North Carolina (NC) has the sixth worse record in the country when it comes to crashes involving tractor-trailers, according to an ABC11 news investigation.
“And in 2009, more than 50 percent of the trucks inspected in North Carolina had maintenance or safety violations. Of those, more than 12 percent were in such bad shape that they were immediately parked and put ‘out of service’,” the station reported.
The report suggests these findings may be the tip of the iceberg because the majority of trucks in the state are not being inspected. The data obtained from the NC Highway Patrol showed that 9.3 million trucks went through state weigh stations in 2009, but fewer than one percent of those commercial vehicles ended up having safety inspections.
As experienced personal injury attorneys with offices in North Carolina, we report on far too many accidents involving semis and 18-wheelers in the state. Recently, we reported how five people were killed and 10 were injured when a tractor-trailer hit a line of eight vehicles near Fletcher, NC.
In some cases road users have lost their lives as a result of what appears to be a direct safety violation. Last year we reported on how a man from Florida was killed on I-95, near Dunn, NC, when his car struck a container that had fallen in front of his car after the load fell off a tractor-trailer.
The investigation by ABC 11 suggests big rigs are frequently operating on our highways with defects such as faulty brakes and worn tires that can pose an immediate danger to other drivers who share the highway.
In 2010, our truck accident attorneys secured a $3.5 million settlement for the family of a man who was killed when a tractor trailer rear-ended his vehicle in Norfolk, Virginia (VA). During the case we uncovered evidence of poorly controlled diabetes which the trucker had failed treat properly before the crash by not taking his medication in accordance with his doctor’s orders.
DM