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An accident that involves a big rig or 18-wheeler and an ordinary vehicle commonly includes serious injury and death in the passenger vehicle, since cars are designed under the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards to handle impacts from other normal sized vehicles, not tractor-trailers. A big truck can weigh more than 80,000 pounds and can go up to 75 feet in length. Considering these numbers, it’s not shocking that truck accidents result in more grievous injury and a larger number of deaths than other traffic accidents.

Truck accidents are an everyday occurrence all over the United States for a variety of reasons. Recent statistics show:

• Every day 90 people in the U.S. are injured or killed in a truck-related accident.
• More than 450,000 large trucks are involved in crashes each year.
• More than 1,000,000 people are involved in the crashes.
• More than 5,000 people are killed each year in truck-related accidents.
• More than 140,000 injuries occur due to truck accidents.
• One third of the injured suffer catastrophic injury.

Should you be unfortunate enough to be involved in an accident with a big rig, who will you or your loved ones hold responsible for the damages? A truck accident attorney will assist with determining who the potential defendants are in your truck accident case. He or she is well versed in handling truck accident litigation and will conduct an investigation to establish who the possible responsible parties are. These will likely include:

• The owner/operator of the tractor;
• The owner/operator of the trailer (should they be two separate entities);
• The insurance carrier for the tractor and the trailer. (Some states allow you to name individual insurance carriers as defendants in a commercial vehicle accident case, which exposes the existence of liability insurance to the judge and jury. Your truck accident lawyer will determine if your jurisdiction permits this.)

Other possible defendants are:

• The truck driver; (If he or she is an agent or employee of the owner, however, it’s generally unnecessary to name the driver as an individual defendant. Note that sometimes drivers disappear following an accident due to a prior criminal history or drug or alcohol abuse.)
• The shipper/loader (for improper loading);
• The manufacturer of the vehicle, the tires, or other parts that may have contributed to the cause or severity of the accident (product liability);
• The owner of any public or private property whose negligence contributed to the accident.

Once your truck accident lawyer has determined who the defendants should be, the lawsuit will be filed and the investigation will continue. Most truck accident cases involve the use of accident reconstruction experts who will help to pinpoint the details of what happened and who was at fault.