Old Dominion Truck Accident Lawyer

Hurt in an accident involving an Old Dominion truck? Allow us to give you some helpful advice.

Car accidents are bad enough, but when an 18-wheeler truck is involved, the results are quite often tragic. To add insult to injury, those bringing a personal injury or wrongful death claim against the negligent trucking company are almost guaranteed to face extreme conflict, hostility and deception by the insurance company.

Old Dominion's history of truck accidents.

Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. is a very busy trucking company which operates in many areas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. The company has almost 8,000 trucks, employs over 9,000 drivers, and is headquartered in North Carolina.

According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Old Dominion trucks have been involved in 675 accidents on US roads in the past 24 months alone (prior to 05/11/2016), including 224 accidents involving at least one injury, and 16 with one or more fatalities.

What to do if you've been hit by an Old Dominion truck driver.

If you are involved in an accident with an Old Dominion truck, it’s important to know exactly what to do. The steps you need to follow include:

1. Make sure you obtain all the evidence you can. Some of the things you may wish to do include taking pictures of the scene, your injuries from start to finish, and the vehicles that were involved in the accident. It is also important to obtain the names and contact information for any witnesses to the accident if at all possible. Witness statements can be incredibly important as the police accident report may be influenced by the testimony of the other driver.
2. Make sure you seek medical attention in a timely manner if you have been injured. You also need to fully cooperate and be totally honest with the medical professionals throughout the entire course of your treatment.
3. Immediately get in touch with a personal injury lawyer who has experience handling cases that involve large truck accidents. Understand that Old Dominion’s lawyers will do everything they possibly can to relieve their driver of any responsibility for the accident. In all honesty, without an attorney, you'll likely be taken advantage of. These companies know every trick in the book, and will stop at nothing to reduce the value of your potential claim.

Truck accident statistics in Texas.

Sadly, 18-wheeler truck accidents are all too common in Texas, as are serious injuries related to those accidents. Some of the statistics related to truck accidents in Texas include the following:

• In 75% of accidents that involve tractor trailers, the fatalities are not the truck drivers but victims in passenger cars.
• Semi truck accidents make up 10% of all crashes in Texas.
• 3,534 people were killed in 2014 because of accidents involving commercial trucks.
• On a nationwide basis, 100,000 are injured every year in accidents involving big rigs.

The importance of hiring a personal injury lawyer.

While you may be apprehensive about hiring an attorney, its important to understand that our law firm takes car accident cases "on contingency." This means that you never pay us a penny out of your own pocket because we only get paid if we actually recover money for you. The financial risk is all on the firm, and you can take comfort knowing that we're working as hard as we can to resolve your case as quickly as possible.

One of the most important elements in a successful accident case is to prove liability; not just fault, but liability. Issues of liability can get complex when you have multiple parties to a lawsuit, and it's very common for the truck and the trailer to be insured by two different companies. Additionally, commercial trucks are governed by an additional set of federal rules laid out by the FMCSA. If you do not have a full and complete understanding of these laws, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.

One of the most important reasons to hire a personal injury attorney after a truck accident is that you need leverage when facing an insurance behemoth. If you have never beat this insurance company in court (or have never litigated a case at all), they simply have no reason to negotiate fairly with you.

In order to give yourself the best chance at a successful claim, you need a lawyer who is experienced at litigating accidents that involve commercial trucks. Rasansky Law Firm has the experience necessary to investigate your claim and will seek 100% of the compensation you justly deserve.