With its position just a couple of hours outside of Chicago, Rockford can see a great deal of truck traffic each year. That heavy truck traffic helps move the goods that many people need to their locations, but it may also mean considerable accident risk for other drivers. Truck accidents often mean substantial injuries and a long road to recovery for many victims.
Fortunately, if you suffer serious injuries in a truck accident, you do not have to handle your legal search for compensation on your own. Contact Zayed Law Offices Personal Injury Attorneys today to learn more about your rights after a truck accident in Rockford.
Zayed Law Offices Personal Injury Attorneys: Relentless Legal Representation for Rockford Truck Accident Victims
At Zayed Law Offices Personal Injury Attorneys, we have considerable experience handling truck accident claims.
Take a look at some of our past results:
- $1 million awarded to a truck accident victim
- $725,000 awarded to the victim of a truck accident
- $475,000 awarded following a truck accident
- $360,000 awarded after a truck accident
- $325,000 awarded to a truck accident victim
We cannot guarantee the results of future truck accident claims based on the results seen by our past clients. However, we do handle each claim with the same level of determination and commitment.
Many truck accident victims find that dealing with the insurance company on their own leaves them struggling to get the compensation they really deserve for those injuries. At Zayed Law Offices Personal Injury Attorneys, we work to level the playing field, providing our clients with comprehensive legal support as they pursue the compensation they deserve.
We help collect the evidence our clients need to establish liability.
Truck accident claims can prove tricky. Frequently, truck accidents involve multiple components, including involvement from the trucking company. We help seek out all the evidence our clients need to establish their right to compensation and prove who caused the accident.
We interview witnesses, review any video footage of the accident if available, and look at the damage to the vehicles. Furthermore, we look at the truck driver’s records to get a better idea of whether distraction or exhaustion may have caused the accident.
We make sure our clients know how much compensation they should expect for their truck accident losses.
After a truck accident, many victims end up confused and unsure about how much compensation they should expect. Too often, insurance companies prey on that confusion, refusing to offer the compensation those victims deserve.
At Zayed Law Offices Personal Injury Attorneys, we work with our clients to establish the real financial losses they faced because of the truck accident, then give them an idea of the compensation they should expect from a reasonable truck accident claim.
We help our clients fight for the compensation they deserve.
It can take time to establish the full compensation you deserve and pursue it effectively after a serious truck accident. The insurance company may even try to extend the length of your claim so that you will prove more likely to accept a low settlement offer. At Zayed Law Offices Personal Injury Attorneys, we remain relentless in pursuing justice for our clients.
Rockford, Truck Accidents: Common Causes
Driving a big truck safely requires a great deal of skill and attention. When everything goes well, truck drivers may have smooth roads and easy runs. However, even minor challenges can contribute to severe truck accidents, and dealing with that risk can prove incredibly difficult.
Truck Driver Distraction
According to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations, truck drivers can spend up to eleven hours of a fourteen-hour shift on the road. Unfortunately, those long hours can quickly translate to road haze. Not only that, truck drivers spend enough hours on the road that it becomes increasingly easier to grow distracted, their attention on things other than the task of safely hauling their cargo to its destination.
Driver distraction can prove particularly dangerous for truck drivers, since they need more room to maneuver than the average passenger vehicle and may, as a result, cause more serious injuries.
Driver Drowsiness
Not only can those long hours on the road increase the risk of distraction, they may considerably increase the chances that the driver will grow drowsy behind the wheel. Long hours on the road and long days away from home can make truck drivers very tired and leave them struggling to keep their eyes open.
Drowsy drivers may show many characteristics of driving while distracted or inebriated. Worse, however, they may fall asleep behind the wheel. With nothing controlling a big truck, it can pose a substantial danger to everyone around it on the road.
Poor Weather Conditions
Rockford gets an average of just 188 sunny days per year. During any given year, it sees 37 inches of rain and 35 inches of snow. Those higher-than-average bad weather days can spell disaster for many truck drivers as they come through the area. In poor weather conditions, many drivers have a hard time navigating safely in their big trucks, which can significantly raise the risk of an accident.
Inadequate Driver Training
Driver shortages have increased in Rockford. Unfortunately, driver shortages mean that trucking companies may push their drivers harder, including sending them out on the road before they have the training they need to navigate safely.
Truck drivers with inadequate training may not know how to handle busy I-90 or I-39 traffic or increase overall safety when they encounter drivers behaving dangerously on the road.
Speeding
Speeding substantially increases accident risk for all drivers. Rockford truck drivers, however, may notice an increase in danger from speeding compared to the drivers of passenger vehicles. Speeding trucks require considerably more room to slow down safely, and those truck drivers may have a hard time maneuvering well enough to avoid a collision at those high rates of speed.
Blind Spot Accidents
Big trucks frequently have extremely large blind spots, which can make it very difficult for truck drivers to keep track of what happens around them. The average big truck has blind spots on every side of the vehicle. When the truck driver fails to adequately track the movement of other drivers, it can result in a blind spot collision.
Common Truck Accident Injuries in Rockford
Because of the greater mass of the average big truck, truck accidents frequently result in substantial injuries. Victims of truck accidents may end up with injuries that can have long-term consequences.
Traumatic Brain Injury
Dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury can mean that the victim has to completely rearrange his life to manage the challenges. Traumatic brain injury interferes with cognitive functions. Victims with traumatic brain injury may notice decreases in memory, focus, creative problem-solving, and even emotional regulation tasks.
Often, those challenges impact the victim’s work and leisure life alike. Traumatic brain injury can also, in some cases, lead to personality changes that may cause problems with the victim’s relationships.
Back and Neck Injuries
Truck injuries frequently result in substantial back and neck injuries. They may cause anything from herniated discs and muscle damage to spinal cord injuries, which could result in full paralysis below the site of the injury. Back and neck injuries can interfere with mobility or cause ongoing pain when the victim tries to engage in even common tasks, which means that the victim may end up out of work for a long time while dealing with back and neck pain.
Amputations
In extreme cases, the damage caused by a truck accident may result in amputation. Amputees often have significant limitations in mobility or struggle with independence, especially in the early days after the accident. After the permanent loss of a limb, some victims choose prosthetic limbs to help them get around or improve functionality.
While those devices can help, they do not offer a perfect replacement for a biological limb. Victims can also expect to have significant ongoing expenses related to prosthetic replacement since the average prosthetic requires replacement every three and five years.
Broken Bones
Often, truck accidents result in multiple broken bones. Truck accident victims may have a hard time maintaining independence while broken bones heal, especially in the case of multiple broken bones. Furthermore, broken bones may mean ongoing, long-term treatments, including surgery and physical therapy. Some patients with broken bones notice that the pain in the affected limb lingers long after the initial accident.
Recovering Compensation After a Rockford Truck Accident
Following a truck accident in Rockford caused by another party’s negligence, you may recover compensation for your injuries and financial losses.
First, you will work with an attorney to determine who bears liability for the accident and, therefore, whom you can file a claim against. Often, the truck driver will bear liability for the accident due to direct acts of negligence, including distraction, inebriation, or ignoring the rules of the road.
In other cases, however, other entities may bear liability for the accident. For example, the truck driver’s company might bear liability for an accident caused by dangerous policies that increased the risk of the accident.
At Zayed Law Offices Personal Injury Attorneys, we cannot guarantee the compensation you will recover after your truck accident, but we can help you break down the losses you sustained and give you a better idea of the compensation you might expect.
Your Medical Costs
Truck accident injuries may require substantial, ongoing medical treatment—and that means substantial medical bills that you may have to contend with after the accident. Keep track of all the medical costs you may face so that you can put them together in a comprehensive injury claim following your truck accident. You may need to include the cost of emergency medical treatment and long-term treatment costs: hospitalization, ongoing procedures to treat your injuries, follow-up appointments, therapy, and durable medical equipment, for example.
Your Income Losses
In addition to the higher bills that may appear after your accident, you may find that your injuries prevent you from generating income the way you normally would. You might have to miss work, either short-term or long-term, following your Rockford truck accident. Sometimes, your injuries may prevent you from performing your usual job duties altogether. Other times, your employer might prefer that you recover before coming back to work.
You may also have to miss work for:
- Follow-up appointments
- Additional treatments and procedures
- A drop to part-time hours due to the extent of your injuries
Talk to your lawyer about the lost income you have faced because of your truck accident, including vacation time or sick leave you may have had to use as you recovered.
Your Pain and Suffering
While you may have any number of financial losses related to your truck accident, you may also find yourself contending with non-financial losses. Serious injuries often cause immense pain during the recovery process.
Furthermore, you may find yourself missing out on activities or dealing with broken relationships related to your injuries. An attorney can help you pursue compensation for those non-financial losses by adding compensation for pain and suffering to your truck accident claim. Let your attorney know about the losses you have faced due to your injuries.
Do You Need a Truck Accident Attorney in Rockford?
If a truck driver’s negligence injured you in Rockford, you may deserve compensation. At Zayed Law Offices Personal Injury Attorneys, we help our clients get a better idea of the compensation they deserve and relentlessly pursue the best possible resolution to their claims. Contact Zayed Law Offices today at (815) 205-1519 for your free consultation.
