Auto Litigation in America Today
May 20, 2010
The United States Trucking Industry is a huge industry. It seems that every time we get on the interstate highway system, there are more and more semi tractor-trailers populating the lanes of travel. It has been estimated that there are as many as five hundred thousand tractor-trailer accidents each year nationwide. The trucking industry has not been blessed with a stellar reputation with regard for safety. In fact, in 2002, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) reported over a hundred thirty thousand injuries and nearly five thousand deaths related to large truck accidents. Those injuries and deaths often flow from driver fatigue, negligent operation of the truck, tire blowouts, improper loading, sudden braking, drug and alcohol use, and repeated driving violations.
Each one of those rigs, while moving down the highway, poses a significant risk to each one of us and our family members. At the Humphrey Law Firm, P.C., we are committed toward improving the safety on our highways through our representation of those who had been injured through the negligent or reckless operation of large semi tractor-trailers on our roadways. There are a multitude of safety rules and regulations which are supposed to govern the operation of these large rigs on our highway system. Oftentimes those safety rules and regulations are ignored. Oftentimes truck drivers are told to disregard those safety rules and regulations so as to get the delivery where it is supposed to go earlier rather than later. It has been estimated by the Highway Traffic Safety Administration that up to thirty percent of the deaths and seventy percent of the injuries on our roadways which involve semi tractor-trailers are directly attributable to fatigued truck drivers.
The large semi tractor-trailers are not responsible for all collisions resulting in injury and death on our roadways. Worldwide it has been estimated in the calendar year 2004 that 1.2 million people were killed (2.2% of all deaths) and fifty million more were injured in motor vehicle collisions. Motor vehicle collisions are the leading cause of death among children worldwide (two hundred sixty thousand children die each year and ten million are injured). Automobile collisions are the sixth leading preventable cause of death in the United States. In 2005, forty-five thousand eight hundred people died in the United States and 2.4 million were injured from automobile collisions.
While there are a multitude of factors that may result in an automobile collision, it is well accepted that greater than fifty percent of crashes are due solely to driver factors. Those factors can include the speed in which the vehicle is being operated, driver impairment from alcohol, physical impairment, old age, sleep deprivation or drug use. Most recently, the use of cell phones while operating an automobile have caused a proliferation of the number of crashes causing serious injury or death.
Again, there are multiple safety rules that govern the operation of automobiles on the roadway. We at the Humphrey Law Firm are committed to improving the safety record on our roadways and preventing serious injury or death from unnecessary automobile collisions. The most important way of improving safety on our roadways is to hold those responsible for those collisions legally in our civil justice system.
If you or a loved one has been injured (or if a loved one has been killed) on our roadways under circumstances that you believe another vehicle and its operator were negligent or reckless, we can advise you of your legal rights in conjunction with that injury or death. Again, there is no charge for an initial consultation and investigation of the merits of such a claim. When we take on such claims, we do so on a contingent fee basis which simply means that we recover nothing for all of the time and effort of our entire office unless we are successful in obtaining for you the recovery you deserve.
