In a truck accident, truckers often avoid serious injury because they’re protected by tons of heavy, solid steel. But victims driving much smaller vehicles usually aren’t so fortunate.
California’s fatality rate for truck accidents is among the highest in the U.S. In 2020, truck accidents killed nearly 400 people and heavily injured many others.
Learn more about injuries common in truck accidents and the impact they have on you below.
Truck Accident Injuries Can Have Serious Consequences for Victims
Injuries sustained from truck accidents can be much more severe than those incurred by crashing into another car. Semi-trucks with fully loaded trailers can weigh as much as 40 tons, and that much weight can easily kill someone or leave them disabled for life.
Spinal Cord and Neck Injuries
Neck and spinal injuries can cause long-lasting pain that’s difficult to treat. You may experience a herniated disc, for example, which happens when a disc in your spine slips out of place.
If your spinal cord injury is severe enough, it can render you temporarily or permanently paralyzed. You may need a wheelchair or find yourself unable to move around without someone’s help.
If this happens to you, it’s possible that you’ll lose your job because you can’t work anymore. You may need to find different work or drop out of the workforce altogether.
Broken Bones
It’s very common to break bones in an accident, and that’s even more true in impacts involving commercial vehicles.
Broken bones in truck accidents are often severe. Bones may crumble or pierce the skin via compound fracture. Such breaks take many months to heal, and even then, bone function may not ever recover to what it once was.
Compound fractures can lead to infections, too. Your doctor may put you on a course of antibiotics or administer antibiotics intravenously.
Lacerations
Lacerations aren’t just painful; they can also cause weakness or even death due to a loss of blood.
Many accident-related lacerations require stitches to heal. Wounds don’t always heal cleanly, which means you may end up with scarring that requires pricey plastic surgery to fix.
Airbag and Seatbelt Injuries
Your seatbelt stops you from flying through the windshield in a truck accident, but that much force can cause whiplash when your neck snaps forward and back. This force can also crush your organs or break your ribs.
Airbags can produce similar problems. Airbags save lives because they shield your upper body during an accident. But they deploy with an extreme force that can injure your neck, chest, arms, or head.
Burns
Many trucks, such as vehicles towing tanks of fuel or chemicals, contain flammable materials that can easily burst into flames in an accident, which may cause serious and life-threatening burns.
These severe injuries require a lengthy hospital stay to treat. Once you heal, you may struggle with scarring and disfigurement that’s difficult to correct. This disfigurement may embarrass you so much that you isolate yourself from others.
If you sustained disfiguring burns in a truck accident, call a truck accident lawyer to learn if you can sue for your pain and suffering.
Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs)
TBIs are one of many injuries common in truck accidents. If you’re suffering from this common injury, you might experience confusion, memory loss, blurred vision, and nausea.
Severe traumatic brain injuries can also cause personality changes. If others wonder why you’ve become irritable and angry when you were once loving and kind, a traumatic brain injury could be to blame.
A majority of mild traumatic brain injuries heal within several months. About 20% of traumatic brain injuries are serious enough to impact you for the rest of your life.
Amputations
It’s gruesome to think about, but arms and legs can easily become detached from the body in a truck accident. Doctors will do everything they can to reattach a limb, but despite their efforts, saving an amputated limb isn’t always possible.
Doctors may also need to amputate a limb to save your life. This can happen if an accident leaves you severely burned or you develop a major infection in a limb that doctors can’t treat with antibiotics.
If you’ve lost a limb due to a truck driver’s negligence, your quality of life can drop significantly. You may be unable to walk, work, or take part in your favorite hobbies. Such damages can mean a higher compensation award for you in a personal injury lawsuit.
Internal Injuries
In an accident, the weight and force of a truck can crush organs with ease. Injuries to the lungs, heart, kidneys, and bladder are very serious and require emergency attention.
Even if a doctor manages to save your life, the accident could permanently affect your organ function. For example, you could have trouble breathing or have a higher chance of experiencing a cardiac event in the future.
What Damages Can You Recover From a Truck Accident?
After you return home from the hospital, you’re likely wondering if you can hold the trucker who hit you or their employer responsible for your injuries. It is possible to recover damages, but you’ll need to prove that the driver or trucking company’s negligence caused your injuries.
Proving negligence in a truck accident case is a little different than it is for regular car accident lawsuits. Your lawyer will consider questions such as:
- Did the driver fail to take their mandated break?
- Did the trucking company fail to perform maintenance on the vehicle?
- Did the driver not properly secure their cargo?
- Was the driver speeding, driving aggressively, or not paying attention to the road?
If your truck accident lawyer can prove negligence, the court may award you compensation for medical bills, lost wages, and a lowered quality of life.
Khalil Law Group Will Prove Liability in Your Truck Accident Case
If you’ve suffered from any injuries common in truck accidents, call Khalil Law Group at (714) 617-5189 for a free consultation on your case. We will fight hard to help you pursue compensation.