Hi I am Frank Hartman and I am a practicing attorney
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in Charleston South Carolina specializing in personal injury
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and auto accidents and today we're going to talk about
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somes aspects of a trucking accident and how it differs from a
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general auto accident the sorts of considerations your
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attorney is going to take into play when he is working your
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claim the first thing that is interesting about the trucking accident
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is typically in any truck these days you're going to have
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computerized what's called black box and the reason why it is
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there is a in the event of a collision
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typically it's going to document what the driver was doing
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as far as brakes, acceleration, speed, all those sorts of things
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immediately and up to the point up of the collision
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and in that respect it'll show you a pretty good
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photograph of what happen immediately before the collision
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another reason why they have the black box on board is
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because they it is a way of
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monitoring the driver because one the biggest issues you have with truckers is
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obviously they are in a hurry to get wherever it is they are going
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they have a tendency to
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overdrive you know maybe instead of driving the twelve-hours
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typically required it maybe they drive 14 or 16
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or they just wouldn't sleep at all in that respect they would be falling asleep
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at the wheel which can be an incredibly dangerous circumstance if you are driving
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an 18 wheeler and you've got a bunch you know little tiny
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cars that are immediately around you so the computers that are on board now
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actually document you know when they're driving when
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when the truck is actually moving forward and when it is
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stopped and the guy actually is mandated to take at least
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an eight five to eight sleeping period
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and that's important like I said because the biggest issue previously with that
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they had a tendency to want to overdrive to try to get there on time
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or to get there early to make their mark The second thing you should take into consideration when you are working a trucking accident
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is what's called a a failure to screen an what i'm talking about there is
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an employer has an obligation to go and look into the background
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of any potential employee that it's planning on hiring
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especially in the context of trucking the idea being you're looking for
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individuals who were maybe they have DUIs in their past
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or they have a history of poor driving or they have god forbid a history of collisions
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and hurting people the employer has an obligation go out and seek that
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information
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before they hire and a lot of times
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they drop the ball on that and in the context of discovery
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a good attorney is going to find that and it's going to be something you use
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in the context of trial against a trucking company
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that they a failure screen on their part and
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just generally speaking they shouldn't have hired the person to begin with
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the last thing that I want to talk about today
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in consideration of a potential trucking collision case is a
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failure to properly maintain the truck now it sounds
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pretty common sense when you really sit down and
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think about it but you'd be surprised how often it is the case that
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the company simply just didn't maintain the truck well enough
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and it contributed to the reasons for the collision what I mean by that
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is your typical brakes or
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tires all the various things that you need to maintain on a vehicle to
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be able to keep it roadworthy they don't do so so maybe
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that the tires are worn there's not enough tread or
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the brakes they were not maintained properly so it didn't have enough breaking capacity
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and it was unable to stop and unable to prevent the collision
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these are all sorts of things that you're gonna need to bring engineers
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to examine the truck after you know post collision
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to document and potentially present in the context of discovery or
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possibly trial
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in the event that it actually goes that far but certainly
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in the context of presenting to an insurance carrier I'm Frank Hartman and today we talked about
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some things that you need
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to consider in the context of your trucking collision case if you're watching this
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video
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you have questions regarding your trucking collision I answer questions
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like this all the time and I would strongly
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encourage you pick up the telephone and call me at 843
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300 7600 or feel free to look me up
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at thehartmanlawfirm.com and again thanks for watching
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