Ep. 43 - Truck Wreck Experts | After the Crash

Scott Faultless:
Safety costs money. Bad trucking companies, bad actors don’t make that investment in safety. They usually have the worst equipment, and they have bad brakes, they have fatigued drivers, and those are factors right there that if you have a semi coming down the road at highway speed, and they don’t touch their brakes or their brakes don’t work, you’re in for a catastrophic collision.

David Craig – Host:
I’m attorney Dave Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelley and Faultless. I’ve represented people who have been seriously injured or who have had a family member killed in a semi or other big truck wreck for over 30 years. Following the wreck, their lives are chaos. Often, they don’t even know enough about the process to ask the right questions. It is my goal to empower you by providing you with the information you need to protect yourself and your family. In each and every episode, I will interview top experts and professionals that are involved in truck wreck cases. This is After the Crash.

Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of After the Crash, the podcast that deals with truck wrecks throughout our country and issues dealing with trucks and big trucks, concrete trucks, box trucks, semis, buses, and other commercial motor vehicles. Today, we have a special guest, somebody who I know extraordinarily well, my partner Scott Faultless. Scott was one of the founding partners of the law firm of Craig, Kelley and Faultless. I’ve known Scott since somewhere around 1990 when he and I started working together, and we’ve been working together since.

Scott is constantly or consistently recognized by Super Lawyers, as well as US News Best Lawyers. He has won and has been presented the prestigious Sagamore of the Wabash, which is awarded by the governor of the state of Indiana for people who have been very worthwhile and active in the community and that make Indiana a better place. In addition to that, he’s a Board of Regents member of the ATAA. That is the premier trucking group that represents victims of truck wrecks throughout the United States, and in order to be on that board, you have to actually be board-certified in truck accident law.

Scott is board-certified in truck accident law and is one of the few lawyers in the country that is board-certified. That’s a vetting process that they go through that’s approved by the ABA that makes sure that lawyers are actually qualified, experienced in the area of truck wreck law. There’s less than a hundred lawyers that are board-certified, and Scott is one of those. In Indiana, there are only four lawyers at the time of this podcast that are board-certified in truck accident law, and Scott and I are two of the four. So that’s an extraordinarily difficult, challenging thing to do, and I’m proud of the fact that Scott and I both have that recognition.

In addition, Scott does a lot of the appellate work. I always say he’s the brain of the law firm. He does a lot of our briefs and research, but he is also asked on a regular basis to protect the citizens of the State of Indiana by filing briefs on cases that are not even his. There are cases that are not even Craig, Kelley and Faultless cases, but he’s asked by other lawyers or by the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association to participate in key important issues to help protect the citizens. These are what we call amicus briefs, and he regularly files amicus briefs on behalf of people that aren’t even his clients. He is very active in the law of personal injury and specifically very active in the law that deals with truck accidents. So Scott, welcome to the podcast.

Scott Faultless:
Hi, Dave. It’s good to be here. I’m glad you finally invited me.

David Craig – Host:
Scott, he’s just down the hall so I get to talk to him all the time. It’s good to have him on the podcast. The podcast is designed for average everyday people, folks who are not lawyers, but sometimes lawyers participate or watch these, and I’m sure today’s episode they’ll find educational and informative. The one area that I wanted to talk to Scott about and have him share his insights was when there’s a catastrophic truck accident and our law firm is called, the first question that people want to know is what happened and why it happened, but as lawyers representing the victims, we have to be concerned about what type of recovery we can make for these people.

Oftentimes, it may be the breadwinner of the family, somebody who the family’s dependent upon their income to pay their bills, their mortgage, all their other expenses. The first question is, how do you replace a breadwinner financially? You’ll never replace them as a person, but how do you do that financially? One of the things you have to look at is insurance coverages and how much money there is available. Let’s start off, Scott – let’s talk about insurance coverages. Do truck and commercial motor vehicles carry different types of insurance than what cars do?

Scott Faultless:
Yes. In many states, there are relatively low amounts of insurance that the states require you to purchase and have cover your vehicle when you drive, so that in case you’re in a crash, there’s coverage for the person who’s harmed. In semi cases, it’s very different. That amount is rated by federal law for interstate commerce cases, and that minimum amount is $750,000. That amount has been in place since almost 1980, so that amount has not changed in over 40 years. Even though the cost of everything has increased over the course of 40 years, the amount of insurance that truck companies are required to have as a minimum amount has not changed during that time. Medical bills have increased, the amount people earn has increased, everything in life has increased except for that minimum amount, and that causes problems, particularly in catastrophic cases.

David Craig – Host:
Has there been attempts to change that law? And, who’s against it?

Scott Faultless:
There have been numerous attempts, both through Congress, as well as through the Department of Transportation, which is where federal motor care safety regulations are formulated. Not surprisingly, the trucking industry is consistently against it, both in terms of their lobbying efforts, as well as their financial contributions to members of Congress to oppose it. They don’t want that increased cost, even though when they harm someone, those costs have increased substantially over the last 40 years.

David Craig – Host:
Just to make sure that folks understand. So, if there’s a wreck on the interstate, and unfortunately, – let’s say there’s five cars involved – and there are multiple people, somebody from each vehicle severely injured and maybe some people are killed, is it $750,000 per car? How is that divvied up amongst all these people that are injured?

Scott Faultless:
Well, that’s the hard part. Oftentimes, there is not enough insurance coverage to cover all the losses for everyone involved in a single crash. Using your example, if there’s five vehicles, and if everyone suffers a serious injury, plus, you have their vehicles that were damaged, and because that $750,000 covers both the injury to your person and/or the death and also the property damage to the vehicles, all of a sudden, it doesn’t take very much, particularly with the expensive cars these days, for that $750,000 to be consumed very quickly, and people throughout the entire crash are grossly undercompensated.

David Craig – Host:
So, that’s not $750,000 per person?

Scott Faultless:
No, it’s for one crash.

David Craig – Host:
You and I’ve had cases where the life care plans, if somebody is paralyzed or has a severe brain injury and requires 24/7 care for the rest of their life and they’re young, with the cost of medical treatment, cost of 24/7 care, that can exceed $750,000 today.

Scott Faultless:
Very easily, even in cases that are not catastrophic, but yet people are dealing with lifelong physical problems. They’re going to require ongoing care. That can quickly exceed the $750,000 by itself. A catastrophic case, the person there is making a fractional recovery of what their case is worth.

David Craig – Host:
This insurance limit, the $750,000 that’s been there for what you said 40 years, that’s got to take care of somebody for the rest of their life. So, even if you have one person with catastrophic injury, somebody that’s got to be taken care of for the rest of life, they don’t get to go back and collect more insurance. That’s it?

Scott Faultless:
Well, that’s where my job comes in is looking for other insurance, other sources of recovery to help cover the loss, and there’s several things we have to do. The amazing part about all of this is that there’s a certain group of trucking companies that cause the overwhelming number of crashes on our roads, and I’ll call them bad actors. They don’t do what’s required in terms of safety. They don’t maintain their brakes. They don’t train their drivers. They don’t inspect their tractors and trailers regularly. The whole world can look at these and identify these bad actors because the information is online. If you know their DOT number and/or their name, you can look them up and look at their safety record and get an idea, “Is this a good or bad trucking company?”

The ones that are bad, you can figure out relatively quickly by just simply looking it up on the Internet. Anybody can do it. Any insurance company, any shipper, any broker, any other truck company hiring can look it up and see, “Is this a bad actor or not?” Unfortunately, the bad actor is the one causing a lot of the crashes.

David Craig – Host:
I recently read that 10% of the trucking companies out there are causing almost all of the damage and all of the wrecks. So most trucking companies just make sure people talk to us all the time about where we’re against truckers or we’re against trucking companies, but that’s not true. 90% of the companies we believe are safe and run pretty safe, reasonable operations. Most truck drivers out there are just people who are working hard, who are trying to make a living, and take care of their own families. But it’s that 10% or less that you’re talking about that are really, really bad, and the bad ones seem to be, or at least from my experience after doing this for 38 years, the bad ones seem to be getting worse.

Scott Faultless:
They are getting worse, and the bad ones cause the worst wrecks too, because they usually have the worst equipment, and they have bad brakes. They have fatigued drivers. Those are factors right there that if you have a semi coming down the road at highway speed, and they don’t touch their brakes or their brakes don’t work, you’re in for a catastrophic collision. Those are the bad trucking companies typically that are doing that. What you have is bad actors who, because they have a poor safety record and/or a history of crashes, their cost of buying insurance, this minimum amount of $750,000, goes up substantially because they’re a bad actor. They’re an unsafe trucking company. So what do they do? They simply change their name from ABC Trucking Company to XYZ Trucking company, same trucks, same drivers, same phone number. Everything’s the same except for the name.

When they do that, when they get a new name and a new DOT number, now they have a clean safety record. That allows them to buy insurance at a much cheaper rate, the $750,000, at a much cheaper rate than what they would’ve been charged if they simply kept their name and lived up to their poor safety record. In the industry, these are called chameleon carriers, it’s the same truck, just a different name. Just like a chameleon changes its colors, a chameleon trucking company has just simply changed its name and keeps running these unsafe trucks on our roads, and they get hired. That’s where the big problem is, because they get hired because they’re skimping on the cost of being safe. Good trucking companies invest in their drivers, they train them, they retrain them, they coach them, they monitor their performance, they invest in good mechanics, make sure that their trucks and trailers are sound and safe to be on the road.

Safety costs money. Bad trucking companies, bad actors don’t make that investment in safety. When you do that, you can outbid loads against good trucking companies, and that’s what happens. It’s known within the transportation industry that there’s these bad actors that don’t spend money on safety, and they can outbid the good trucking companies, and they get hired by shippers, by other motor carriers to haul their loads, and by freight brokers. That’s who we start looking at when we have a bad actor with only $750,000 insurance, and we try to figure out is there other insurance that may cover this load or other people who may be responsible for getting this load into this bad trucking company’s hands.

David Craig – Host:
I think that for people to understand, I know you and I worked on a case down in Jennings County, Indiana, where there was a chameleon carrier. It was a carrier that’s bad news, that’s dangerous, and it changes its name and identity in order to get insurance in order to get work. Why don’t you talk a little bit about that case?

Scott Faultless:
Sure. We had a case where a grandma and grandpa had picked up their granddaughter and were taking her back to their house for a fun evening together. She was going to spend the night with her grandparents. They were stopped at the bottom of the hill to turn left onto their county road to where their house was, and a semi came down the hill and they don’t have brakes, and it rams into the rear of them, killing the grandmother and injuring the granddaughter and the grandfather. Well, come to find out, that particular truck earlier that day had been stopped over in Ohio, and the truck driver who had that load initially had called the owner of the company and said, “Hey, I can hear the brakes hissing. I can’t lock up the brakes to shift my load, because the load was out of balance and actually overweight on the rear axles.”

So, he told the owner, “I’m not driving this,” and the owner comes says, “Get in the truck, drive this route.” He told him the route to take so he wouldn’t have to go past any weigh stations to be inspected or weighed, and the guy said, “No.” We had an honest truck driver doing his job properly, but the owner of the company was a bad actor. And he got in his truck with another guy and drove from Mitchell, Indiana to Ohio where he got in the truck and left the good truck driver by the curb to find his own way home. Then, he drove the route he told the good truck driver to take to avoid weigh stations and avoid being inspected. He’s driving with bad brakes, he knows it. Then he comes over a hill, and he can’t stop because he has bad brakes. That’s the type of bad characters that unfortunately we deal with time and time again in many of our cases.

David Craig – Host:
In that case, we found out through investigation that, in fact, that guy had changed his name and that he was one of those people that the government was on the radar of being shut down. Tell us a little bit about why that was a chameleon carrier.

Scott Faultless:
So, two or three years before this crash – because these type of things build up over time, they don’t happen overnight – he had a compliance review by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association, and they cited him. He actually had a conditional safety rating under his old name, and then, finally, he actually got an unsatisfactory rating, and that meant that they were going to put him out of business. So, what he did is that he gave them some more information and improved a little bit so that they could make him conditional safety rating, and that allowed him to keep taking loads.
Then, roughly two or three months before he knew the next compliance review was coming up, he changed his name, got a clean safety record and got new insurance, but he was at the same facility with the same phone number, same trucks, same drivers and the same owner. Everything was the same except for the name and the DOT number. All of a sudden, he’s able to pass because it’s a new name, they don’t have the same scrutiny. Then, we end up with our crash, and this family is changed forever.

David Craig – Host:
In that case, as an example, one of the things you talked about in the very beginning was that one of your jobs is to try to help us find money for the victims and their families. So, you look at different parties that might be responsible, as well as different insurance contracts that might be on that particular vehicle. But with a chameleon carrier, typically there’s going to be $750,000 minimum insurance because these guys are bad actors. Even when they change their name, they still are running low budget operations, so they’re buying the minimum insurance, but sometimes it’s not that hard to figure out that ABC company is really the same as old BCD company, and in this case, it really wasn’t that hard to figure that out. You did have the same owner and even the building still had the old name on it, if I remember right.

So, in that case, for example, I know that you made a case against the broker saying that the broker who put the trucking company together with the shipper, they should have some responsibility. Talk a little bit about why was the broker responsible? When is a broker responsible, and how do you figure that out in this particular case?

Scott Faultless:
Well, broker cases, they have changed recently. Unfortunately, there’s a decision out of the United States Circuit Court from the Seventh Circuit, which includes many states including Indiana, and other circuits have adopted a similar ruling that say that brokers are immune from liability, which means you can’t sue them. They’re not responsible for their own negligence in hiring and selecting incompetent and unsafe trucking companies. They say that a federal law grants that immunity. We disagree with that wholeheartedly. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision says it’s different. So, we have conflicts between these circuits, and unfortunately, the only way that conflict’s going to be resolved is from the United States Supreme Court at some point in time.

David Craig – Host:
This is a perfect example of a case that we were able to recover from the broker, and it was prior to that case, but we made the arguments and said that the broker should have known that this trucking company was bad. I know for a fact that there are several plaintiff lawyers that are truck accident lawyers, that are board-certified lawyers, that are fighting that issue and trying to change that. So, it’s still something we have to look at. We have to recognize that there are some bad cases out there. But like Scott said, there’s certainly a group of really good attorneys out there like us that look at these issues and constantly try to change it. Because, the trucking industry, whether it’s the broker, the shipper, the trucking company, the commercial motor vehicle carriers, they’re all working really hard to take away the rights of our clients.

Scott Faultless:
That’s one way to sue a broker, but there’s potentially claims against a broker, the shipper who actually had manufactured that load, and was shipping it somewhere in the United States and/or a different motor carrier or potentially, a different trucking company. So, you have to look and see how did this load end up at on this truck at this time? You have to trace all the documents back all the way to the beginning point where the shipper was and find out who touched this load, who had contractual responsibility for this load, and who had contractual responsibility to make sure that there was insurance to provide coverage.

You have to track all of these documents back. You have to follow the money, so to speak, and follow all the documents back and get all the contracts. Did the shipper have a contract with a really big trucking company to haul all of its loads all across the country? Look at that contract to see did they bind themselves to transport every load tendered to it, and did they accept the load? Then, did they throw that load off to a different motor carrier? Because for a variety of reasons: they didn’t have enough drivers, they didn’t have enough tractors, and they said, “Here, can you just haul this load for us,” and they get a lower bid than what they’re contractually getting paid by the shipper. So, they skim the profits off the load, and they give the load to the bad actor, the motor carrier who can give a cheap quote.

We look and see – can we go after that company, if that company exists, who had a contract with the shipper? Did the freight broker, who had a contract with the shipper, did they hold themselves out as a trucking company? Did they bind themselves out and say, “We’ll transport this load for you,” and did they make representations in their contract and agree to accept that load and bind themselves to do it? Because if they did, then they could be responsible as well.
Is the shipper a different motor carrier, or the broker, are they exerting control over this driver? Are they telling the driver, “You have to go here, you have to do this.” They are, in essence, using that driver as their employee or agent, and they’re exerting control enough to be responsible as an employer or a principle. We have to look at all these things, gather up all the documents, all the emails to the driver, the text messages between the shippers and/or the trucking companies and/or the freight brokers, and try to figure out is there someone else who could be responsible for this bad actor’s conduct because they’re the ones who put them on the road.

David Craig – Host:
For the average everyday person who’s listening to this who may have a loved one or a family member who’s been killed or seriously injured in a semi wreck, whether it’s us or they hire someone else, I think it’s important for them to understand that this is not something that personal injury lawyers deal with day in and day out. These aren’t issues that you have with car wrecks, typically. These are sophisticated questions that really you have to be a truck accident lawyer to understand. Would you agree with that?

Scott Faultless:
Absolutely. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of attorneys out there who stand on semis and act like they’re truck lawyers, and – everything I just described – they’ve never even thought about. It takes time, unfortunately, everything I just described in terms of: following the documents, following the money, figuring out who got paid, who submitted the bills to the shipper, how much did they submit for, how much profit did they make, how much money was paid to everybody else – all that, unfortunately, takes time. Then, you have to read the document and say, “Were they required to have insurance? Were they required to have an excess or an umbrella policy by contract and/or did one of the motor carriers promise to ensure liability for the load?” So, you have to read all of these documents, and, unfortunately, it takes a ton of time and threats to force trucking companies and all these players to give us the documents so we can read them, understand them, and figure out, before the statute of limitations runs, if there’s anybody else that should be involved in this lawsuit.

David Craig – Host:
For you folks out there that may not know, a statute of limitations is every state has a period of time in which you can sue them. In some states, it’s two years, and in some states, it’s five years, or it could be any number.

Scott Faultless:
In some states, it’s one.

David Craig – Host:
In some states, it’s one year. So, if you don’t bring your case within the statute of limitations, you never are allowed to recover for any harm, no matter how bad it is. As an experienced truck wreck lawyer, there’s a couple of things that jump out at me. First of all, what Scott’s talking about is it takes a long time, and you have to fight, because none of these companies want to give this information to you voluntarily. They don’t want to have to pay what could be millions or tens of millions of dollars, and, they will fight you.

And so, you have to get the documents, and you have to understand the documents. You have to be able to read the documents, you have to be able to consult with experts that are in this area to understand whether you have a case or not. That’s a big part of it, and it takes time, but if you don’t have the right attorney, they never even know to go look for those documents. The saddest thing that Scott and I see are cases where lawyers have settled it for the $750,000 and then they’re saying, “that’s all the insurance there is,” when in fact, there were millions or tens of millions of dollars that was really available. Families come out with a really bad result and sometimes don’t even know it until they ask the question, and then it’s too late, which is really sad.

The other thing about it is that some of the people you’re talking about that might be responsible, for example, the shipper, the law in most states is pretty tough to hold a shipper responsible, hold a shipper liable. So in order to say, okay, what Scott and I do when we sit down when we get a trucking cases, we say, “Okay, who all might be responsible? What team of experts do we need to put together to protect our clients?” And the sooner we get hired, the easier that is. You and I both have worked on cases where a shipper has been involved or a mechanical issue has risen that if we didn’t get hired quick enough, or if they hired a lawyer who didn’t understand these issues, evidence would’ve been lost, and a full recovery could not have been obtained.

Scott Faultless:
Yeah. One example of a negligent shipping case, which involved the negligent securement of the load that the shipper actually put the product on the trailer, screwed and nailed dunnage around the load on the flatbed trailer to help secure it. They did a bad job putting the dunnage down and securing it, – actually, they did a very poor job, it was negligent – and it was hidden in such a way that the driver couldn’t see that they were doing a poor job. The driver takes off, and his load starts coming loose because they did a poor job securing it to the trailer. He comes to stop on the interstate over the crest of the hill, and unfortunately, a crash occurs.

To prove that case to show that the load was improperly secured, you have to be hired almost immediately to make sure the trailer is secured. So when it comes time to actually unload the trailer, to shift the load to a different trailer so it can be taken on its journey, you can then inspect the dunnage to see how it was improperly or properly secured the load. In that case, we actually had a videographer present and recorded everything unloading that load and showing that the dunnage, which is blocks of wood, were not secure. That explained why the load shifted and why the truck driver had to come to a stop.

David Craig – Host:
I think that’s critical. In that case, where we were hired quickly, I went out and met the widow the day after the wreck, because another family member and a friend of the family had recommended they hire us, because they knew we did trucking law. Not only did we go out and inspect the vehicle, we had somebody watch the vehicle to make sure they didn’t start the unloading process until we got there, but we also had experts there with us at the scene. We had a videographer there at the scene. This was a bad carrier, a bad truck driver who had only million in insurance. So, some companies will only sell a minimum of a million instead of $750,000, but this guy was a horrible driver. He only had a million dollars worth of insurance, and a million dollars wasn’t sufficient for the death of a husband. It was a husband who had young girls in college.

That was not sufficient, nor ever would be sufficient financially, and so it was critical that we collect for the family more than the million dollars. This is a case that we were able to collect more money from the shipper than we were from the trucking company. So, the shipper had more insurance, and unfortunately, a lot of lawyers would’ve moved slow. They wouldn’t have been out there, they wouldn’t have found out because they tried to unload that load earlier before the time they told us, and they would’ve missed out on all that, and the family would’ve been stuck with the million dollar coverage. So, time is of the essence.

Scott Faultless:
Remember, in that case, the shipper was filling an order for a customer. That customer wanted that product right now. They were on a timeline on a construction project, and they needed those construction materials today. We were getting pressure from everybody, “Well, you got to release this trailer because it has to be unloaded and moved on, because there’s $100,000 of product on this trailer.” We’re getting pressure from everybody, and we just kept saying, “No, and if you don’t preserve it, we’ll go to court, and we’ll get a court order preserving it until we have everything that we need to do a proper inspection and preserve the evidence.”

David Craig – Host:
We’ve done the same thing on mechanical issues when we are hired quickly. We were able to do inspections. Those inspections turned out where we were able to find problems with the vehicle, which then led us to other possible defendants. We’ve also had trucking companies who later blamed other mechanical issues on other folks. Sometimes, the maintenance of a truck can come into question. Even that can create a liability for someone else that can help us recover for the clients by going after these people who did improper maintenance of the vehicle.

Scott Faultless:
Correct, and we’ve had a case where the kingpin came off the fifth wheel, which is the device that the trailer latches on to so that the tractor can pull it. The load came from South Texas, where they don’t see a whole lot of freezing weather. The crash occurred in northern Indiana in wintertime, and it was freezing. They didn’t properly grease the fifth wheel, so that it would function properly and latch onto the kingpin. When the truck driver literally pulls out of the shipper’s driveway onto the highway, he loses his trailer because it wasn’t properly maintained and causes a very severe crash. The guy suffered lifelong catastrophic injuries.

Getting involved quickly, being able to inspect that fifth wheel, and then we actually purchased a fifth wheel, the same make and model so we could present to a jury to show how it’s supposed to properly be greased and how it’s supposed to properly function and what everybody did wrong. But they were blaming one of the third-party mechanics that they had hired to maintain the equipment, so that’s something we had to know early on in the case so we could bring them into it if we needed to.

David Craig – Host:
It is critical for folks to understand that you need to hire a qualified attorney. So ask them, “Have you done truck wreck accidents? Are you board certified in truck accident law? Have you ever gone to trial on a truck wreck case?” Because you have to look at the shipper, the broker, the motor carriers, you have to follow the paper trail. You have to do your investigation, hire the right experts, and examine the shipment, the truck, and all the equipment, quickly. You have to have lawyers who aren’t looking for the easy, quick settlement. You have to look for lawyers who are looking out for your interest, who are trying to maximize results of your clients.

So what we’ve talked about are shippers, brokers, motor carriers, trucking companies, drivers. We’ve talked about mechanics, people who keep the trucks running, maintenance, but on top of that, there are often other people involved in wrecks that can also be responsible. We have handled every year, unfortunately, we get hired on construction zone wrecks. Every single year, there’s construction, where semis plow into the back of people in construction zones and either kills them or severely injures them. Another issue is someone else is responsible for the construction zone? For example, is there a contractor, a subcontractor, is the government? Who else might be responsible for this loss other than just the truck driver? Because again, the truck driver may only have $750,000 or a million, and again, it’s usually the bad truckers that are the ones that are causing these wrecks in the construction zone, so they may have minimum insurance, and that insurance, if it’s multiple vehicles, which oftentimes it is, is never sufficient.

Scott Faultless:
Yes, construction zones are, in my opinion, one of the most dangerous stretches of the roadway you can be in, period, as a motorist. This is why I tell my own kids, “If you’re in a construction zone or near a construction zone, or if you’re on an interstate and you come to a stop, if you come to a stop, if possible, make sure you’re in the lane where you have an out. Make sure you leave enough space between the car in front of you. Then, keep your eyes on the rearview mirror and watch for truck drivers who are not paying any attention or asleep or on their cell phone.”

“And if they’re not slowing down, just take off and go into the ditch to avoid being hit by a 60, 70 mile-an-hour truck who’s not paying any attention.” And I tell that to all my kids and anybody that will listen to me, because it’s happened so many times in construction zones where trucks literally just run into a line of cars, because either the driver’s asleep, the driver’s fatigued and half-asleep, which is the same thing as drunk driving, and/or the truck driver’s on their cell phone not paying any attention. And you have to look at the construction zone itself to see if the truck driver was alert. Was there something wrong with the construction zone that was a contributing factor in the crash, such as was there actually an area that people could get out of the travel lane if they’re experiencing a mechanic problem?

So, there’s a variety of issues you have to look at from the construction zone. Construction zones change almost daily, and so you have to get out there and have someone videotape and photograph the construction zone as soon as possible to make sure it hasn’t changed, because they move barrels, they move stripes, they move the barriers. Things move in construction zones, so you have to get out there quickly to preserve the evidence to figure out was it improperly signed? Was it improperly marked, and things of that nature to see if there is more responsibility out there.

David Craig – Host:
If you have a family member or a friend of someone who has been a victim of one of these wrecks in a work zone or construction zone, it’s critical that you hire an experienced truck wreck attorney quickly so that they can go out and preserve this evidence. We had a case where several people died down in Kentucky, and we actually sent a truck with a big giant scanner on the back of it, and it scanned the entire construction zone. We shot it from the air, we shot it from the ground, we shot it every which way you can imagine. We have sued the government, we’ve sued the construction companies, we’ve sued the contractors in construction zone cases and have cases pending right now against those type of folks for improper negligence construction zones. But again, those things do change quickly, and you’ve got to move quick. You’ve got to have attorneys that are looking for that, rather than lawyers who just look at it and say, “Guys, there’s $750,000 available, so let me settle this case. Sorry, there’s nothing else we can do.”

One other tip that I would say that Scott didn’t talk about, that I tell my kids, not only do you have to watch your mirror, but if you’re approaching a construction zone, you don’t want to be that car in the back of the line. Unfortunately, semi-drivers plow into the back, and if you happen to be the one in the back, then your odds of surviving are decreased. When you start seeing construction zone signs, you want to start positioning yourself so you don’t have a semi in front of you, and you don’t have a semi behind you. The reason you don’t want a semi in front of you is because you could be knocked underneath the semi.

So you want to leave plenty of room in the vehicle in front of you, and you have control over that. But if you’re in the back of the line, it’s tough, and sometimes, you don’t have an out. Most of the time you do, sometimes you don’t, but if you position your car in enough vehicles, and have enough cars behind you, then you at least increase your odds on not being one of the ones that’s hit. So it’s sad, but not only do we see people that are drivers that are tired that fall asleep, we have drivers that are distracted. Distraction is more than just the use of the cell phones. They have a lot of electronic stuff inside these semi tractors now that require them to talk, move, look down, take their eyes off the road, GPS. There’s so much stuff inside these tractors and that can cause them distracted.

Some drivers, they live in these semi tractors, so they might be eating, they might be doing a variety of things that cause them to be distracted, to plow into the back of the vehicles, and the maintenance, and sometimes the brakes are not properly maintained, so they plow into the back, because they’re not unable to stop. We’ve seen drivers using cruise control in construction zones or going into construction zones.

Scott Faultless:
At night.

David Craig – Host:
At night, which is extraordinarily dangerous. There’s so many different factors that come into play. There’s multiple people who can be responsible for a wreck. So, the key is you hire somebody, and then you hope that the law firm has somebody like Scott, who can go through and sort through all this, follow the paper trail so that you can find out everybody that is possibly responsible, because all those folks should be held accountable. Scott, is there anything else that we haven’t covered as far as finding other parties and insurance policies?

Scott Faultless:
The only thing is that oftentimes, a truck driver’s driving his or her truck, their tractor, but they’re pulling someone else’s trailer. The trailer may be owned by a shipper, may be owned by a different trucking company, and they may not have a lease on that trailer. If that’s the case, there’s almost always going to be insurance on the trailer itself. Then, you need to make sure you read that, get that policy that covered that trailer from the shipper and/or the other motor carrier and see does that trailer policy also provide coverage for this crash. That’s definitely very important to do on cases where they don’t match up, the tractor and the trailer, the leases and the ownership don’t match up, and you’ve got to track that paper trail, as well, and get those documents.

David Craig – Host:
Great advice. So you’ve been listening to After The Crash. Thank you for listening, and hopefully, you’ll continue to follow us. Hopefully, you’ll like us and follow us on YouTube, or you can listen to us on any of the other places you listen to your podcasts, but hopefully you would like to watch us, so go to YouTube. So thanks everybody. Have a great day, and be safe out there.

This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After The Crash. If you’d more information about me or my law firm, please go to our website, ckflaw.com, or if you’d like to talk to me, you can call 1-800-ASK-DAVID. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, then pick up my book, Semitruck Wreck: A Guide for Victims and Their Families, which is available on Amazon, or you can download it for free on our website, ckflaw.com.