Archive for the ‘Trucking Industry’ Category

A tractor trailer gas tanker carrying around 7400 gallons of diesel fuel crashed on Tuesday, August 9 in the early morning when the driver ran into a 2000 Pontiac Sunfire who was stopped on the left side of the road after blowing a tire, according to WBIR Knoxville.

The wreck occurred while the tractor trailer was driving in Tennessee. The driver of the tractor trailer slammed into the car on I-75N and flipped, breaking the tank, and it began leaking the diesel fuel.

Fortunately, the driver of the Pontiac was not injured, but the driver of the truck was flown to UT Medical Center, and his condition is unknown according to WBIR.

The leaking tanking was upright and leaking fuel onto the interstate, and some of the diesel ran off into a creek in the ditch just off the road. The remaining fuel was off-loaded as clean-up crews worked on clearing the roads according to the report.

The driver of the tanker was driving a 2007 International Tractor Trailer for Frazier and Mann out of Virginia.

1-75 was closed for several hours on Tuesday, but one lane was opened around 10:30. The Tennessee High Patrol has confirmed that the interstate has been re-opened according to WBIR.

From 2003-2007 there have been six large truck crashes that have involved hazardous material (HazMat) or released hazardous material, and a total of 120 statewide.

Shelby County had the most HazMat crashes in the state during that time with 19, and Davidson County was a close second with 16.

Our sympathy goes out to the driver of the tractor trailer, and we hope that he will make it through this accident. Thankfully the driver of the other car escaped unharmed.

A copy of the official police report may be obtained by contacting:

1-800-377-HURT (4878)

www.seriousinjury.com

Tennessee truck accidents are just like car wrecks, right?  Well they do involve vehicles on roadways, but that is where the similarity ends.

Finding out what happened and how in any truck accident can be very difficult. The truck driver almost always denies liability, and digging out the important information requires a lawyer to understand the documentation required of all trucking companies, and the regulations that apply.

Trucking accidents are more common than you might believe.  380,000 trucks were involved in crashes in 2008. Over 4000 people were killed.

As an example, the hiring and supervision issues in a trucking case don’t exist in a typical car accident. The trucking company is required to investigate the driver, including their driving history. This means the lawyer in a Tennessee trucking case must understand and pursue all the things that the trucking company was required to do, as well as those things they should do if they want to operate safely.  ”Hours of Service” and driver logs can provide insights on what the driver really had been doing in the hours before the truck accident, and disclose the kinds of information the trucking company had but did nothing with.

If you or anyone you know has been injured or killed in a Nashville truck accident, please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Nashville  personal injury attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000, or contact our office online here.

One last thing: If you are hurt and have any questions at all, contact our office at (615) 356-2000. Don’t delay. Cases involving personal injury or death in Tennessee must be acted on quickly. Time is running. Call for an appointment, if it’s bad enough that you need to read this far into a website blog, it’s bad enough to get an attorney involved.

Tennessee tractor trailer wrecks often have driver fatigue as a factor. There are lots of reasons why truck drivers experience fatigue, but there is no legitimate excuse for a tired truck driver to be driving a tractor trailer in Tennessee, or elsewhere.  Sometimes it is clearly the fault of the trucking company, sometimes clearly the fault of the driver.

A new bill has been proposed  in Congress that might reduce the number of tired truckers on highways. “Jason’s Law” would provide funding to increase the number of rest stops for truckers nationwide.

If they build or expand rest stops, will it decrease truck accidents in Nashville or truck accidents in Tennessee?

Recent truck wrecks I have reviewed don’t point to that, but if even one wreck is avoided isn’t it worth the cost?

If you or anyone you know has been injured or killed in a Nashville tractor trailer accident, please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Tennessee tractor trailer attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000, or contact our office online here.

One last thing: If you are hurt and have any questions at all, contact our office at (615) 356-2000. Don’t delay. Cases involving personal injury or death in Tennessee from a Tennessee tractor trailer accident must be acted on quickly. Time is running. Call for an appointment, if it’s bad enough that you need to read this far into a website blog, it’s bad enough to get an attorney involved.

Blows to the head from a Tennessee car accident are not uncommon. They are also very common in motorcycle accidents, and collisions involving tractor-trailers.

Most of the time people “shake it off” and go on with their lives. We now have the example of the NFL on the importance of taking head injuries very seriously.

If you or anyone you know has been killed or suffered a personal injury in Nashville ( or Tennessee), please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Tennessee personal injury attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000, or contact our office online here. No matter what you do, before you settle your case with an insurance adjuster, read our materials on dealing with insurance adjusters first!

One last thing: If you are hurt and have any questions at all, contact our office at (615) 356-2000. Don’t delay. Cases involving personal injury or death in Tennessee must be acted on quickly. Time is running. Call for an appointment, if it’s bad enough that you need to read this far into a website blog, it’s bad enough to get an attorney involved. Contact us before you settle your case with an insurance adjuster!

Trucking Industry Priorities

The American Trucking Association (ATA) is the national voice of the trucking industry, including their employment of lobbyists in Washington. In a recently released survey of trucking executives (click here), the ATA has published the top 10 issues (according to trucking industry executives) for the trucking industry.  Number 1 was the economy and the first item under the issue “economy” was “tort reform”.  In other words, “Don’t hold us responsible for injuring and killing people, it’s expensive.”  Or maybe “Don’t punish us for doing a lousing job hiring and supervising our employees, it’s expensive”.  The second “issue” for the trucking company execs was government regulation. It can be argued that government regulation is the primary reason that the  trucking industry pays attention to such things as hours of service, drug screening, driver safety, or engine emissions. Tennessee and Nashville truck wrecks are more common because of the interstate system and Tennessee being between destination population centers in the North and South. Certainly when a trucking company is sued, their violations of safety regulations are always important issues for us to talk about and for juries to consider.  As Tennessee attorneys who handle cases against trucking companies, we are constantly surprised at how little real attention is paid to safety. We all have to follow rules, the trucking industry is no exception – even if it’s not one of the top issues for trucking company execs.