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If you or a family member is involved in an accident with a truck, time is of the essence when it comes to investigating and collecting evidence. The crash site needs to be examined quickly in order to determine what happened: how, where, when and why. Since truck accidents are much more complicated than accidents involving only autos, it’s very important that you hire a truck accident attorney early on to make sure your case is handled properly. Your attorney will engage an investigator with specialized knowledge, training, and experience to locate, document, and evaluate the physical evidence.

Why It’s Important to Act Quickly

One of the main differences between auto-versus-auto accidents and truck-versus-auto accidents is that important evidence can quickly disappear if it’s not collected right away. The truck may be in another part of the country within days of the crash and have a different trailer connected to it. The trailer in the collision may be unloaded, reloaded, hitched to a different tractor, and sent on its way within that time. Time also allows for the illegal destruction or material alteration of evidence, which is called spoliation. Motor carriers are required under federal law to keep certain data following an accident (such as driver logs), or they may be cited, fined, and/or sued for failing to follow the regulations, depending on what state they are in.

Investigating the Accident

Your truck accident lawyer will set out to gather and examine the many different types of records that will be needed to support your case, including witness statements, police reports, the truck driver’s records of duty status (driver’s logs), fire and rescue reports, tow company records, a list of components on the commercial vehicle, the truck’s maintenance records, any toxicology reports on the truck driver, and hospital and coroner’s reports.

Conditions at the Accident Site From the crash site itself, the location of the accident will be determined with the highest degree of certainty possible. Because environmental conditions may change over time, specific information must be sought regarding the conditions on the day and at the time of the accident. Your attorney will want to find out the weather conditions and the drivers’ experience driving in such conditions. If there was construction on the road, your lawyer may need a traffic engineer to review road construction plans, permits, and diaries. Other longer-term conditions, such as the surface of the road, surrounding trees and shrubs, embankments, guardrails, and signs, need to be investigated as well. All of these may have played a role in the accident and may be important evidence to help you prove your case.

Accident Reconstruction

If the facts are not clear from the physical evidence, witness statements, and written documentation, your attorney may need an accident reconstructionist to piece together all the information and reconstruct the events leading up to the accident. Your truck accident attorney will also need a full report regarding the condition of the tractor and trailer prior to and at the time of the accident, including the brakes, lights, wheels, tires, load, etc. Commercial motor vehicles undergo a pre-trip inspection prior to setting out on the road, in order to ensure all the systems are functioning properly. This inspection should be well documented and your attorney will want that documentation to determine what condition the truck and trailer were in just prior to the accident.

Information Logs as Evidence

Commercial motor carriers, in compliance with federal law, require the drivers to keep a written daily log of their driving, off-duty time, on-duty non-driving time, etc. Some carriers also use electronic event data recorders. These are not quite as inclusive as the “black boxes” found on aircraft, but they may be helpful in getting certain information, especially about speed and “hard-stop” events( where the driver had to brake suddenly). You can tell when the truck was in motion or stationary. Some of the event data recorders can capture and freeze a thirty to ninety second block of data recording speed just prior to the accident. Should the truck have an electronic recorder, your truck accident attorney will certainly want to obtain any information recorded on it. The evidence it provides might prove helpful to your case.