Gulfport Truck Accident Lawyers

Three things truck drivers often do that cause or contribute to crashes are:

• Drive while tired: Truck drivers can be scheduled to stay behind the wheel for 11 hours in a 14-hour shift as part of a 70-hour workweek. As you can imagine, exhaustion can set in several hours into a shift, creating a terribly dangerous situation. Many safety groups recognize that fatigued driving can cause similar reaction time, attention, and steering issues as intoxicated driving.
• Speed: Rather than being paid by the hour, truck drivers are most often paid by the mile driven. To increase their paycheck while decreasing the length of their shifts, some truck drivers are tempted to break the posted speed limit and speed. Heavy vehicles take much longer to come to a complete stop than lighter vehicles, so speeding in a tractor-trailer is even more dangerous than it might initially seem.
• Overload the trailer: Incorrectly loaded trailers are big problems that hide in plain sight because other drivers can’t see what is happening inside a closed trailer. When a truck takes a tight turn, brakes suddenly, or drives on a banked turn, a top-heavy trailer can tip over and crush cars in adjacent lanes. Even a strong wind can hit the side of a trailer like a sail and push it over if it is top-heavy.