The driver
Fatigue, impairment, distraction, or a licensing/qualification problem.
Eighty thousand pounds behaves differently, is regulated differently, and is defended differently than a passenger car. The evidence that proves what happened is electronic — and most of it is on a retention clock that starts the moment of impact.
What to do in the first 72 hours →In a passenger-car collision there is usually one driver and one policy. In a commercial collision, responsibility is frequently distributed across a commercial chain — and each link has its own insurer, its own records, and its own lawyers.
Fatigue, impairment, distraction, or a licensing/qualification problem.
Negligent hiring, inadequate training, pressure to run past hours limits, or skipped maintenance.
Selecting an unsafe carrier, or loading/securing cargo improperly.
Brake, tire, or coupling work performed badly — or not at all.
Defective brakes, tires, underride guards, or steering components.
Overweight, shifted, or unsecured freight that changes how the rig behaves.
This is the part people lose without knowing it happened. Commercial vehicles generate a rich electronic record — and almost none of it is preserved by default. Repairs overwrite it, retention schedules expire, and the tractor goes back into service.
Speed, throttle, brake application and hard-braking events in the seconds before impact. Can be overwritten or lost when the tractor is repaired or returned to service.
Electronic logs showing whether the driver was legally allowed to be behind the wheel. Carriers are required to retain records of duty status for six months — not forever.
Licensing, medical certification, road test, prior violations, and the carrier's own hiring diligence.
Annual inspections, repair orders, and driver vehicle inspection reports that reveal known defects.
Forward-facing and in-cab video, plus GPS breadcrumb data. Often on short retention cycles measured in days.
Bills of lading, scale tickets, and load securement records that establish weight and balance.
Nothing here requires a lawyer to begin. It requires speed.
Get medical attention — adrenaline masks serious injury, and a documented exam anchors the medical record.
Photograph everything: final rest positions, skid and gouge marks, the trailer's DOT number, placards, and road conditions. Get the police report number.
Identify the motor carrier — not just the driver. The DOT number on the door leads to the carrier's safety record.
Send a spoliation letter. This is the single most time-sensitive step: written notice legally obligating the carrier to preserve the ECM data, logs, and records described above before they cycle out.
Interstate carriers operate under Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules. A violation is not merely a technical infraction — it is often the clearest evidence of how a crash became possible.
No. Commercial carriers operate under a federal regulatory scheme, carry substantially larger policies, and typically dispatch a rapid-response investigator to the scene within hours. The evidentiary and legal landscape is different from the first day.
Interstate carriers hauling general freight must carry a minimum of $750,000 in liability coverage under federal rules, and many carry far more. Catastrophic injuries frequently exceed what a private auto policy could ever cover.
Liability often still reaches the carrier whose authority and placards the truck was operating under. The contractual label matters far less than the operational reality.
Statutes of limitation vary by state and by defendant. But the practical clock is much shorter: physical evidence and electronic records can be gone in weeks.