Common Injuries in Truck Accidents
Attorneys Helping Victims in Schaumburg, Wheaton, and Surrounding Areas
Commercial trucks can cause significant damage and injuries in an accident. In the most serious cases, these accidents can be deadly. If you or someone close to you has been injured by a careless truck driver, you need to reach out to a Wheaton or Schaumburg truck accident attorney without delay. At Therman Law Offices, we understand that victims of truck accidents may be dealing with life-altering disabilities, and we are familiar with common injuries in truck accidents. We take pride in getting our clients all of the compensation to which they are entitled under Illinois law.
Common Injuries in Truck Accidents
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) defines a large truck as a vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or heavier. According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, about 3.9 percent of all auto accidents in Illinois involved trucks in 2014. In total, there were 11,585 semi-truck crashes in the state that year, of which 86 were deadly accidents and 1,902 ended in injuries. Data from the NHTSA reveal that 23 percent of truck accidents result in injuries.
Common injuries in truck accidents can range from minor to catastrophic. Some examples include:
- Back and neck injuries: Whiplash is a common injury resulting from a truck accident. More serious injuries, such as dislocated discs in the spine, can also result from a truck accident interfering with a person’s ability to return to work and day-to-day activities.
- Broken bones: Broken bones may heal completely in some cases, but in other cases, they may never heal so that the bone goes back to how it was before the accident.
- Head injuries: Head injuries can range in severity from a moderate concussion to a traumatic brain injury. Depending on the specific injury, the effects can range from a change in personality to a decline in cognitive ability and, in the most severe cases, death.
- Amputation: In some cases, limbs may need to be amputated for the greater good of the patient’s health. For example, if an arm, leg, or hand was crushed or severely burned, it may require amputation.
- Spinal cord injuries and paralysis: Serious injuries to the spinal cord can result in partial, temporary, or complete paralysis of the body. Even in the instances in which these injuries are not permanent, they may cause severe pain and often require long-term rehabilitation for recovery.
- Burns: If one or more vehicles catch on fire after a truck accident, a victim can suffer serious burns. Not only are these injuries extremely painful, but also they can be life-altering. Burn injuries are typically classified by severity. The more severe the burn, the more likely it is that the victim will suffer an irreparable, disfiguring injury.
- Cuts and lacerations: Cuts and lacerations, depending on their severity, can have a serious impact on an accident victim. For example, shattered glass can result in injuries ranging from minor cuts to permanent eye damage. Cuts and lacerations can also lead to disfiguring scars that can forever undermine a person’s life.
- Internal injuries: The blunt force trauma of a truck accident, coupled with the body’s interactions with the vehicle, such as a deployed airbag, can cause blunt abdominal trauma. These injuries can involve the bladder, spleen, liver, pancreas, or kidneys and can result in serious, long-term conditions.
If a negligent truck driver caused your accident, such as by failing to check a blind spot or getting behind the wheel while overly fatigued, your attorney may be able to recover damages in civil court through a negligence lawsuit. Under Illinois law, negligence occurs when a truck driver causes an accident by failing to use reasonable care behind the wheel. Reasonable care denotes how a prudent truck driver would have driven in the same or similar circumstances. To prove negligence, the plaintiff’s lawyer must establish that the truck driver had a legal obligation to drive safely, the truck driver violated this legal obligation, and the truck driver’s violation was a direct and proximate cause of the crash and the plaintiff’s harm.
Victims of truck accidents deserve to be fully compensated for their injuries and losses. The greater the extent of the injury, the more compensation that a victim will likely be entitled to obtain. Generally, truck accident victims may be able to recover a variety of damages, such as medical expenses, rehabilitation costs, lost wages, pain and suffering, and the cost of future care.
FREE CONSULTATION
Chicago 773-839-8944
Wheaton & Schaumburg 847-744-8400