San Bernardino Truck Accident Lawyers
The San Bernardino California truck accident attorneys at DiMarco | Araujo | Montevideo have worked diligently for over thirty years helping clients who have been injured in truck accident get the maximum legal compensation they could. Injuries are always tragic but as you may sadly already know, trucking injuries can be catastrophic due to the size and speed of trucks and how heavy their loads are. We have represented clients who have had the full scope of injuries due to trucking accidents from wrongful death and head injuries to broken bones and burn injuries. We strive to remain to be the best San Bernardino trucking accident injury lawyers around. Our firm is ready to start fighting in and out of court on your behalf. Our successful reputation throughout San Bernardino County speaks for itself: We are experienced truck accident lawyers who will work tirelessly for our injured clients so that they can spend their energy on healing from their trucking injuries.
How to File a Truck Accident Lawsuit Claim
You are possibly thinking about how to bring a “big rig” legal cause of action and/or how to file a workers’ compensation claim for a shipping truck catastrophic injury. Please feel free to contact us at any time of the day or night at (909) 436-4610. We will discuss all of your questions and concerns and the following with you during your free consultation:
- Options for how you may be able to do-it-yourself.
- The answers to all of your questions that you have regarding how we can help you navigate the legal system during this very trying time.
- What would actually be involved step-by-step in suing another party and filing your legal claim(s) for workers’ comp and/or third party personal injury.
- Potential litigation issues including: expert witness depositions, investigation, law and motion, pleadings, written discovery, legal evidentiary standards of proof and legal requirements, lay witness depositions, types of causes of action, potential special and general damages including: temporary disability benefits, loss of earnings, medical treatment, bodily injury, and other damages and benefits you are entitled to recover.
- How we could make your case simple, efficient and successful.
Our seasoned truck accidents attorneys and staff are prepared to take the load and stress of a lawsuit off of your shoulders and onto ours. We want to offer you the peace of mind that you will be in good hands. If after meeting with us and discussing with us the numerous crucial steps and costs that are needed to file, litigate, investigate, negotiate and potentially take your trucking injury case to trial, please know that we are always here to step in and handle it for you. We wish you the best of health and the speediest of recoveries.
Contact Our Firm Today
Work Injury Attorneys
Law Firm of DiMarco | Araujo | Montevideo
San Bernardino County, California ~ (909) 436-4610
Please call us any time as we are available by phone 24 hours a day
You and your loved ones deserve the best attorneys in San Bernardino who have the knowhow and training to get you the maximum possible compensation under the law. It is also very important to have comprehensive legal guidance as soon after a trucking accident injury as possible to ensure that you get the timely and complete medical attention you deserve. We are sure that the insurance companies will have a full team of lawyers and investigators to the scene of the accident as quickly as they can. Due to this, you will most likely need to even the playing field as best as possible by taking quick action on getting your own legal team on the case quickly.
Highest Rating for Ethics and Customer Service
The Better Business Bureau gave us their highest award of an A+ so you can rest assured that we will work hard for you. We are ready to start your trucking and hauling work injury, workers’ compensation, and personal injury case so contact our firm at (909) 436-4610. The initial meeting is free and we’ll work on a contingency basis after that where you will not have to pay our firm anything unless we win your case.
Truck Accident Workers’ Compensation
Just like all workers in this state, truckers are required under the law to be covered by workers’ compensation insurance. It provides assistance and support when an employee is injured while working. Workers’ compensation also protects the rights of the injured employee including the fact that the employer cannot penalize or fire employees for filing a workers’ compensation claim. Most of the time, employers are required to pay disability while the injured trucker is unable to work. Workers’ compensation does have limits set in place by law. Furthermore, it does not allow for damages for pain and suffering. The workers’ compensation insurance held by your employer might pay you and your family medical benefits, disability, income, medical expenses, permanent disability compensation, death benefits, and vocational rehabilitation, when the injury warrants such payments. See the information below regarding third parties who are also at fault for trucking accidents.
We Will Give Complete Answers to your Questions
Schedule your free initial consultation today so you can discuss the job injury. We will answer all of your questions including if you are wondering how State Disability Insurance (SDI) works, what the workman comp benefits may end up being specifically for you, and how much a workers’ comp lawyer costs or how much a work injury attorney costs? The good news is that you will not have to pay anything unless and until we win your case. Our firm also strongly believes in educating the client throughout the entire process.
A Third Party Also at Fault
Third parties are people, companies or government entities who are also responsible for all or part of your workplace injury other than just your employer or place of work. By adding the third party case, you may be able to be awarded compensation and benefits beyond that which is provided by the California workers' compensation laws. If you are a filing a workers’ compensation claim but you want to recoup your full lost income and pain and suffering, our firm and our investigators will need to find a responsible third party like that of a road or highway construction firm, truck mechanic, truck manufacturer, or others who was also at fault.
Third Party Cases Need to be Coordinated with the W.C. Claim
You can call one of our local San Bernardino County workers’ comp accident lawyers today to discuss your case, injury and legal options. This may be especially important since cases that may have an additional third party (like a defective product manufacturer or a faulty road design) need to be coordinated and handled correctly since there could be two or more cases for the one truck accident injury. Our experienced truck accident injury lawyers and staff have handled cases like these for over three decades.
Truck Accident Injuries & OSHA
The goal of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (www.osha.gov) is to attempt to keep work environments as safe and healthful as they can. This even includes the work environments of truckers: the freeways, warehouses, truck yards and their mobile workplace of their truck, big rig, 18-wheeler, tanker, semi-tractor trailer, 16-wheeler, and all other types of trucks. OSHA claims on its website that “Every day in this country, more than 14 workers lose their lives in preventable workplace tragedies.” Due to that sad statistic, OSHA continues to attempt to improve freeway safety, road safety, and driving conditions so that less truckers and other drivers get hurt or cause accidents. OSHA even has a section of its laws devoted to trucking drivers and the trucking industry in general.
Enforcing the Safety Regulations
OSHA will investigate injuries and safety code violations by conducting site inspections, interviewing witnesses and employees, checking driving logs, reviewing maintenance records, looking over the black box if there is one and other investigative tactics. Perhaps one of their most successful techniques is that they will keep the names of all truckers or employees who call them regarding unsafe working conditions, OSHA violations, unsafe work hours and potential truck accident risks anonymous, if the employee requests it.
Common Trucking Accident Injuries
Due to the big size and fast speed of many trucks, most of the potential results of truck accidents can be traumatic. Concussions, blindness, broken bones, coma, amputation, lacerations, whiplash, contusions, back injury, ligament sprains, brain injury, burns, neck injury, becoming deformed, cuts, being crushed, muscle strains, heavy bleeding, and death are all potential outcomes of trucking accidents. The truck accident injury attorneys of DiMarco | Araujo | Montevideo have over three decades of experience assisting truckers or those hit by a truck with their legal cases for all the above results, injuries, and more. We will stay by your side throughout the legal journey. If you do not have your own doctor or medical plan for your truck highway accident, truck loading accident, truck unloading accident or truck road accident, we can help find a local one that will be able to give you the comprehensive and timely treatment that you legally and ethically deserve.
How Trucking Accidents Occur
Truckers can be asked to drive for many hours on end throughout all parts of the day and night. They invariably encounter many types of challenges, conditions and dangers. A main reasons truck accidents cause so many injuries and deaths each year is that trucks can be forty times heavier than the car, motorcycle or van it collides with on the highway or road or in the parking lot. Over 70 percent of truck accident injury victims were not truckers or truck passengers. Trucking accidents can happen in many ways including air-brake failure, rear-ender, illegal lane change, rollover, unsafe lane change, improper loading, under the influence driver, brake failure, jack-knife, out of control downhill, an intoxicated driver (DUI), spill, poor repair or maintenance of the truck or car who started the accident, a drunk driver, overworked driver, negligent hiring, drugged driver, driver on drugs, improperly secured load, illegal loads, driver on his cell phone, run-off-road collision, another driver hit the truck, load too heavy, driver fell asleep at the wheel, side collision, and animal collision. It is important that the trucking company you work for always keeps up on the maintenance of your truck as that helps avoid some trucking accidents.
Additional Truck Accident Causes
Some more types of causes of trucking accidents that occur in San Bernardino include collision with a pole or stop light, swerved into a car, collision with a median or barrier, hit a pedestrian, hit a deer, side swiped a car, speeding, jack brake failure, head-on collision, poor road construction, equipment failure, sleep deprivation, poor eyesight or poor reflexes, load shift, poor road design, hit road debris, swerved off road, blind spot accident, poor road condition, driver eating or calling, too much downhill speed, trucker texting, inexperienced UHaul driver, low warehouse clearance, low bridge clearance, low building clearance, or a distracted trucker on a cell phone while driving. Trucking accident injuries can be catastrophic, serious, tragic and/or fatal and we hope that you give our firm the chance to defend you, get you the compensation you deserve and protect your rights.
The Trucking Companies Response
Each trucking company and manufacturer has been the defender in countless truck accident injury legal proceedings and they have a team of experienced defense attorneys ready to do what it takes, including their trick techniques, to win the case or minimize the compensation payout. It would be tough for an individual to take on such a well funded and motivated foe.
Legal Assistance Helps You Get the Maximum Compensation
You need our legal assistance to have the best chance of receiving the maximum compensation that is legally possible for your truck accident injury. Trucking companies have been accused of tying up the legal process so that individuals cannot sustain the legal effort (unless you have a law firm that works on a contingency basis like us so we won’t give up since we only get paid if we win), not enforcing their trucker rules and regulations, falsifying maintenance records, falsifying driving logs, and losing critical records like the receipts, black box, computer records, driving logs and more.
Trucking Companies Start Fighting their Legal Case within 1 Hour
In fact, when a trucker is involved in an accident, they radio their dispatcher. The dispatcher then gets the trucking company’s lawyers and investigative team to the trucking accident site within an hour and sometimes faster than even the tow trucks, police, ambulance or fire trucks are able to arrive. Their team immediately starts to defend the case and possibly even destroy, hide or change the evidence. If the large company you will be up against in court is legally defending their case so quickly after the accident, shouldn’t you be too? Call us as soon as you can as we can help you preserve the evidence and protect your side of the case. It is important that you are proactive when facing the above and hire some of the best San Bernardino County truck accident attorneys at our firm as we’ve been representing truck accident victims since 1979. We know how to help you win your case and get to Maximum Medical Improvement as soon as you can. By the way, if you were injured awhile ago and you did not have lawyers at the scene of the accident, do not worry. That is typical as who (other than the big trucking companies) thinks about that when they’ve been hurt and they are shaken up. We can still help you so please call us.
What to do After a Truck Accident
After any truck accidents or any vehicle accident for that matter, it is a good idea to try to remain as calm as you can. Decisions that are made following a truck accident may affect your health and your potential legal case, so be sure to contact your family or your friends for help after you call 911 and you secure the accident evidence. It is important to get immediate medical attention as many injuries, such as neck injuries, whiplash injuries and back injuries, do not show immediate symptoms but for the best medical recovery, they do need quick treatment. Be sure to also document and retain as much evidence from the trucking and car accident scene as possible including taking your own pictures, writing your own records and protecting your vehicle that was involved in the crash. Our trained staff will want to investigate the vehicle for signs of defect or evidence to help with the case so be sure it is not tampered with.
Possible Compensations for You
The California state law is designed to protect the rights of people that get injured due to the fault of another company, person, or corporation. The law takes into account the many ways your life could have been effected due to the 18-wheeler, big rig, semi-truck, or tractor trailer accident since injuries caused by a bad truck accident can be life-threatening, career hindering, life altering, debilitating, and tragic. The types of compensation that you could be entitled to receive potentially may include punitive damages, medical bills, payment for your life-care, changes to your lifestyle, property damage, loss of current and future wages, pain and suffering, and more. We can discuss with you during the free consultation whether your case and circumstance warrant each of those compensation categories.
Government Oversight & Liability
All levels of our governments have tried to make trucking and driving on the CA roads safer over the last few decades. This is especially true as our roads have become more and more crowded over the years. For the trucking industry, they have many route, weight, size, and design regulations and restrictions. In terms of whose rules they have to follow: When the trucks stay on the National Network of US and state highways that are considered interstate freeways, they come under federal limits. When those same trucks turn onto intrastate highways and freeways, they come under the state’s rules.
Other Measures to Protect
To protect our bridges and overpasses, there is the Federal Bridge Gross Weight Formula that governs the relationship between weight and axel spacing. Weigh stations are also an important tool for the government to use to enforce its trucking regulations. In addition, the government continues to pass laws that require trucks to add safety features, quality improvements, sensors, warning lights and secondary safety features. The CHP is another force that is used to create a safer highway system to drive on.
CalTRANS
Caltrans is the California state department that manages more than 50,000 miles of freeway and highway driving lanes and works with local agencies to connect local streets and roads to the highway’s offramps, onramps, overpasses and interchanges. CalTRANS has been involved in the high speed flow of cars, trucks, semi-trucks, vans, SUVs and commerce in this state for over one hundred years.
Road Conditions that Cause Accidents
Additional causes of vehicle and trucking accidents on our roads and highways are defective road designs, ineffective curve or downhill/uphill designs, poor road conditions, a lack of a center divider or guard rails, and unmaintained roads and highways. In addition, poor water flow and water drainage can cause puddles, slippery conditions, loose gravel and other unsafe conditions. Caltrans may also be liable if it is found that their traffic control devices are negligent or not properly installed such as stop signs, reflectors, road paint, warning signage, traffic signage, traffic lights, and detours. We can help you look at your semi-truck accident, 18-wheeler accident or other truck accident to see if CalTRANS was partially or fully at fault.
Limiting the Hours Truck Drivers Can Work Continuously
Since some of the main causes for truck accidents are sleepy, overworked or exhausted truck drivers, the federal and state governments have also tried to regulate the amount of hours a trucker can drive within a certain set period of time. A trucker keeps a log book or an electronic on-board recorder to track their hours of driving, breaks, out-of-cab time and duties. The current hours of service rules revolve around a max of eleven hours of driving in a fourteen hour window which is then supposed to be followed by a ten hour period of rest. Truckers are also required to get a commercial driver’s license to be able to operate a truck in the United States.
Governments Have a Duty to Oversee Construction
Most of the time, governments have direct oversight over the construction projects of all road and traffic projects including street, bridge, underpass, overpass, intersection, and freeway projects. They also plan the flow of traffic and control it using signals, reflectors, lanes, warning signs, and other signage. This oversight can create a duty and responsibility of the building, safety, permit and/or planning division of any municipalities, state and federal governments. Most agencies have a building and planning division that oversees commercial and residential construction projects. We have experience with cases involving government entities and we will be sure to look at that part of your accident.
US and State Commercial Licenses
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has developed a set of minimum standards that each state needs to meet or exceed for their version of the commercial licenses. Class A, Class B and Class C commercial licenses are needed when one is driving a vehicle with either the capacity to hold a certain number of passengers or a certain amount of load or cargo. Further tests are needed for drivers of semi trailers, school buses, tank trucks, and trucks with hazardous materials.
Distracted Truck and Car Drivers Cause Accidents
The Department of Transportation and CalTrans are also working hard to find a way to prevent trucking accidents and trucking injuries due to distracted drivers. Texting, cell phones, drinking, eating, smoking and loud music all have contributed to truck accidents in the last year.
Types of Trucks & Tractor Trailers
Since 1979, our firm has helped thousands of clients who have suffered all types of work injuries and personal injuries. We are proud to say that a rather large number of those clients have been injured truckers who we’ve been able to help rebuild their lives through a positive settlement or trial verdict. The major types and brands of trucks and tractor trailers that are on the road today include big rig, Kenworth, platform truck, box truck, motorhome, Renault Magnum truck, Dodge truck, Ford truck, GMC truck, Penworth, semi-trailer, semi-truck, Peterbilt, Mack, flat bed, tractor, tanker, tractor trailer, cab over, double trailer, refrigeration truck, 18 wheeler, open truck, car/vehicle transport, dump trailers, enclosed truck, live stock truck, Bobtail, construction trucks, cement truck, three axel truck, Colet, grocery truck, retail truck, Pierce truck, Oshkosh, Crane Carrier Corporation, horse trailer, ballast tractor, and cement mixer.
Additional Trucks that are on California Roads Today
More types of trucks and tractor trailers include GINAF, Leyland, Freightliner, Sterling, dump truck, pickup truck, recreational vehicle (RV), tow truck, mobile crane truck, heavy hauler, log carrier, truck-mounted crane, fire truck, Western Star, garbage truck, crane truck, pic trailer, plant trailer, Daimler truck, multi-stop truck, bottler truck, DAF truck, Tata Motors, Hyundai truck, Isuzu truck, UD Nissan truck, oil tanker, dog truck, Hino Truck, panel truck, Chevrolet truck, MAN truck, and full-sized pickup trucks. All of these types and brands of trucks are useful for what they were designed to do and accomplish but it is crucial that you are always on alert for truck defects or product defects as they can cause truck accidents as well.
Major California Truck Routes
California has some of the country’s biggest ports, airports, farms, manufacturers, refineries and stores that need to ship their raw materials, products, supplies, produce, and merchandise all across the state and country. Some of the major truck routes in California where trucking accidents happen are: Interstate Highway 805 (I-805), Interstate Highway 19 (I-19), Interstate Highway 405 (I-405), Interstate Highway 80 (I-80), Interstate Highway 10 (I-10), Interstate Highway 5 (I-5), Interstate Highway 14 (I-14), Interstate Highway 99 (I-99), Interstate Highway 40 (I-40), Interstate Highway 8 (I-8), Interstate Highway 215 (I-215), Interstate Highway 15 (I-15), Interstate Highway 60 (I-60), Interstate Highway 905 (I-905), Interstate Highway 395 (I-395), and Interstate Highway 710 (I-710). San Bernardino has an especially large amount of trucks within its borders due to Ontario Los Angeles International Airport. Every single day of the year, many thousands of trucks, semi-trucks, tractor trailers and 16 wheelers use our highways to move goods to and from airports, warehouses and ports and throughout the rest of our state.
Call Our Firm for Quality Legal Help
We believe that every injured person deserves a chance to discuss their case and their legal options. We encourage you to call us regardless of whether you believe your case has merit. We will be honest and forthright with you throughout the trial. We are well known throughout San Bernardino County, California, Upland, Ontario, Orange County, Rancho Cucamonga, Riverside, Rialto, Los Angeles, Chino, Victorville, Chino Hills, Long Beach, Apple Valley, San Diego, and San Francisco as top trucking accident attorneys who know how to help you. We offer a free initial consultation and case evaluation for all injured truckers. Even after that first no-cost meeting, we work on a contingency basis where you won’t owe us anything unless we win your injury case. The San Bernardino trucking injury attorneys at DiMarco | Araujo | Montevideo are willing to have the meeting at your home or hospital room if you are unable to come to our office.
We are available to meet Monday through Friday between 8:30am and 5:30pm and we can also setup appointments on Saturdays, Sundays and in the evening. Many throughout San Bernardino consider us to be the best trucking accident lawyers around. Let us represent your trucker accident injury and start the process of protecting your rights.
Law Firm of DiMarco | Araujo | Montevideo
San Bernardino County, California ~ (909)-436-4610
