Commercial vehicles range from armored cars, cement trucks, fire trucks, PGE, other utility vehicles and UPS Trucks. On any injury claim in Oregon or Washington State the commercial truck or vehicle has a heightened duty of care to regular car drivers, bicycles, and pedestrians. This is because the operators of such rigs have a commercial driving license and owe the greater public more care.

Commercial drivers are made more responsible to others in Oregon and Washington state because the business entities are on the road for the purpose of making profits and their much larger utility trucks injure more because they are simply bigger. Bigger at-fault trucks may result in greater injury including death to pedestrians, cars, and walkers.

Questions often addressed in the car accident cases involving commercial vehicles include such factors as: did the side mirrors have bubble convex mirrors to give the driver a broader range of view, did the utility vehicle have a warning sound which would emit and warn pedestrians to prevent run-overs, and finally did the commercial driver fully keep a proper lookout before executing a right or left hand turn.

I have worked on these in the last 16 years in Oregon and Washington car accident law. For commercial driver saying the injured person was in their blind spot is a cop-out because they are statutorily made to take these extra measures as to protect the public at large.

Often times, following an accident with a large commercial truck, a negligence lawsuit will take place. Negligence lawsuits are very complicated and involve complex legal theories. In many cases, proving a truck driver or a commercial trucking company were negligent can be a difficult, time-consuming and intricate process.

Generally it involves a lengthy evaluation of all the facts surrounding the accident, taking into account things like the truck driver’s actions, the other driver’s actions, conditions on the road and other factors present at the time of the accident. In addition, things like the maintenance records of the truck and trailer and the driver’s log book recording the hours he had driven prior to the accident all need to be examined.

While the interplay of all these factors can lead to extremely complex cases, sometimes the facts of a case can lead to an inference of negligence, making for a much easier case. Finding an inference of negligence depends upon showing that the type of event or accident does not naturally occur absent negligence on the defendant’s part. The classic case concerning an inference of negligence, or negligence per se, involved a person walking below a building under construction. As he walked along the sidewalk he was killed when a huge crate of bricks fell on him from above.

The court found an inference of negligence on the construction company’s part because large crates of bricks don’t just naturally fall from buildings absent negligent behavior.
In the field of commercial trucking law, certain circumstances lead to inferences of negligence. Some examples include: (1) where a skidding semi was on the wrong side of the road when the accident occurred; (2) where an accident occurred when a truck crossed into the wrong lane of traffic and hit a car traveling in the correct lane; (3) where a truck skidded on a wet road, lost control, hit a curb and flipped over; (4) where a trailer full of peanuts broke loose from the truck and collided with a gasoline tank; and (5), where the metal cement chute fell from a cement mixer and injured a motorcyclist riding behind the truck. In these types of cases, an inference of negligence was found on the defendants’ part.

Having an attorney that can recognize the circumstances that would lead to an inference of negligence can save a huge amount of time, money and effort. In addition, where an inference of negligence is guaranteed to be found the truck driver will lose the case. If an attorney is aware of this and communicates this to the truck driver or the trucking company, the victim will almost certainly get a large settlement offer without ever having to go to court.

Let’s examine the easiest possible scenario- a case where the duty issue seems as straight-forward and uncomplicated as can be. Imagine a truck is driving down the highway and dangerously changes lanes without looking, causing an accident. It seems pretty obvious that the truck driver violated his duty to change lanes safely in order to avoid causing an accident. the fact that there is a law detailing this very duty seems like it should make it simple to prove this element of a negligence case.

However, in cases dealing with safety statutes, first the victim in this case must proved that they belong to the class of people that the safety statute is intended to protect, then they must prove that the safety statute was created to prevent the exact type of injury the victim suffered.

Therefore, in this case, the victim must prove to the court that the safety statute requiring truck drivers to change lanes safely was intended to protect all drivers on the highway driving in the lanes adjacent to a large truck. Then, the plaintiff must prove that the objective of the law was to protect against the possibility that a truck driver on a multi-lane highway would enter the adjacent lane without due regard for the other cars and trucks already driving lawfully in that lane.

While this may sound simple, if the lawsuit doesn’t proceed in exactly this way and spell out each of these factors, the defendant will win. For this reason, even in what seems like the easiest of cases, it is imperative that an accident victim contact an attorney.