“If you contact Foley Griffin for a car accident case, you will meet with me. I’m the named partner here. I considered it very important to meet with all new clients myself. The difference between commercial vehicle accidents and regular vehicle accidents generally has to do with the significance of the impact between the vehicles. Most of the time, commercial vehicles are larger vehicles, and when they collide with a passenger vehicle, oftentimes it leads to significant damage to the passenger vehicle, which leads to serious injuries. We’ve found over the years that some of the causes of commercial vehicle accidents are either excessive speed or the fact that the driver has not gotten enough sleep because they have deadlines to meet. They’ve been driving for long periods of time, and they haven’t properly cared for themselves by getting the appropriate rest.
As a prosecutor, I have a lot of experience handling cases where truck drivers didn’t properly tie down their loads on their vehicles or didn’t go through the proper safety checklist on their vehicles, and that has allowed me to focus in on cases where people have been injured due to the negligence of a truck driver specifically either speeding or not properly securing the load or not properly following the safety guidelines that are required.
Commercial vehicle drivers and owners are held to the same standard as any other driver on the roads in New York State. We’ve had a lot of experience handling cases involving commercial vehicles, and what we’ve found is generally the commercial vehicles are registered out of state. That doesn’t change how we handle the case. It’s just an added layer for us to deal with, but again it doesn’t change anything about how we handle the claim or the investigation of the claim.”