Bowie Truck Accident Attorneys

Following safety rules is critical to protecting the public and for driver’s to maintain their jobs. Every truck driver has to demonstrate that they know the rules and are capable of following the rules. Truck accidents invariably follow violations of these rules that are due fatigue, carelessness, weather conditions and laziness. Truck accidents are often investigated by authorities, the trucking companies risk management team and also their insurance company.  Some of these investigations are done to determine if the truck accident was preventable.   A truck accident attorney should be familiar with the criteria to assess whether a truck accident was preventable. An admission of responsibility by a truck driver may lead to his termination from the company. The truck driver knows the rules that he should have followed and it is important to have a lawyer that knows the same rules. Truck accident attorneys, George Patterson and Maria Patterson have litigated hundreds of truck accident cases. Each truck accident attorney at Patterson law know the detailed requirements of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Many companies that engage in interstate trucking provide copies of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations to their drivers. These detailed requirements provide fertile ground to establish negligence on the part of the driver of a commercial truck.

Truck companies may try to evade responsibility for truck accidents by claiming that they are not required to follow the safety rules.  An experienced truck accident lawyer should know that state regulations often require companies that operate intrastate to abide by federal safety regulations.  There are also industry standards that companies that employ commercial drivers are supposed to follow even if those drivers operate vehicles that weigh 10,000 pounds or less.  If a truck accident lawyer is unaware of these regulations, rules and standards, the professional driver that injured you may not be held to the standard of care that we should expect of a professional driver.

Commercial trucks have larger blind spots that require the proper adjustment of mirrors for the truck drivers to monitor those areas for traffic. The Bowie truck accident attorneys have litigated numerous cases involving unsafe lane changes made by commercial truck drivers into cars that were in known blind spots. Interstate truck drivers are also required to maintain a log documenting the hours that they had been driving as well as the location and times of stops. This information is helpful to determine if a truck driver was sleep deprived or running late. Violations of the rules of the road are more likely to occur when a driver is tired or rushed. Improper truck maintenance also leads to accidents. Truck accident attorney, George Patterson has litigated truck accidents caused by illegally parked trucks and by trucks that failed to have adequate lighting or reflective markings. This is particularly important in preventing night time accidents when trucks are crossing multiple lane roadways. Truck accident attorney, George Patterson has also handled wrongful death claims arising from serious truck accidents.

Early in George Patterson’s career he was hired by a major trucking company to represent the company after many serious truck accidents. One such truck accident occurred when a truck driver ran into multiple cars that were stopped on a highway. The weather reports indicated that there had been fog in the area before the accident. An exhaustive review of the driver’s logs and corresponding records followed. These records are required to be kept under the applicable safety rules.  Errors and ommissions in these documents are often evidence that the truck company or truck driver was violating safety rules.   Mr. Patterson has experience with meeting with truck drivers immediately after serious accidents and sometimes on location. These meetings were done to preserve critical evidence. Trucking companies hire attorneys immediately after serious accidents as a way to shield the lawyers work through attorney-client and attorney work-product privileges. Unless your lawyer knows what evidence to look for, preserve and obtain it is unlikely that the trucking company will voluntarily disclose and/or preserve critical evidence.