Ep. 67 – Why Trial Experience Matters in Choosing a Truck Accident Attorney

Michael Cowen: A good truck accident attorney looks for the why. It’s not just that a wreck happened, but it’s why it happened. If you have a lawyer that will do the work and uncover the why, the insurance company will pay you more money.

David Craig – Host: I’m attorney David Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of Craig, Kelley, and for over 35 years, I’ve dedicated my career to helping individuals and families who have been seriously injured or lost loved ones in devastating semi-truck, large truck, and other commercial motor vehicle accidents. When tragedy strikes, life can feel chaotic, overwhelming, and uncertain. Many people don’t even know where to begin or what questions to ask. That’s why I created After the Crash, a podcast designed to empower you with the knowledge and resources you need to navigate these challenging times. In each episode, I sit down with experts, professionals, victims, and others involved in truck wreck cases to give you inside guidance and practical advice. Together we’ll help you understand your rights, protect your family, and move forward. This is After the Crash.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of After the Crash. Today, we’re very fortunate to have Michael Cowen as a guest. Michael is a nationally known or nationally recognized truck accident attorney. He’s board-certified in truck accident law. He is a frequent speaker. He’s an author. He’s now the, going to be the chair of the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys, which is the largest group of just lawyers representing victims of truck accidents and commercial motor vehicle accidents. He runs his own trucking seminar down in Texas, and I love the name of it. It’s Big Rig Boot Camp. I run one in Indiana, and my name is Winning Truck Wreck Cases. My name is terrible compared to yours, Michael. I love yours.

And so, Michael’s been running that for several years, so he’s teaching other lawyers how to handle truck wreck cases. He’s now getting ready to chair the biggest organization of lawyers that handle these cases. He’s an author. He’s written a book that I’ve read, and I highly recommend to all attorneys. In fact, I just gave it a review. And so, he’s written “Big Rig Justice”, which is a bestselling book that also helps lawyers how to handle these types of cases. So Michael, welcome to our podcast.

Michael Cowen: Thank you.

David Craig – Host: I really highly respect you. Folks that are listening to this are ordinary citizens, and we get attorneys that listen as well, but folks that are ordinary citizens. And I think that they don’t really know that truck wreck cases are different than other types of cases. They’re not really familiar with it. They’ve never been in this situation, and they find themselves oftentimes in a catastrophic situation that now all of a sudden they’re trying to figure out, and they’re trying to learn about truck accidents. And Michael, why don’t you start off by just letting people know, is it different? And why should they be concerned about the lawyer they pick?

Michael Cowen: It is different, and one of the reasons I’m so passionate about sharing what I’ve learned with other lawyers is I didn’t know they were different when I first started handling cases. And frankly, 20-something years ago, I don’t think I served my clients as well as I could have if I was trained and educated on how to properly handle a truck accident case. I read your book recently, “It’s Never Been Easier to Hire the Wrong Attorney”. And I think that’s such an important thing, because it’s not just that there’s a lot of consumers that don’t know that these cases are different, but there’s a lot of lawyers that don’t treat them different. And as a result, their clients get a fraction of what they deserve in the case. And the reason is, a good truck accident attorney looks for the why. It’s not just that a wreck happened, but it’s why it happened.

And so the trucking industry, it’s a good industry, we need the industry, and there’s a lot of good people that work in trucking, but you and I don’t see them very often because they do things right and they don’t cause a lot of catastrophic crashes. But there are a lot of economic incentives to take shortcuts to have your drivers work more hours. To have your drivers work more hours than it’s legally allowed, to skimp on training, to hire a driver with a bad driving record because you need someone to get behind the wheel. You have trouble hiring, or even worse, you want to get someone to work more cheaply, and someone that no one else will touch will work for you more cheaply. Because of these economic pressures, there’s so many shortcuts being taken, and if you have a lawyer that would do the work and uncover the why, why did this wreck happen, not just what happened in the wreck, the insurance company will pay you more money.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well, and I think that’s extraordinarily important for people to realize, is that really picking the right lawyer, and Michael is one of those guys, that knows truck accident law. And he loves to share it and teach others, and I think that’s a great way to pick a lawyer, is that somebody who’s active, who’s involved, who teaches other lawyers, who writes. And also, I think it’s important, and I know you try cases. I try cases. My law firm, we still regularly go to trial, and I don’t put it on my web— I just don’t do a lot of self-promotion on my verdicts. But the reality is, I think, and I know you agree, it is extraordinarily important to have a lawyer who goes to trial. And everybody out there who’s listening to this says, “I don’t want to go to trial.” Nobody wants to go to trial. And I just read a statistic, like only 3% to 5% of the trials in the personal injury area actually ever go to trial. But why is it, Michael, that it’s important to have a lawyer who does go to trial, like yourself?

Michael Cowen: Well, there’s a couple of reasons. One, if the insurance company on the other side knows that your lawyer doesn’t like going to trial or is unlikely to go to trial, they know that there’s no real pressure on them. An insurance company will never offer money because it’s fair. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about fairness and justice. What they care about is, if I don’t pay what this lawyer wants, will something worse probably happen to me in trial? And so if you have a lawyer that’s known, and they have great databases, they keep track of what lawyers do and when they settle and how much they settle for, if you have a lawyer that they know will chicken out at the last minute and take the last offer, that last offer will keep going down until they get to such a low level that the lawyer just gives up and starts finding other lawyers to come help with the cases.

Whereas if you have a lawyer that the insurance company knows will go to trial, they value it higher. If you have a lawyer that knows how to find the why about what happened and is more likely to get a really good result at trial, then they really offer you a lot more. And it’s not just us saying that. I had dinner with someone that used to be the head of claims for one of the big trucking insurance companies. She’s like, “We have a list. And the lawyers that are on the list, if we know they do a really good job, we know they try cases, we know they do the work, we know we have to pay their clients more money.”

David Craig – Host: Yeah, and I’ve had defense lawyers tell me that. I’ve had defense lawyers sit down and tell me. I had a trucking case where there were multiple people killed. We represented, arguably, the lowest value case because it was a gentleman who had no family, no dependents, he was older, and it was in a state in the country that that was significant. But all these other law firms were involved from all over the country, and they all settled out, and it was clear that they were all going to settle out. And my client wanted her story told. We wanted changes in the industry. It was a dangerous truck, sleep-deprived driver, and we wanted changes in the industry. And I had a client who was brave enough to say no. And so we continued to say no and they kept laughing, saying, “Well, you’re the lowest value case.” And I said, “Well, it really depends on what you decide what the value [is]. But the reality is we’re going to tell our story, or you’re going to have to make some changes and pay us a certain amount of money.”

Everybody else got out of this case, and they had bigger cases than ours theoretically, and didn’t get as good a result. And my client hung in there, and she was brave enough to say, “David, you can go try this case,” and was down in Kentucky. “And you can go try this case.” And you know what? They came around right before trial, and they agreed to make—and it’s confidential, I can’t tell which company it is—but they agreed to make changes to their policies on sleep deprivation and sleep apnea. This case was a sleep apnea case. And then they paid my client a fair number.

And we would’ve never gotten that had my client not been brave enough to say, yes, we’ll go try this case if we need to. And if we didn’t have a law firm that was willing to go try the case… Now, the other firms, other firms were good lawyers and they may have had clients who just said, “We can’t go try the case.” And it’s about the clients. We do what they want us to do. But you have to be ready, and I know you guys are.

Michael Cowen: Yeah, we had the same thing happen. We had clients, they actually, they weren’t really in it for the money. They really cared about what happened and it not happening again. In fact, they did not want to go to trial, but the insurance company and trucking company gave them no option. But then after five days of trial, not only did the settlement offers just… I think they went up six times from what the offer was prior to trial. But I was so proud of my clients. Because I got a text on a Saturday morning saying, “Can you talk?” from the lawyer on the other side. And I know what that’s about. When you’re trying a case and they’re texting you on a Saturday and you’re going to do closing arguments on Monday, it’s about they realized you’re doing well and they want to settle the case.

And my clients let me say, “Before we talk about money, is your company willing to make a change to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” And an hour-and-a-half later they said yes. And it felt so good because it’s not only bringing some financial justice to my clients, and that’s important, but my children and my wife are on the same highways as everyone else, and I have a very personal, selfish interest of trying to make these roads safer because I love my family. And the fact that they did that and the clients felt so much better, it didn’t feel like it was dirty money, if that makes any sense. They felt so good because they were able to save the next life to make the world a better place. And frankly, forcing a company also to pay substantial money when they do substantially bad things makes them less likely to do those bad things again, and that also helps.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. And if you’re listening out there and you’ve been involved in a catastrophic wreck with a semi or commercial motor vehicle, when you go interview lawyers, make sure that you find somebody who actually has tried cases, who does try cases. Some of them will publicize it because that’s the world we live in today, others will not. But that’s a question you should be asking them and talking to them because if only 3% to 5% of the cases go to trial, but what percent of the cases get a fair resolution? And your chances of getting a fair resolution is far greater if you pick a lawyer or a law firm that’s willing to go try your case.

Michael Cowen: And I’d also ask, who all was involved in the trial? Because sometimes someone brags about a trial result, but what happened is they brought in another firm and they or one of their lawyers asked questions on one 10-minute witness so that they could say that they were part of the verdict, but they weren’t really doing the work. And some of those lawyers are good people, but the problem is there’s a perverse economic incentive with that lawyer because that lawyer knows that they’re not really a trial lawyer. And so as they get closer to trial, they know that I can either take what the insurance company is offering and keep the whole fee, or I need to bring in a trial firm and I have to split my fee with them. And you never want your lawyer to have to choose between doing right by you and making more money.

You want this alignment of interest, which is what we have, where my lawyer only does well if I do well. The better off I do, the better off my lawyer does, and vice versa. And you never want your lawyer to have to choose between doing the right thing by you and making money.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. I think last week I had a client come in, and a law firm, it was a big law firm, and they actually terminated them because they couldn’t get a settlement. And they said, “We don’t try cases.” They were three years into this. They had done a bunch of work on the case, and then the client comes to us. And I said, “Well, let’s look and see what there has been done.” And no offense to anybody, but I like to do things my way. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best way, but it is our way of doing things, and it’s been working. I’ve been doing this for 40 years now, and it’s been working. But you look at somebody else’s file who’s not trial lawyers, and they really shouldn’t have been doing the depositions. They shouldn’t have been doing the discovery. And so they put this client in a bad shape or a bad position because they’re not trial lawyers, and when they couldn’t settle the case, they bailed on them rather than even trying to find somebody else to handle it.

So yeah, no, I think you’re absolutely right, you find somebody. And meet the trial lawyer. Talk to them, who does try your case. But I even think it’s more important to meet the whole team, because you and I both know that you and I can be up and stand up in front of a jury and talk to the jury and try a case, but you and I aren’t doing it by ourselves.

Michael Cowen: Absolutely not.

David Craig – Host: And so I think the clients deserve to see who else is helping you, who else is working with you.

Michael Cowen: Exactly. Because I have to make sure that when I’m out trying cases or taking big depositions or even teaching other lawyers, somebody needs to be talking to that client, letting the client know what’s going on, finding out what the client needs, making sure that the client knows what they need to do and is informed about what’s happening in the case. Our goal is always, we communicate with our clients so much. And we find out how they like to be, because some people like phone calls, some people like texts, some people like emails. But our goal is that we very rarely have clients call us because we keep them so well-informed they don’t need to call us. We should be calling them. And you have to make sure you have a good team that can do that, and your case isn’t going to sit there stagnant while the trial lawyer is out trying cases, but that actually there’s a team of people and processes in place to keep things moving.

David Craig – Host: I think one of the things I respect about your firm is it’s really a client-centered firm, like ours. I think really, I find, the really good trial lawyers are people who care about the clients, and so that they usually have a firm that’s geared towards taking care of the clients and treating them the way they want to be treated, the clients want to be treated.

Michael Cowen: Absolutely.

David Craig – Host: Well, I know that you and I have been doing this for a long time. We run up against some of the same types of cases. And so I’d like to talk a little bit about some of the frequent types of cases you’ve seen and what kind of challenges it presents to clients or what type of things the clients should be aware of when they face them.

Michael Cowen: Sure. You want to name a specific type of case, or you want me to just talk about what I see?

David Craig – Host: Sure. At this time of year, I don’t know if you do it, but I’ve already been hired probably four or five construction zone cases. I can’t remember a year where I haven’t been hired in a construction zone case, one with a semi. Are you seeing a lot of those?

Michael Cowen: I am. And again, a lot of times what happens is traffic stops or slows down in that construction zone, and the tractor-trailer does not hit the brakes in time, and so they either slam into the vehicles in front of them or they switch lanes and slam into the vehicles in the next lane over. And too many lawyers think these are easy cases, because just to prove that the truck is at fault when they slammed into somebody, that’s pretty easy. But to take that next step and go into the why, why do we have so many crashes in construction zones, and what I find, it’s a combination of either driving too fast, being tired and drowsy and zoning out, or being distracted usually because of something on their phone. And those three things, when you look for those whys and then you look at why does a trucking company permit that to happen, what can they do to keep that from happening, then you can really get fair value for your clients on those cases. But you got to do the work.

David Craig – Host: And one of the other challenges that I’m sure you see too, is that the bad companies we talked about, and you said earlier, and I agree, most truckers are good, decent people who try to make a living and take care of their families and they try really hard to be safe. Most trucking companies are. But the bad ones are getting worse. They really are. And so, unfortunately, a lot of the bad trucking companies or drivers are driving bad equipment, and a lot of them have minimum insurance, and the minimum insurance on a trucking case is $750,000. A lot of companies will write $1 million policies, but $1 million is not enough to take care of these people. So when you get a construction zone wreck, one of the first things we have to look at is, okay, in addition to the things you just named, is there anybody else that might be responsible?

Michael Cowen: Absolutely. And we’ve really looked at two places there. One is the road construction company. Did they follow the safety rules to have a safe road construction site? One case, for example, we had recently was signage. They were doing what’s called a mobile or moving project where they’re adding striping to the road. And the rules are different for when you’re moving over one mile an hour or less than one mile an hour. And they were moving less than one mile an hour, but they had the signage as if they were moving more quickly, and there was a lot more traffic backed up. So the traffic was backed up past the sign, so you encountered the stopped vehicles before you encountered the warning signs. And they needed to have monitored that and done something about it.

Another one we had, and luckily we had clients that noticed it and we got there right away, was there was a temporary stoplight that wasn’t normally there because they were doing construction on a bridge and taking it down to one lane. So people had to take turns using the bridge. And the truck driver never stopped. He was zoned out. Smashed into a line of stopped motorcycles and catastrophic things, but there were supposed to be rumble strips. And the construction company was paid by the state to put on rumble strips, but they didn’t do it. And, luckily, we got out there quickly, we were hired quickly, and were able to document that those rumble strips weren’t there. Because the first defense from the construction company is they said they really were there.

And then once we provided, not just the police officer’s dash cam video, but our own inspection showing they weren’t there two days after the crash, and the day of the crash on the dash cam, then they claimed that someone from the state told them that they didn’t have to put them there. And then we had to go track all that down and show that wasn’t true. And then they paid substantial money to our clients. But we had to do the work. And, luckily, we had clients that hired lawyers who would do the work before the evidence disappeared, and so we were able to get out there quickly.

David Craig – Host: I think construction zone cases are some of the hardest cases. And like you said, they’re deceiving to non-truck wreck lawyers because they look at it as a rear-end collision, oftentimes, and so they don’t even jump, and they don’t have a rapid response team, or they don’t do anything to secure the evidence. I think the construction zone cases, if you have a construction zone wreck, you not only need a truck accident lawyer that involves a commercial motor vehicle, but you need a truck accident lawyer that has handled construction zone cases, because they are completely different. We send out our rapid response team, as soon as I get hired, I have people out. But we’ll send drones over the scenes. I have a Cloudpoint scanner, a company I hire, and they go Cloudpoint scan the entire construction zone. I don’t know if I’m going to need it or if I’m not going to need it, but I send them out to scan entire scenes. Because sometimes you can use a drone, but sometimes you have an airport close by, or you have bridge abutments.

And so, I just hire this vehicle, and it drives up and down the road and scans the whole construction zone area. You can get videos. You send preservation letters out to the construction companies because that way, some of them run daily morning runs and they videotape it, so you need them to preserve those videotapes. But if you don’t get that letter out right away, they may not preserve it. And so, there is so much. And when you’re looking at it, you’re saying, okay, I don’t know what the truck driver’s going to say. I may know what the police report says he says. Sometimes they get killed, sometimes they’re hurt badly, so we don’t know what they’re going to say. So you and I and the good trucking attorneys, I think we anticipate, well, what if they say this? And we just say, okay, let’s go find out as much information as we can about a wreck, including getting the 9-1-1 calls, getting all the witness statements, securing the scene, videotaping the scene, because construction zones, they change overnight.

Michael Cowen: Absolutely. We’ve had cases where even we’ve been hired a week later, there have been changes. And so, it’s so important to get out. If you’re a consumer, and it’s tough, because especially when there’s a death and you’re dealing with all the… You want to deal with the burial and all the family things, and it’s really tough to think about these things. But the problem is, just hire the lawyer and let them do it and they can leave you alone while you process everything. But let them get out there and preserve that evidence, because it will be gone, and then you can’t prove what happened.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. And I tell people, because you’re absolutely right, because when these accidents happen, a lot of times the families are in the hospitals or they’re planning on the burial, and they’re not thinking, do I need to hire a lawyer? And I always tell people, if you’re the friend or a family member of someone who has gone through a catastrophic truck wreck, then somebody has to look out for your family or your friends. And they just need to designate somebody in the family or friends who can be the point coordinator, and let that person go out and talk to the attorneys and interview the attorneys and get you the people to come in and talk to you. But you don’t have to be the one doing it. You’re not in the best place to even make the decision. But if you’re a family member or a friend, look out for these folks and move quickly.

Michael Cowen: Absolutely.

David Craig – Host: Now you’re not old enough, I don’t think, but when I first started, I used to hire airplanes to fly over the construction zones and take photographs of the scenes because we didn’t have drones. We didn’t have some of the equipment we have nowadays, with the Cloudpoint scanners and all that. Did you ever do that?

Michael Cowen: I am old enough. I have been in the right seat of a Cessna 172 or 150 with a photographer taking photos. And that was fun, but life is a lot easier now with drones and everything. And some lawyers try to shortcut and say, “Well, I just use Google Earth.” But Google Earth doesn’t get you the construction site on that day. It changes a lot. So you can’t just rely on Google Earth; you have to go out there and do the work.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. I like to go personally. I can’t think of an accident scene on a significant accident where I haven’t been there. I may not get as fast as my rapid response team, but I will get there. I like to look at the equipment, I like to see the place myself.

Michael Cowen: I will tell you, this was not a trucking case, there was a tire defect case that I did years ago when I used to do those cases as well, and one of the big important things in a tire defect case is finding all the parts of the tire. In this case it was the tread. We had what was left of the tire, but the tread had separated and come off, and no one could find the tread. We sent an expert out there, they couldn’t find the tread. And we were driving around. It was near the border. We talked to a couple of people, border patrol guys, because I know they sometimes go and help support the scene. And they said, “Well, we weren’t there, but so-and-so was.” And they said, “He’s working over here.” And so we went and found that person.

He says, “Oh yeah, I remember. I took the tread, and I wanted to take it off the road and I put it by this fence.” And we found it, but it was only by going out to the scene and then talking to people that were out there who were not on the police report, and then going through the brush until we found it. It made a seven-figure difference in the case. And the fact is, someone just getting paid by the hour isn’t going to take those extra steps. It was because I cared and it was my case, and I just have great pride in doing the extra work. We went out there and got it done.

David Craig – Host: I can honestly say that there was a trial that I did that I won, that I know I wouldn’t have won had I not gone to the scene personally, because I gained information that the defense lawyer didn’t have. It was an obstruction view kind of case, but I understood it after being there, why the stories of the different witnesses made sense, that I wouldn’t have understood had I not physically been there, walked it, tried to figure out why… These people don’t seem like liars. How can their stories be honest and still be different? But I think, again, the good trial lawyers, they’re looking, they take these cases personally and they want to be involved in even the investigation part. And you and I both, we use top-notch experts and we will hire those people early so that they can be involved and can help guide you, and guide us.

Michael Cowen: Yeah, we work with good engineers and reconstructionists, and they’re important, but there is no substitute for getting out there yourself and seeing what everybody saw and understanding it. It’s just learning the basics of how to drive an 18-wheeler or a semi-truck. If you’ve never driven one, it’s hard to evaluate what could the truck driver have seen? How quickly do these things stop? And we also want to be fair to the truck drivers. We want to take righteous cases where the trucking company did something wrong and caused harm to good people.

David Craig – Host: How about bad weather cases? Now, Indiana, we have a lot of snow and ice in the Midwest. Down in Texas, you probably don’t get as much snow and ice.

Michael Cowen: We don’t get as much, but when we get it, nobody knows how to drive on it, so it’s really catastrophic. It’s funny because when I was a younger lawyer coming up, they used to try to use weather to pull one over on me and say, “Well, it’s not our fault. The road was wet. The road was icy. We didn’t realize it.” But when you learn the rules you know that, one, there’s a federal regulation that says that truck drivers must exercise extreme caution when there’s adverse weather conditions that affect your ability to stop, like wet roads or slippery roads or your ability to see, like rain, fog, smoke. And then if you get the commercial driver’s license manual, it actually talks about what that means, what do they have to do.

For example, just on a rainy road, they have to reduce their speed by one-third. So if you’re in a 75-mile an hour zone, they got to go down to 50. And we have so many cases that say, “Well, we slowed down. We’re going 70 to 75.” It’s like, “No, you’re going 20 miles an hour faster.” On snowy roads it’s reduced by half, and on icy roads it’s slow down to a crawl, like five miles an hour, and get off the road as soon as you can safely get off the road. Because you cannot safely operate an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer on icy roads. And so just in this with the smoke, the fog, it’s if you can’t see, don’t drive. And you have to drive at a speed where you can stop in the distance you can see ahead. And so when you learn the rules, then you can easily win these cases and realize that the smoke screen is really what they did wrong. They’re trying to say, this is a defense for us. And it’s not a defense for them, it’s actually what they did wrong.

David Craig – Host: I think having, again, truck accident attorneys, they know that different motor care safety regs require extreme caution. They know that the CDL manuals… And also industry standards. There’s books out there that talk about what they should do. And a lot of times, we’ll download what the trucking company, or get through the discovery with the trucking company, some trucking companies have rules that are even better than the CDL manual, the federal regs. More specific. But you have to take the time to learn that. And then my favorite deposition are truck drivers. I love talking to truck drivers. I like listening to them, and I represent a lot of truck drivers that get hit by other truck drivers, and they love to tell you what they think the rules are.

Michael Cowen: Oh, absolutely.

David Craig – Host: And so, one of my favorite questions is, what’s your rule of thumb about what you do? What do you do? Before I get into the other rules, what’s your rule when you’re driving on packed snow? And there’s never 50% decreased speed, or very rarely. And the great thing about it is, defense lawyers, at least my experience has been they don’t do a great job preparing truck drivers for depositions. Maybe because they can’t. But the reality is that truck drivers want to tell you that it’s the car driver’s fault. Just get off the roads. Let us drive. And so I love taking their depositions in bad weather cases.

Michael Cowen:

Absolutely. And it’s a safety culture thing. And what I’ve found is, just like you, we’ve represented a lot of good truck drivers that were hurt by bad truck drivers, and you find out the safety culture at the good companies is be careful, follow the rules, don’t cause crashes. It’s better to give the right of way than take it. But there’s a subset out there, and they’re the ones that we see mostly causing these horrific crashes of, we’re the 80,000-pound vehicle. Get out of our way. It’s our road. You four-wheelers just need to give us a wide berth and just move. And that’s just so wrong and it causes so much harm.

David Craig – Host: I had a case and where a lady was just trying to change lanes, she lost control of her car and she got hit and killed by a semi that was passing on the left. And the police put it was my client’s fault for driving too fast under the conditions. Multiple lawyers turned this case down, and even what’s really sad is multiple lawyers in my firm turned the case down. And then finally somebody said, “No, call and talk to David.” So they talked to me and I’m like, “Well, what’s the semi doing in the left lane passing people?” I don’t care how slow it was going, why is it passing? And so you start working the case up, and I was able to take care of this lady’s family because we know the rule and there was ice on the road, there was packed snow, and this guy wasn’t decreasing his speed by 50% or getting off the roadway his first opportunity. And so just because the police report even blames you, you’re driving a car and you have different rules than a semi or commercial motor vehicle driver.

Michael Cowen: Yeah, we found that the police reports don’t get it right pretty often. And again, the police officers are good people trying to do their job, but there’s a three big disadvantages that you have if you’re injured by a trucking company. One is the police officers are not trained in the rules for truck driving; they’re trained in the rules for a passenger car driving. When you’re operating an 80,000-pound articulated tractor and trailer vehicle, you have to drive it differently than a passenger car. The second thing is that oftentimes the driver of the passenger vehicle is badly hurt or killed and cannot give their side of the story. So they only hear the story that the truck driver comes up with after they call their dispatcher or their person, and they get them on the phone with the insurance people, sometimes with the lawyer.

And the third thing is on the really catastrophic crashes, the trucking companies, insurance company, they have their own rapid response team and they will get people out there, usually former law enforcement officers that know all the other police officers. And they will get them to the scene, sometimes while people are still trapped in the vehicles, to start advocating for the trucking company to their buddies that are the ones investigating the crash. And so, as much as the police officer is trying to be fair, when your friends are in there telling you, “Hey, what about this? What about that?” and you don’t have a voice of your own because you’re trapped in the vehicle or you’re being taken off to the hospital, or God forbid you’ve passed away, you really need someone that knows what they’re doing, that can go in there and pierce through that and do a thorough investigation.

David Craig – Host: Yeah, the worse the wreck, the more likely the other side has a team there.

Michael Cowen: Absolutely.

David Craig – Host: And then in addition, we’ve seen cases where a truck driver’s version changes from immediately after the wreck until, by the time the police talk to them. Because a lot of times in these type of cases, they’re worried about the victims, they’re worried about opening the roadways. They’ll put the driver over somewhere. And the driver may tell witnesses at the scene one thing, but then all of a sudden an attorney or a claims person gets there and starts talking to them, and then we’ve seen those story changes. Which is, again, part of the investigation. You want to talk to as many people that may have talked to the trucker before the claims people get there.

Michael Cowen: Even with eyewitnesses, I’ve seen on the body cams of the different officers. The first officer at the scene will talk to a witness and the witness will give one story, but then other people will start talking to that witness and putting some doubt in their head. And by the time they talk to the officer who is writing the report, they’ve got that witness to change their story. And so you need to go remind the witness of their original story. But again, that means you have to go out there and get the body cam videos and watch them all, and they’re long and boring, and there’s usually like 10 minutes of something exciting and two hours of just someone walking around and looking at stuff. But again, you have to do the work.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well, and the police, like you said, are doing a good job, but depends on what police department it is. Some police departments are better than others. Some have the equipment to investigate, some don’t. And so they’re just, a lot of times trying to get the roads open so that there’s not another wreck. And so they don’t look at it as their job.

What about fatigue? Do you see very many truck wrecks that are caused by fatigue?

Michael Cowen: We are, and we’re seeing a few ways. Trucks now have what’s called electronic logs where, when you’re driving it’s supposed to automatically say you’re driving, because when it was paper logs, there was a lot of cheating. But we’re still seeing a lot of fatigue cases, and it really goes back to the why. Truck drivers are human. They’re on the road a lot. And they can legally work up to 14 hours a day, but if you get stuck in traffic, or a lot of times when they go to pick up or drop off a load, they get stuck there 5, 6, 7 hours. And the companies are only paying them by the mile, so when they’re sitting there stuck, if you break down, you get stuck in traffic or you get stuck for hours picking up or dropping something off, you don’t get paid for that time. And so to make enough money to support your family, you have this economic pressure to push.

And so we find that they’re doing a lot of tricks, even with electronic logs, to cheat. And so, one thing we see a lot is they’ll go to sleep in one city and they’ll wake up in a different city supposedly. Well, it’s because they went and logged out of the system and drove. It’s called unassigned drive time. Now, the trucking company gets an alert when this happens, but a lot of times they look the other way. So we’re seeing that a lot. And a lot of times you think, well, they only moved 10 miles, but in those 10 miles they actually went and drove to the facility, spent five hours getting unloaded, and then drove back and really only slept three hours during this 10-hour time. That’s one big thing we see.

The other thing we find out is, you’re on the road and if you have a company that has a good policy that you’re not allowed to talk on the phone while you’re driving, they’re lonely and they want to talk to their loved ones. And so they’re on the phone, either playing on their phone or scrolling the internet or talking to people while they’re supposed to be sleeping, and getting that information. And it’s also not very comfortable sleeping those tractor-trailer units, especially when they’re doing team driving and one person’s supposed to be in the back sleeping while the other one’s driving. We see a lot of fatigue, and again, we have to do the detective work to prove that it happened. But there are studies showing that when you have five, six hours of sleep, it’s equivalent of driving drunk, as far as the increase in crash rates.

David Craig – Host: One of the things that, I’ll be speaking down at the ATAA conference that you guys asked me to talk to… You and the board members wanted me to talk to truck drivers. And I love talking to truck drivers. And one of the things I asked them about was fatigue. And one of the truck drivers said, “You’re not sleeping. When you’re driving as a tandem, when you’re driving as a team, you’re bouncing around in the back of a tractor cab. And other guy may be talking to you, the other driver may be talking to you, you got all kinds of noise, radio, and so you’re not getting good quality sleep. And so you can be tired, and so it’s not a good way.” And those people are trying to keep that tractor running. Those companies are trying to keep that tractor running. One of the guys was telling me that that’s a problem with fatigue.

Then another one told me, which I was kind of shocked about, was that there’s a lot of ghost or phantom drivers. So these people are really acting like there’s two drivers in a truck driving across the country, when really there’s only one. And they’re cheating and saying that, “Okay, now I’m switching and someone else is driving.” But when the wreck happens, there’s only one person in the truck. And sometimes they’ll say, “Well, he got sick and I had to leave him at the rest stop,” or whatever. But in reality, when you do the homework and you do the checking, you find out that there really wasn’t two. And you can’t drive that many hours without being fatigued.

Michael Cowen: Absolutely not, and it’s just so dangerous. And it’s dangerous to be fatigued driving any vehicle, but when you’re driving an 80,000-pound vehicle compared to 4,000 to 5,000-pound car, the amount of harm that’s caused. And that’s why we have rules and we really need to uncover when those rules are broken.

David Craig – Host: Backing is another area, either backing and hitting pedestrians, backing across roads at night. Do you see very many backing type wrecks?

Michael Cowen: Absolutely. We have a ton of them. That’s actually the most common crash, is a backing crash. And the reason is that in our cars, even though it is tricky, you got to pay attention in our cars, we have two things. One, we have glass. You have what’s the backlight or the rear windshield, whatever you want to call it so you can see out there. And then cars now have back up cameras. Well, tractor-trailers, you have a big trailer. You have a giant blind spot, you don’t have any glass when you’re looking back. You just have your mirrors that can’t see everything behind you. And for whatever reason, the vast majority of trucking companies choose not to purchase back up cameras. They could, they’re available, they’re not very expensive, but they choose not to. And so what truck drivers have to do is get out and look and make sure there’s no one behind them before they back up.

But again, they cut corners, get in a hurry, they don’t do that, and then they back into people, they back into vehicles. And even if the speed’s not that high, again, when you’re 80,000 pounds, force is mass x acceleration, you have that huge mass, it causes harm and hurts people even when the speed isn’t that high. So that’s one thing that we see a lot in backing cases. The other is backing across the road, especially at night. And what the truck drivers don’t realize, because they’re not properly trained, is they have this reflective tape on the side of the trailer. And if you’re at a 90-degree angle, like you’re going perpendicular to the trailer, that reflective tape is bright. But when you’re backing into a driveway, you’re never at a 90-degree angle; they’re at a different angle. And between the fact that the reflective tape isn’t visible when it’s not at a 90-degree angle, when it’s at a 60, 70, even 45-degree angle, you cannot see it.

And then you have the headlights pointing at you, and so all you see is it looks like there’s a truck in the other lane. And when you have headlights, it’s hard to see what’s behind the headlights. It’s called glare. And your eyes adjust to the light being there and you can’t see the trailer. And so people end up going underneath the trailers and getting catastrophically injured or killed, and you can’t see the trailer in time to break and avoid the crash.

David Craig – Host: Yeah, I went out to Montana and they set up exactly that example, and I was shocked at how we were just driving along and you couldn’t see the trailer. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve had cases as well, but I actually went out and saw what it looks like. And as you know, some of these trailers aren’t the cleanest things, so even when what conspicuity tape they have sometimes is covered, sometimes it’s in bad shape, and that doesn’t help.

Michael Cowen: Yeah, I didn’t understand it till I went to the same place you did, that truck driving school in Montana that’s nice enough to have a program for lawyers. And you can go there and spend time and learn to drive a truck and see what you can see. So I tried a case in March, and what we did is, I wanted the jury to be able to see what I could see. Now, I wasn’t going to be allowed to go fly them up to Montana and take them to a test track. But we actually got the same model truck tractor and the same model trailer and the same type of pickup truck and worked with our experts, and documented at night what you could and couldn’t see as our client was approaching that trailer. So we could show that that trailer was invisible. But again, we had to do the work, but it was incredibly effective.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. What about right turns, left turns? Somebody’s, again, it’s 40 tons, they’re pulling this big trailer, and we see a lot of right turn wrecks and a lot of left turns. Talk a little bit about that.

Michael Cowen: Yeah, so I’m going to start with right turns. The problem with right turns is there’s a proper way and an improper way to make it. And it’s actually in the commercial driver’s license manual, it’s on all the training videos and stuff. But a lot of truck drivers do it the wrong way. They do what’s called a jug handle turn where they’re in the right lane, and then they move towards the left, sometimes even partially into the left lane, and then they come back around to the right to make the turn. The problem with that, if you’re the driver behind that tractor-trailer, it looks like that tractor-trailer or semi trailer is moving into the left lane. It creates this illusion. And so you think they’re going to the left lane, so you’re passing them in the right lane, and all of a sudden they come back around in front of you and you get in a crash. And then 90% of the time the police officer blames the car that got tricked into this situation.

And so, there’s a really, really good video. There’s a company called J.J. Keller that makes safety training videos. They’re the most accepted in the industry. And their video on right turns, it shows. You see what’s happening. And so it shows the view of the 18-wheeler going to the left, and then it looks like it’s switching lanes. And what I love about it, it says, “And if a motorist went and they pass you on the right, who could blame them?” So when I try these cases, I play that, “Who could blame them?” over and over again, because that’s what the trucking companies try to do. And so those cases are big fights, but when you learn how to visually show what the driver sees, and so you not only show that there’s a rule the truck driver broke, but how that lured the passenger vehicle into a trap of passing the truck on the right because you have no idea that it’s going to be making a right turn in front of you when it’s going into the left lane.

Left turn cases I mostly see… The rule is, a tractor-trailer should never make oncoming vehicles stop or swerve to avoid a collision, but they will just make a left turn in front of an approaching vehicle expecting the vehicle to stop for them. And that’s not what the rules say, and so they cause a lot of crashes that way. And again, a lot of times the police officer said, “Well, they hit the trailer, the truck was well into its turn.” Despite the fact that the passenger car had the right-of-way, they will still half the time blame the driver of the passenger car, and it’s just wrong. And when we get in there, we’re able to uncover those things and turn those cases around and help our clients.

David Craig – Host: It’s just that attitude some truckers have, which is, we’re bigger than you, so you’ll see me, so you’ll stop.

Michael Cowen: And again, it’s a time is money thing. It’s an attitude thing, and it’s a, “I’m not being paid while I’m sitting here. And if there’s a lot of traffic, I don’t want to have to wait for it. I’m going to just assume someone’s going to stop for me.”

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well, there’s something that still blows my mind is lane changes in blind spots on tractor-trailers. Because almost every vehicle that we drive now, the newer vehicles, on the mirrors they’ve got little lights flash or they’ll ding or they’ll make noise. And yet, I still hear truck drivers tell me that the car was in their blind spot and they moved over and hit them when they switched lanes. How is that still happening?

Michael Cowen: Well, it shouldn’t be, even without all the things that we have in our cars, like blind spot detection systems, which are available for trucks, but the company would have to pay extra and they don’t do it very often. But the blind spot myth is based on an outdated information. The only mirror that’s required on the side of a truck tractor is what’s called a plane mirror or West Coast mirror, it’s just like a rectangular flat mirror. And if you only have that one mirror on each side, yeah, there are blind spots, but more than 99.9% of trucks… I’ve actually gone out to truck stops. When I was working on my book, I actually went out to truck stops and counted and did my own mini surveys to make sure that I understood what the industry standards were, but I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen a truck that didn’t have what’s called a convex mirror, which is a mirror underneath.

It’s got a curve to it. Sometimes they’re round after-markets, but in the last 20 years, they almost all just have them built in underneath this rectangular plane mirror. And that gives a lot more view. And so pretty much from that mirror back, there’s no blind spot. But now I would say at least 75% of the trucks have what’s called a fender mirror. It’s a third mirror up front, which then gives a view basically from the bumper all the way back to the trailer. There is no blind spot. And we’ve proven this. And my partner Natalie Arledge tried a lane change case in May, and we actually had our expert, the same guy that’s there in Montana, just go sit in the truck and we put out cones showing what you could see from each of the three mirrors. And there was no blind spot big enough to fit a motorcycle, much less a car anywhere alongside either side of that truck.

The blind spot is a myth. The only way there would be a blind spot is if the truck driver didn’t properly adjust their mirrors. They’re supposed to do an inspection every morning and adjust their mirrors. Now, if they don’t maintain their equipment right, they can create blind spots. Maybe in the 1960s there were blind spots, but in 2025, there is no excuse to have a blind spot on the side of a tractor-trailer.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. And we still hear that defense.

Michael Cowen: All the time. And it drives me crazy because some of our friends who are well-intentioned that are trucking lawyers, put out these graphics online saying, “Stay out of the no-zones, stay out of the truck companies’ blind zones.” And I hate perpetuating that myth because they’re not there. The truck driver can see you if they adjust their mirrors and if they actually look in their freaking mirrors before they make the change.

David Craig – Host: And they have the mirrors. Now, I’ve seen still some box trucks. I’ve seen some older stuff that doesn’t have it. But the reality is, you’re right, I haven’t seen a semi tractor-trailer in a long time that has it.

Michael Cowen: But if they don’t have the mirrors, it’s because a company made the choice not to have them. Because even if it’s an older truck and didn’t have it when they built it, they’re all available cheaply. Just do a Google Search for aftermarket fender mirror, aftermarket convex mirror. And I’ve seen a lot of, when I went out to the truck stops, a lot of older trucks where somebody just went and spent the 150, 200 bucks to add all the extra mirrors that the truck needed to make it safe.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. Well, Michael, is there anything else? Again, for the consumer, the person out there that unfortunately is facing one of these type of cases, anything else that you want to share with them that we haven’t chatted about? We’ve covered a lot.

Michael Cowen: Yeah. First of all, I’m really sorry that you’re going through this. As much as I love my job, I’m always remembering what people are going through. And that as much as I love uncovering what happened and why it happened, I also never forget it’s a true human tragedy, whether it’s an injury, whether it’s worse than that, a death. But make sure that you get a lawyer that will do the work and uncover what happened, not just because it’s going to get you more money. And I’m not saying that’s not important, because you do deserve what the law says you’re entitled to and you should not be sold short. But also because we want to prevent that next crash. And if trucking companies and their insurance companies, which can put pressure on them before wrecks happen when they set premiums and stuff, if they know that if they don’t make changes, they don’t stop these bad things from happening they’re going to have to pay more money, then they’re never going to make the changes and make our roadways safe.

I think I have the goal, and I think you do too of, I want my son who’s thinking about going to law school to have to do something else for a living in the law, because we’re going to make these things safe and put ourselves out of business and he’s going to have to find something else to do. That’s my goal. I know you share that goal. If not, we wouldn’t be trying to force the companies to make the safety change and prevent that next crash. And so you really want to interview, do your homework, and find a lawyer that’s going to do you right and do our society right by holding these companies accountable.

David Craig – Host: Couldn’t agree with you more, Michael. Michael, how do people ahold of you? What’s your firm name and how do people get ahold of you if they want to find you?

Michael Cowen: My Texas firm is Cowen Rodriguez Peacock. We also have a firm in New Mexico called Begum and Cowen. The easiest way to find me is my website, Cowenlaw.com. C-O-W-E-N-L-A-W.com. You can give me a call, (210) 941-1301, or send me an email. It’s just Michael@Cowenlaw.com.

David Craig – Host: All right. Well, Michael, thank you so much for being on this episode of After the Crash.

Michael Cowen: Thank you for having me.

David Craig – Host: This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After the Crash. If you’d like 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.