A recent Cook County trucking accident settlement raises some interesting question about driver responsibility. The Cook County wrongful death lawsuit was brought by the family of a 47 year-old Illinois auto worker who was killed in a collision with a truck. The surviving truck driver was not fluent in English…
Despite having a preexisting back condition, a plaintiff driver received $2 million from the defendant driver for a back injury sustained in an Illinois trucking accident. Prior to settlement, the Chicago personal injury case was pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. In the…
A Cook County jury recently returned a verdict awarding over $25 million to an Illinois resident who suffered a severe spinal injury after being involved in a truck crash. The then 38 year-old plaintiff was left as an “incomplete paraplegic” and has been unable to return to work since the…
Now that the road construction season is upon us in Chicago and Illinois it is important to remember to drive safely and cautiously when in a construction zone. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics study, between 1995 and 2002, almost 900 road construction workers died from on the job…
The Commercial Motor Vehicles Safety Act of 1986 (CMVSA) was passed by Congress to regulate interstate trucking. The CMVSA aimed to improve highway safety by making sure that all truck and bus drivers on the road are qualified to operate those vehicles. Prior to the passing of the CMVSA there…
There’s two sides to every story and trucking accidents are no different. Typically when two vehicles are involved in an accident the vehicle drivers’ stories vary in some way. Law enforcement officials and insurance companies are left with the job of sorting through the facts to come up with an…
Last summer on Missouri Highway 40, an Alabama trucker plowed into stopped traffic on Highway 40 in St. Louis County killing 3 people. He is now being held at the St. Louis County jail in Clayton, MO after being charged with three counts of involuntary manslaughter as a result of…
New reports show that even licensed truck drivers and bus drivers in Illinois may be unqualified to drive their respective vehicles because of inadequate testing in other states. Some of these unqualified drivers are threats to the public utilizing Illinois highways and can even lead to tragic trucking accidents and…
Trucking accidents in Illinois linked to unskilled truckers have spiraled upward in the last several years, which is in part a result of many unskilled truck drivers have actually receiving their trucking licenses fraudulently. In the last five years, the US government has uncovered licensing fraud in 24 states, including…
Car and truck manufacturers have largely ignored the product defects causing insufficient occupant protection and rollover crashes until recently, relying instead on inadequate minimum government standards. However, this is changing in light of increased pressure from a consumer-friendly government coupled with years of having to compensate victims of rollover deaths…