AUGUST 2, 2021
How can I avoid having a serious car crash with a large truck or semi tractor-trailer while driving in Kansas?
How can I avoid having a serious car crash with a large truck or semi tractor-trailer while driving in Kansas?
Western Kansas truck crashes and accidents can be deadly. Our firm takes on hundreds of tractor-trailer and large commercial vehicle crashes that occur due to the high winds in Kansas across the entire state. Every year we see many wrongful death cases arise from a tractor-trailer driver driving in high winds and storms which often causes the tractor-trailer to cross the center line where innocent people are killed. Many of our clients have lost their mother or father or even worse, their children because some negligent truck driver failed to follow the FMCSR and CSA BASICS and did not cease operation during hazardous conditions.
Defense Attorney Strategy
Defense attorneys and insurance carriers always try to claim these accidents arise from an act of God or a sudden emergency that was not foreseeable. These defenses are fictitious and not real. Weather reports from meteorologists and television and radio stations often provide warnings about the following:
- Storms causing high winds
- Thunderstorm and tornado watches and warnings
- Heavy rain and hail warnings
- Smoke warnings where high winds and farmers burning fields cause numerous accidents across Kansas every year
Truck drivers and dispatch officers for commercial motor carriers are required to maintain vigilance over storms that are brewing and trucking companies can get weather alerts from Weather.Gov/alerts.
Checking for Bad Weather
This ability of drivers and dispatchers to be able to check for bad weather in all areas of the country means that bad weather conditions are always foreseeable. High winds are foreseeable. Smoke causing limited visibility along highways like I-70, U.S. Highway 50, U.S. Highway 54, U.S. Highway 400, U.S. Highway 83 and U.S. Highway 183 and many other highways crisscrossing Kansas is known to occur during spring and summer.
Every year we get many different clients who are killed or seriously injured from high winds, smoke and truck drivers driving in hazardous conditions when they should have ceased operations and waited for the storms, wind, smoke and fog to clear before they operate and drive across Kansas.
Smoke and limited visibility accidents are caused for two reasons. First, farmers are careless and should not burn fields in high wind conditions. Second, truck drivers are required to cease operations when visibility is limited and often fail to do so in order to meet on-time deliveries.
How do you protect yourself from negligent and reckless truck drivers?
When you know you are on a highway where truckers and semis are always driving you should do all of the following:
- Keep away from blind spots of tractor-trailers
- Don't get blocked in by two semis who are in two lanes
- When you see a tractor-trailer you should move rapidly past them and make wide moves staying as far away from the trailer as possible
- Never travel side by side with a tractor-trailer
- When you are in high wind or smoke conditions with limited visibility drive with your headlights and flashers on and keep at least several car lengths between you and the large trucks and semis
- Always be ready for a tractor-trailer in high winds to be caught by the wind and swing into your lane of travel
- Realize that most truck drivers are fatigued and tired truck drivers do stupid things when they are fatigued
Our Wichita based personal injury lawyers are accident attorneys who have offices across Wichita and in Garden City. Our team will instantly go to work to prove accident injury victims are not at fault. You can use our contact page or get a free call at our Wichita offices at 316-684-4400 and our Garden City office at 620-843-2855.
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