Personal Injury
San Francisco Truck and Semi-Truck Accident Claims
Collisions involving commercial trucks bring in parties, records and insurance that an ordinary car accident claim does not.
More than one party is usually involved
A collision with a commercial truck rarely involves only a driver. Behind the driver there is generally a motor carrier, and behind the carrier there may be a company that loaded the trailer, a contractor responsible for maintenance, a broker who arranged the load, and the owner of the tractor or trailer as separate entities again.
That structure matters for a practical reason: responsibility and insurance do not always sit with the same party, and a claim that looks at the driver alone can miss both. Establishing who did what — and who was entitled to tell whom what to do — is a substantial part of the work in these cases.
The records exist, but not indefinitely
Commercial carriers operate under federal safety regulation, and regulation produces records. Hours-of-service and electronic logging data, driver qualification files, inspection and maintenance history, dispatch messages, and engine control module data can each be decisive about what happened and why.
Almost all of it is kept to a retention schedule, and a good deal of it is overwritten in a matter of weeks. Where a serious collision has occurred, putting a carrier on written notice to preserve those records is time-critical work — and it is work that has to happen long before anyone is thinking about a deadline.
Serious injuries, and the claims that follow them
The physics are unforgiving: a loaded tractor-trailer can weigh many times what a passenger car does, and the injuries in these collisions are correspondingly severe. That severity changes the shape of the claim, because the losses extend years beyond the treatment immediately in front of the injured person.
Where a collision is fatal, the claim available to the family is a wrongful death claim, which has its own rules about who may bring it and what it can recover — wrongful death claims sets those out.
Questions
Common questions
- Why is a truck case different from a car case?
- Three reasons. More parties can be responsible — the driver, the motor carrier, a maintenance contractor, a company that loaded the trailer. Commercial carriers are subject to federal safety regulations that ordinary drivers are not, which creates records that can be obtained. And commercial insurance is usually structured very differently from a private policy.
- What evidence disappears in a truck case?
- Electronic logging and engine data, driver duty records, maintenance and inspection files, dispatch communications and dashcam footage are all routinely overwritten or discarded on a schedule. Where a serious collision has occurred, asking a carrier in writing to preserve those records early is often the single most useful step.
- The truck driver was not at fault. Is that the end of it?
- Not necessarily. A collision can be caused by a shifting load, a maintenance failure, a defective component or a schedule that made compliance impractical. Responsibility can rest with a party who was never at the scene.
- How long do I have?
- Two years from the date of the collision is the general deadline for a personal injury claim in California, and a wrongful death claim generally runs on the same period. A public agency’s vehicle changes that timetable considerably. The evidence question, however, is usually far more urgent than the deadline.
Consultation
Talk to Susan about a truck collision
Every matter begins with a conversation about what happened and what your options are. You will speak with Susan F. Reyes directly.