How Trucking Companies Avoid Responsibility for a Crash
If you’ve been involved in an accident with a large commercial truck, there’s a chance that the trucking company could be liable for your resulting damages, such as the costs of your medical care, disability, property damage, and harder-to-value pain and suffering. However, the trucking company will do whatever it can to avoid responsibility for the crash.
Knowing how trucking companies avoid responsibility for a crash can help you identify their tactics when they try to stand between you and the compensation you need to move forward with your life.
Controlling the Investigation
The trucking company may attempt to conduct a prompt investigation into your truck accident, but only to find information that helps them fight your legal claim. Some companies might even try to get rid of evidence that proves their driver or the service itself was negligent in some way.
Then, when a federal agency like the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an insurance company, or another independent investigator looks into the crash, they’ll be hard-pressed to find evidence to prove the trucking service is at fault.
Blaming You For the Truck Accident
In Illinois, everyone who contributes to a truck accident can share responsibility for resulting damages – including crash victims themselves. Liability is proportionate to fault. So, the more responsibility a trucking company shares for an accident involving one of its vehicles, the more it’ll have to pay to compensate you for your costs and suffering.
However, your ability to recover compensation is directly impaired by your shared fault. You can recover compensation as long as you’re not primarily responsible for the truck accident. Even then, your damages are reduced proportionately to fault.
The trucking company will try to shift as much of the blame for the truck accident to you as it can in hopes that it avoids responsibility altogether or significantly reduces its financial obligations to you.
Taking Advantage of You During a Stressful Time
The trucking service and its insurance company will have a playbook full of manipulative strategies and tactics specifically designed to get you to walk away with way less money than you deserve, or worse, nothing at all. They might try to bully you, threaten you, or simply use your fragile emotional state against you and scare you into taking a lowball settlement.
On the other hand, they might appear to be sympathetic to your loss and persuade you to take time to focus on your recovery before pursuing compensation. They might hope that you wait too long and let the statute of limitations expire, which could help them sidestep liability for your truck accident.
You can protect yourself against these types of tactics by calling an experienced Chicago truck accident attorney for help immediately after a wreck. At Taxman, Pollock, Murray & Bekkerman, LLC, we can coordinate a prompt and thorough investigation into your truck accident, preserve critical pieces of evidence, defend against claims of shared fault, and force the trucking company and its representation to handle your claim in good faith.
The sooner you call for help, the more likely it becomes that the trucking company will have to take responsibility for your accident and make things right.
Our award-winning Illinois trial attorneys have helped clients win over $750 million in monetary awards. Now, we’re here to help you fight the trucking company’s underhanded tactics and demand the top-dollar case results you deserve, too. Contact us at our Chicago law office for a free consultation today.