According to a report from the transportation research group TRIP, about $2.8 trillion in products ship into and out of San Diego each year. These products include imports arriving at the city’s ports and products both going to and coming from the rest of the country via truck.
While California’s economy depends on the movement of these products, the presence of truck traffic on the city’s roadways results in an increased risk to the occupants of other motor vehicle types. This risk could include injury or death resulting from a truck-involved accident. One of the most deadly types of truck-involved accidents that a driver can experience is a t-bone collision.
A t-bone accident, also known as a broadside collision or a side-angle crash, occurs when the front of one vehicle collides with the side of another. This type of accident most often occurs in an intersection, when the driver of one vehicle has failed to yield the right-of-way to another vehicle as legally required.
T-bone crashes can also take place where a private drive or parking lot connects with the roadway, or in parking lots with a lack of traffic control devices and a high number of vehicles pulling into or out of parking spaces. This type of accident accounts for nearly one-quarter of all motor vehicle deaths in the U.S.
According to the TRIP report, 64 percent of urban San Diego’s roadways are mediocre to poor, with hazards such as narrow or poorly marked lanes, inadequate lighting, obstructed views, and improperly designed intersections. Around one-third of all traffic-related accidents in the region are caused—at least in part—by defective roadway conditions.
Other common causes of truck t-bone accidents in San Diego include:
The doors to motor vehicles often do not provide airbags or even an engine compartment or trunk, which can absorb some energy in a crash.
Instead, the occupant on the struck side of the vehicle absorbs the force of the crash with their body. This often creates more severe injuries, particularly when a larger vehicle hits the side of a smaller one.
The massive size of the truck—weighing 20 to 30 times more than the average passenger car—also spells doom for occupants of the vehicle it broadsides. Commercial trucks have a substantial amount of space under the truck that a smaller car can slip into, producing a particularly deadly type of accident known as an underride.
In addition to fatalities, broadside collisions can produce the most serious and long-lasting of all types of injuries, including those that impact the organs that make up the body’s central nervous system: the brain and the spinal cord.
If you were injured in a t-bone truck accident in San Diego, the state’s laws allow you to seek compensation for the expenses and quality-of-life changes you incurred.
You generally have two years to take action unless the claim is against a city, county, or state governmental agency or employee. In governmental claims, the claimant has six months to file a claim seeking compensation.
If you have lost a loved one in a San Diego truck t-bone accident, you can seek compensation through a wrongful death lawsuit. This claim is only available to family members of the deceased, including their spouse or domestic partner, children, parents, or other family members who can prove that they depended on the deceased for services and support. Like personal injury claims, wrongful death lawsuits in California carry a two-year statute of limitations.
California allows personal injury and wrongful death claimants to use the court system to recover both economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages refer to compensation for the expenses that you incurred as a result of the accident, while non-economic damages compensate for the psychological impacts of your injury.
Some commonly claimed expenses and impacts in San Diego truck t-bone accidents include:
Commonly claimed expenses and impacts in San Diego wrongful death cases involving truck t-bone accidents include:
Most truck accidents—including those involving t-bones—occur as the result of negligence. Negligence is the failure to take precautions in a given set of circumstances to protect the health and property of others. This is called a duty of care.
Truck drivers have an increased duty of care compared with other types of roadway users, simply due to the size of the vehicle they drive.
Some of the components of this increased duty of care include:
While negligent truck drivers cause many accidents, other potential sources of liability may cause truck accidents.
These sources include:
To prove liability, you must be able to show these elements in your claim:
T-bone truck accidents are serious events that can permanently alter the lives of other roadway users and their families. An experienced truck accident attorney understands the types of evidence and testimony you need to prove your claim and will fight relentlessly alongside you as you seek compensation.
Let a San Diego truck accident lawyer help you make sense of the legal process of recovering damages.
John Gomez founded the firm alone in 2005. Today, John acts as President and Lead Trial Attorney. He has been voted by his peers as a top ten San Diego litigator in three separate fields: Personal Injury, Insurance and Corporate Litigation. Since 2000, he has recovered over $800 million in settlements and verdicts for his clients with more than 160 separate recoveries of one million dollars or more. A prolific trial lawyer, John has tried to jury verdict more than 60 separate cases.
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