If you watch your neighborhood streets throughout the day, you’re bound to see several delivery trucks zooming from house to house delivering packages.
FedEx, UPS, and Amazon likely send multiple trucks throughout your area on a daily basis. Although these delivery services have made our lives easier in some regard, they also pose a threat to other motorists and pedestrians.
If you’re not careful, then you could end up being seriously harmed in a wreck caused by one of these delivery trucks or vans.
To give you the opportunity to better protect yourself and your loved ones, we want to look at some common causes of delivery truck accidents. With that knowledge, you’ll hopefully be able to avoid these oftentimes devastating collisions.
Common causes of delivery truck accidents
As with other kinds of wrecks, there are several ways that delivery truck accidents can occur. Here are some of the most problematic issues that increase the risk of a delivery truck wreck:
- Distracted driving: Delivery drivers have a lot of stops to make on their delivery route. As such, they’re often looking for streets and addresses, and they might have to look known at their navigation device. This distraction takes their eyes off the road and increases the risk of them crossing a center line, blowing past a stop sign, or failing to brake for slowed or stopped traffic. Additionally, delivery drivers are susceptible to other forms of distraction, such as cell phone use.
- Erratic driving behaviors: Delivery drivers are on tight timelines, and they want to finish their workday as quickly as possible. As such, they might speed, change lanes without signaling, and turn suddenly and erratically. Any of these driving behaviors can result in a serious accident.
- Errant reversing: Maneuvering a delivery truck can be difficult, especially when it needs to be reversed. When a delivery truck driver backs up too quickly or fails to adequately check their surroundings, they can back into another vehicle or strike a pedestrian. Given the sheer size of these vehicles, the resulting damage can be catastrophic.
- Poor cargo securement: It’s not uncommon to see delivery trucks driving down neighborhood streets with their doors open. This makes it easier for drivers to access packages from stop-to-stop, but it also increases the chances that packages will fall out of the truck, causing other vehicles to have to swerve to avoid colliding with them. This, in turn, can result in vehicles crashing into each other or pedestrians being struck by vehicles that are trying to avoid hitting fallen boxes.
- Bad training: Delivery drivers should be adequately trained so that they can safely operate their trucks. But all too often these companies take shortcuts to ensure they can meet staffing needs. This potentially puts a dangerous and inexperienced driver out on the road where they may not know how to respond to changed traffic and weather conditions. This puts motorists like you in harm’s way.
Have you already been injured by a delivery truck driver?
If you’ve been hurt in a delivery truck accident, then you need to consider taking legal action. That may be the only way to find accountability and recover the compensation you need to offset your losses, the latter of which may include lost wages and medical expenses.
These can be hard-fought cases, though, especially when you’re also suing the driver’s employer, so be sure to gather compelling evidence to support your claim and know how to craft your arguments to the legal elements in play.
