You’ve probably experienced this at least once in your driving life. You’re cruising down I-75 or I-64 when traffic comes to a crawl. It’s an accident up ahead. As you get closer, you start to understand the scope of what happened. It’s a truck accident, and the aftermath is nothing short of horrific.
When a semi-truck weighing over a dozen tons slams into a sedan and SUV, you wonder how anyone can walk away from that. Sadly, not many do.
When an accident involving a commercial truck occurs, the trucking company responds rapidly to conduct a thorough investigation. That investigation often happens alongside federal and state agencies who also have a vested interest in the outcome of a truck crash. If there are injuries, the truck driver is automatically tested for drugs or alcohol.
If you’ve been involved in a major collision with a truck, you shouldn’t sit back and wait for the reports from those agencies. You certainly don’t want to rely exclusively on the truck company’s findings. Instead, you should reach out to a qualified Lexington truck accident lawyer to help you understand your rights and what should happen next.
Top of the list is to preserve evidence before it disappears.
Critical Evidence After a Truck Crash
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) sets the rules of the road for the trucking industry, starting with electronic logging devices. These are the devices similar to an airplane’s proverbial “black box” that record all kinds of data.
Additionally, there are other data recording devices installed in a commercial truck, along with other documentation that can also provide critical evidence.
Here’s all the evidence you can obtain from a truck and trucking company:
- Electronic control module (ECM): This records the truck’s speed, braking, throttle, and engine activity in the seconds before impact. It can clearly establish if the truck was speeding or failed to brake in time.
- Electronic logging device (ELD) records: These track a driver’s hours. Since December 2017, the FMCSA’s ELD mandate requires most commercial drivers to log hours of service driving time electronically.
- Dashcam and telematics footage. Many truck companies require drivers to have forward-facing and driver dashcams installed in their rigs. That footage shows the road ahead and what the driver is doing.
- GPS logs: These show the truck’s route, stops, and speed throughout the driving shift.
- Dispatch records: These records demonstrate the trucking company’s orders to the driver and can point to unrealistic delivery demands.
- Maintenance and inspection files: These records detail the maintenance history of a truck to demonstrate whether brakes, tires, or other parts have been inspected, replaced, or neglected.
You are entitled to have access to all of this data and records. The important thing is to get it before it disappears.
How Evidence Disappears
A person’s memory of an accident can fade, but concrete evidence lasts forever. At least, in theory, it does. When you consider that trucks deliver roughly 11.27 billion tons of goods per year and log upwards of 329 billion miles across the country, that is a lot of data to record and maintain.
The reality is that most of that data is overwritten to make room for the new batch. However, there are some legal requirements that trucking companies must adhere to, including the following:
- Hours of Service (HOS) & ELD Data: FMCSA requires 6 months to maintain those records, and that includes backup copies on separate storage devices.
- Driver Qualification Files: These records are kept for as long as the driver is employed and for 3 years after they leave the job.
- Drug & Alcohol Testing Records: 1 year for negative/canceled results; 5 years for verified positive results and refusals.
- Accident Registers: 3 years.
- Vehicle Maintenance & Inspection Data: 1 year while active, plus 6 months after the vehicle leaves service.
- Electronic Powertrain/Black Box Data: Often overwritten automatically by the hardware within 30 days unless preserved.
As for the truck dashcam footage, it runs on short loops and overwrites itself. A trucking company has no obligation to hold on to that footage unless it is ordered to do so.
That’s where you need support from an experienced attorney.
How a Spoliation Letter Protects Your Legal Rights
In the aftermath of an accident involving a commercial vehicle, you have to act fast to preserve evidence. Your attorney can send out a spoliation letter. This is a formal legal notice to be sent to the trucking company, demanding that they preserve all documents and electronic data related to the accident.
This makes the concept of “they might ask for this evidence” a strict obligation.
Once delivered, the trucking company must disable automatic deletion settings that regularly overwrite security footage, phone logs, or computer files. It also eliminates the excuse of “accidental loss.”
If your truck accident claim makes it way before a judge and the trucking company has deleted the data, that company could be hit with heavy fines. They might even have their entire defense strategy tossed out, and the judge could instruct the jury to assume the destroyed data proves the trucking company and driver were at fault for the accident.
This is why working with an attorney to get out that spoliation letter is so important.
One of the first things that the attorneys at Peterson Law Office handle is that spoliation letter. This doesn’t mean your accident claim is headed straight for the courtroom.
However, that evidence will be needed for your initial insurance filing.
When we agree to take on a case, it’s because we believe in our client. It’s also because we have the evidence to back up their version of the accident. If you’ve recently been involved in a crash with a truck, don’t hesitate to reach out to our office for a free consultation.
If we decide to move forward, we want to lock down that evidence right away.