

Full post as published by Missouri Injury Law Blog on November 27, 2007 (boomark / email).