Even when there is a crash involving only passenger automobiles, damages are often extensive and resulting injuries severe. Add a 20,000-pound truck to the mix, and the potential for a serious crash skyrockets.
According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the fatality rate per vehicle mile traveled is more than 50 percent higher for large trucks than the rate for all highway vehicles combined. Perhaps not surprisingly, the larger the vehicle involved in a trucking accident, the greater the cost of the accident tends to be.
Cost of Fatal Crash Involving a Semi Pulling a Trailer Tops $7 Million
There can be many types of costs associated with a trucking accident. There is property damage, the medical bills of injured victims, and wages lost when injured victims are put out of work, or when a victim is killed and his or her family loses out on a lifetime of productivity. There are also societal costs, like traffic delays caused by a trucking accident.
Perhaps the loss that is felt most deeply by accident victims is their own pain and suffering. Victims are often generously compensated for their pain and suffering in truck accident lawsuits.
So what is the total cost of a typical trucking accident? The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently released statistics indicating that one of the most important factors in the actual cost of an accident is the size of the truck involved.
Excluding pain and suffering, the statistics attempt to take into account all other personal and societal costs of a truck accident. The FMCSA found that the average cost of a truck crash when, including data for all medium or heavy trucks was $148,279.
However, the data begins to skew when it is broken down by type of truck. For instance, the average cost of a crash involving a straight truck with no trailer was just $97,811. But the cost of the average crash involving a tractor-trailer pulling one trailer was found to be $172,292. The average cost of a semi crash in which the truck was pulling two or three trailers came in at a stunning $511,582.
The general averages broken down by truck type include non-injury and injury accidents. When only crashes that resulted in injury are included, the average cost of a truck accident involving a semi pulling one trailer jumps to $334,892, while an average crash involving a heavy truck pulling two or three trailers costs more than $1.2 million.
Of course, fatal truck accidents are the most expensive type of traffic accident in the report. The average cost of a fatal truck accident involving one semi pulling a single trailer clocked in at over $7.2 million.
Injured in a Truck Accident, or Lost a Loved One? Call a Truck Crash Attorney Today.
If you have been the victim of a trucking accident, or if a family member has been killed in a truck crash, you should not take these numbers as a guide to how much you will be entitled to in a lawsuit. Every truck accident case is unique, and the figures take into account many costs of trucking accidents that may be spread across multiple victims or even allocated to society in general.
Still, the numbers serve as a powerful reminder of the heavy toll taken when a truck driver’s negligence causes an accident. If a trucking accident has impacted your life, do what you can to ensure you recover the full monetary compensation to which you are entitled. Get in touch with a trucking accident attorney today and start building your case.
