Motor vehicle accidents are emotional experiences. There’s the stress of dealing with injuries as well as the damage to your vehicle. Filing an insurance claim is also not the most fun process. But when a commercial truck driver is involved in the accident, the insurance process and pursuit of compensation for your injuries is different.
Commercial trucking accidents differ from crashes that just involve passenger cars. One reason is that the truck drivers involved in accidents are usually employed by trucking companies. As the employer, a carrier may bear legal responsibility for its truck drivers’ actions. In addition to a truck driver and the carrier, several other parties may be liable for a truck accident. Trucking companies often send their own investigators to the scene – sometimes having investigators on the scene in less than an hour. In fact, some defense firms have an investigator on-call 24 hours a day to send to the scene of serious accidents. While it is not probable for the injured party to get someone on the scene that quickly, significant information is often gathered in the hours and days following a wreck that simply cannot be found weeks later. For this reason, a thorough review of the scene needs to be completed as soon as possible as vital clues may not be present.