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If you have young people and it’s snow and ice, take them out. Go out with them. I don’t care if they’re 18, 17, if they haven’t driven in snow and ice, take them out. And then be careful about letting other kids ride together in a bad weather situation because, even if they’re not on their cell phones, it’s so easy to make a mistake.
I’m Attorney David Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelly & Faultless. I’ve represented people who’ve been seriously injured or who have had a family member killed in a semi or other big truck wreck for over 30 years. Following the wreck, their lives are chaos. Often, they don’t even know enough about the process to ask the right questions. It is my goal to empower you by providing you with the information you need to protect yourself and your family. In each and every episode, I will interview top experts and professionals that are involved in truck wreck cases.
In the Ask David episodes of After The Crash, we switched things up. Instead of me asking questions, I answer the questions. Nothing’s off limits. They ask me about truck safety, about truck accidents, about semi-truck litigation, about commercial motor vehicle wrecks. You name it, I talk about it. This is After The Crash.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of After The Crash. Today, we are happy to have Randy Ollis as a guest. And this is a little bit different. We’re going to have Randy; I’m going to ask him questions, but he’s going to also get to ask me questions. So, I’m going to have to answer. I’m not used to being the guest, I’m used to being the host, but you know what? Randy, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Randy Ollis:
Thank you, David.
David Craig – Host:
Most of you know who Randy is. He’s a celebrity here in Indiana, Indianapolis. He was with Channel 8 for, gosh, 39 years, retired in 2023, is that right?
Randy Ollis:
Yes. I’ve been retired, David, for just over, almost a year and a half right now. I’m retired, but I’m more busy than when I was working.
David Craig – Host:
He’s a meteorologist. Most of you have seen Randy give us the weather for years. He’s the fixture in our households, but now he tells me he’s busier than he ever has been. So, Randy, why don’t you just bring us up to speed? What are you doing nowadays?
Randy Ollis:
Well, I do some consulting work for you guys here, whenever a weather case comes along. I’m also doing some volunteer work for a children’s ministry that I’m really passionate about. I’ve also been asked to be nominated for Visionaries of the Year for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. They have a big fundraising event, starting at the end of February. I thought, I don’t know what I’m doing, but then again, I never knew what I was doing when I was doing weather too, so I thought this is right up my alley here. So, I’m busy with that. And also, travel. My wife and I, we’re group leaders, and we’re heading up a tour to Ireland in August of this year. So, kind of busy. I tell you what, we’re going this way and that way, but I really enjoy it. Last thing I want to do, David, is sit around and do nothing. So, as long as I keep my health and we keep on going here, I’m really enjoying the retirement that we have going on right now.
David Craig – Host:
And I probably left off the most important thing. You’re a husband, you’re a father and a grandfather.
Randy Ollis:
Grandfather, that’s right. I have six grandchildren. In fact, two of them live just down the street, four houses away from us here. So, they’re in and out all the time. So, hopefully, they won’t come in while we’re doing this interview. But we have four of them in the area and two that live down around Atlanta, Georgia. So, it’s great. I couldn’t ask for anything more. I’m totally blessed. I really am.
David Craig – Host:
Well, that makes two of us, and I’m so fortunate to have you on here. So, Randy, he does forensic work. For you that may not know, forensic work is when you have a weather situation or a weather case or case involving the weather, you reach out to somebody like Randy, a meteorologist, who can look up and give you some background information about the weather and the conditions that existed at the time of your wreck or your accident. And so here recently, we had two semi wrecks that were in bad weather, and the head of our rapid response team is a guy named Clint Crabtree. And Clint reached out to Randy and said, “Hey, we’ve got these two situations. Can you give us the weather breakdown for those two wrecks?” And so we still use Randy, and if folks out there happen to be listening to this and they need a forensic expert, how do people get a hold of you?
Randy Ollis:
That’s a great question there, David. In fact, they can go to my Facebook page. I do a lot of communication back and forth. People message me here or you can email me at randy.ollis8@gmail.com. So, I’m not with Wish anymore, Channel Eight, of course, the day I did my last broadcast, my email changed when I walked out the door. You know how that goes. I’m on my own. Wish was very good to me over the 39 years I was there. But I’m enjoying what I’m doing today here too. I really am.
David Craig – Host:
Well, we’ve got a situation that… Now, I grew up, I graduated from high school in 1978, so I always say, “boy, the weather back in the ’70s and early ’80s were a lot tougher than they are today.” I tell my kids that, I tell my grandkids. And now all of a sudden, this year, in 2025, it’s gotten cold, it’s gotten snowy. So, tell me a little bit, am I wrong? Has the weather been, has it changed?
Randy Ollis:
I’ll say this, I’m a big fan of cycles. I really am, that the weather cycles through 20, 30-year cycles, 40 years, whatever. Try telling people down in New Orleans and Houston, and Pensacola that, hey, we’ve had great weather for the last few years. They have until yesterday. They got hammered. I think Pensacola, about eight inches of snow on the ground. I heard one report of near a foot of snow near New Orleans there, and the Gulf Coast just got hammered. So, again, that’s probably a once-in-100-years storm that occurred down there. And that’s going to occur every once in a while. Once in 100 years we had our 100-year storm with a blizzard of ‘78. Everybody remembers that when that went on. But we have been in a warming cycle during the past couple decades or so.
Like you mentioned, David, I remember growing up in Chicago area in the ’60s, ’70s, early ’80s, and the snow would stay on the ground pretty much all winter long. We’d have temperatures down 15, 20, below zero, wind chills of -50. But I will say this, they have changed the formula for factoring the wind chill. They did this several years ago, so it doesn’t seem as extreme as what it used to because they’re always updating their formulas. I didn’t know if you knew that or not, but that did change there several years ago. The weather service, they’re always updating things and changing the weather criteria. But we have been in somewhat of a warming cycle. But again, this winter’s been pretty cold. In fact, I have a couple stats for you. I guess we’re not on TV; we can just go as long as we want.
David Craig – Host:
Absolutely. So, today we’re shooting this on January the 22nd. And I can tell you it’s cold. But that’s all I can tell you.
Randy Ollis:
This morning at the weather service, they got down to a low of -3. And you think that’s a record? It’s not even close to a record. It really isn’t here, but it is, so far, the coldest morning so far of this winter season right here in Indy. Other places were down to as low as -5, 6, 7, 8 degrees below zero. Wind chills -10, -20. So, January has been a very cold month. I checked it out. We’re running about 7.1 degrees below normal for the entire month of January. So, that’s unusual compared to the past umpteen years or so. January snowfall, this month alone, we’ve had about 11.7 inches of snow, and that’s about 5.5 inches above normal. And for the entire snow season, we’re only running about 2.5 inches above normal. So, even though we’ve had a lot of snow, it’s still just 2 or 3 inches above normal for where we should be for this time of the year.
So, it looks terrible compared to the past decade or so. But again, this is, things have changed, at least for right now. We talk about La Niña, we talk about El Niño. This winter, the weather service, long range forecasters, they pretty well nailed it, they said this is going to be more of a neutral winter. If anything, maybe a very weak La Niña. And whenever you have that taking place, that’s when you get the more typical blasts of cold air coming on down. That’s exactly what’s happened. So, I tip my hat to the forecasters at the weather service, the Climate Prediction Center. So far, this winter has turned out fairly close to what they were talking about.
David Craig – Host:
Well, the crazy thing is that, so it may be not that much more snow, but it seems like it because as you mentioned earlier, it is staying colder. So, a lot of times in the past it seems like we would get snow and then the sun comes out and it warms up, and it goes away, and it’s not there very long. But now, the snow has been on the ground here for a while. And then you got the situation where sun comes out during the day and then the road crews go out and they put stuff down and shovel it off, but then it refreezes because it’s so cold and it’s hard to get rid of that ice.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. It really is. Whenever you hear about temperatures getting down to around zero or below, you got to get that off the driveway and the sidewalks before we get that cold. I believe it was last Saturday, we had a high of 46, so it did melt away quite a bit of snow. We’re seeing some grass out there, but there’s still snow covered in sheltered areas here, but you need to get it off before the temperatures plummet down below zero. And this coming Sunday, today’s Wednesday, this will mark three weeks that we’ve had some snow on the ground. So, it’s not a record, but again, we haven’t seen it on the ground this long for quite some time. And I’ve been looking, too, at the long range of maps. You want me to just throw in my 2 cents here about the future? I can do that if you want.
David Craig – Host:
I’m curious. So what is the forecast? What do we expect going forward?
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. I checked it out. Some good news here. I don’t think we’re going to go to 75, 80 degrees or anything soon or across the region, but by the weekend, we’re going to see temperatures close to normal into the 30s across the region. So, again, it’s going to start to gradually warm up the next several days. And that’s probably going to continue to next week. No major storms coming in. I was talking to somebody a little bit ago. For the next week or 10 days, it’s just going to be a quiet weather pattern, moderating temperature. So, that is really good news. And also here, David, I can mention too, weather service here for February, they’re calling for near normal temperatures right here across Indiana, much of the Ohio Valley with above normal precipitation.
And also, for their seasonal outlook, this is for, let’s see, March, April, and May, same thing, near normal temps, above normal [precipitation]. So, if that pans out, it could be a fairly active springtime here with rains and thunderstorms as we’re stuck into a wetter pattern right now. But that’s okay too. I believe last year, and I think the year before, we didn’t have much snow at all — the last three winters, really. And precipitation-wise, last year we were exactly normal. We were on the money to the one-100th of an inch, which is unusual for the entire year. But the two previous years before that, we are running about nine or 10 inches below normal in terms of total moisture.
So, again, it tends to balance out. Last year, we were normal, and we had some pretty good drought going on end of December, first part of January, but that has also been moderating as well. There’s no drought across Indiana, but there’s still some abnormally dry spots, especially up north. So, this active pattern will continue into February, into the springtime too. And David, you know, you’ve been here a long time, we can’t say we’re out of the woods yet in terms of winter, until after the boys’ sectional basketball tournament. That’s always the marker. Once we make it past there, usually we’re home free. But we can still get snow storms into a March and ice storms.
I think, not so much last year, but a couple years before that, we had accumulating snow in April too, the beginning of April. So, it ain’t over until it’s over, but I always put the mile marker at the boys’ sectional basketball tournament. And then after that, hopefully things will improve. Even if it snows and accumulates, it won’t last that long.
David Craig – Host:
Well, I appreciate it and I hope, I like snow-
Randy Ollis:
Me too.
David Craig – Host:
But at the same time, this cold weather…and what I hate is when it’s raining, when it’s not snowing and it rains and it’s cold, that’s even worse than the snow. But my grandkids love the snow. I like getting out. My dog loves the snow, so let’s hope we have snow. But the problem from my standpoint and what I do for a living, as a truck accident attorney is that, unfortunately, every time I see it, especially it seems like when it first hits, the first snow we get, it seems like it just creates chaos and havoc on the roadways.
Randy Ollis:
Let me just go back to, I did a little research, now I get into what you’re talking about now, but the Great Lakes here, I am always fascinated by ice on the lakes. And with the freezing cold snap, about one-quarter of the Great Lakes are now frozen over.
David Craig – Host:
Oh, my.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. Who cares, I guess. But you care if you live next to the Great Lakes because you get the lake effect snow. But I always like to see how much of the Great Lakes are frozen over. I think Lake Erie almost totally frozen over, but that does affect those lake effects snow squalls that are coming on through.
David Craig – Host:
One of the things that’s scary about Indiana, though, is like what you mentioned here, it wasn’t that long ago we had 40 degree weather.
Randy Ollis:
Yes. The last Saturday was 46.
David Craig – Host:
So, then you get this freezing cold weather and then I see it’s going to warm up again a little bit. And so folks, I just saw a water rescue team go out here just a couple days ago. And the problem is, with Indiana lakes, is that you don’t have that steady long period of time where it’s cold enough, where it’s safe to go out on it.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. And even when I was on TV, and even I still do radio now, we always warn people, especially the young ones, don’t go out on the lakes there. The ice is, you don’t know how thick it is. It’s very thin. It’s pretty thick right now. We always say you have got to have about 4 inches of ice in order to support yourself and have it be at safe levels. But even so, there’s always thin spots in the ice, too. So, we always say, don’t go out on the ice, just don’t do it because it can be very dangerous.
You really need prolonged cold weather. And we’ve had it for the last several days or so, but you get down to -10, -20, that’s pretty solid there. But as I mentioned this morning, we got down to three degrees below zero. Hey David, I want to ask you a question too about the roads and driving in that. We’re heading into spring eventually, and with this freezing and thawing, we’re going to have a lot of holes developing. Is that a problem with drivers? Is that cases that come your way because of potholes?
David Craig – Host:
It is. And unfortunately people swerve to miss them. You’re darned if you do and you’re darned if you don’t.
Randy Ollis:
That’s right.
David Craig – Host:
If you hit the pothole, then you’re afraid it’s going to blow out your tires. If you swerve, then that can even be more dangerous.
Randy Ollis:
Yes.
David Craig – Host:
It’s the same with animals, people swerve to miss a deer. I don’t want to hit any animal, but at the same time, when young people swerve, they hit a tree, and a tree doesn’t move, or they hit a pole, and a pole doesn’t move. And so all of a sudden now they’re talking about a fatality or a catastrophic injury. Whereas if — it’s the same thing with bad weather — when you start getting the potholes, you just got to drive slow. You got to take your time, drive slow. So, that way when you do move around the potholes, you’re not endangering yourself or others. But unfortunately, especially I see it, and this is, and I speak to young kids, I see young people get hurt or killed when they do things when they’re not used to it. They’re not used to driving. Maybe they go to driver’s school and then it’s the first spring and they haven’t dealt with potholes.
And all of a sudden they’re driving down and they’re inexperienced, they’re going too fast, and they either hit a pothole or swerve to miss it. And unfortunately, it may not be something that I can help people with as far as an injury case, but unfortunately it is a situation that can unfortunately result in a horrible injury or death.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. It is critical. And also you were talking about, earlier too, about that first snow that comes on down. I’ve had people who move into the market here, TV stations, and I always warn them, every late fall, early winter, I say, “Watch out.” I tell them after a half inch to an inch of snow, that’s going to be 150, 200 car wreck day today. And they go, “Are you kidding me? In one inch of snow?” I go, “Yes.” Because it’s the first snow here. People think, oh, it’s not much. And they just take off like they’re at the speedway, and you got to slow down. I almost would prefer to have the first snow be 5 or 6 inches because then maybe we’d use some common sense and slow down with that much snow. But with the first one, it’s always like people forget how to drive.
We’re making fun of those people down in New Orleans right now and Pensacola saying, they don’t know how to drive in that. We don’t either! And you think we should know how to drive, but we don’t. It’s always that first snow and people are sliding all over the place. So, they’ve just got to slow down. You probably get a lot of cases that from the first inch, 2 inches of snowfall.
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. Unfortunately. Because a lot of times what happens is just people aren’t prepared. So, instead of watching the weather and watching the meteorologists predict it, or they’ll just say, they don’t think that way and so they don’t have their scraper in their car. They’re just not ready for it. And so they get in their car and… How many times have we seen, you’re driving down the roadway and you see somebody with a little circle scraped off on their windshield and you’re like, “okay, now how is that safe?” It’s clearly not safe. And you see that year after year, after year because people haven’t prepared. They don’t have their scraper. I’ve seen people with charge cards out there scraping.
And so, I think unfortunately, people were in accidents, and they caused injuries or deaths when it all could have been avoided, had people slowed down, taken time and prepared properly. Is their car safe? Has it got enough fluid? Is their heater working? Is the defroster working? Do they have good windshield wipers? Do they have a scraper in their car? Are they ready and prepared? Do they have a blanket and do they have stuff inside their car? So, if something does happen, if they do slide off, they can protect themselves, they’re ready. And if they just do those things, so many accidents could be avoided.
And I’m a personal injury lawyer. I represent folks and protect them if they’re a victim of somebody else’s carelessness or negligence. But you know what? I would prefer that no one get hurt. I would prefer that no one get killed. I’ve got plenty of work, and I’m not looking for new work. And we’d spend a lot of our time educating the public, especially those young drivers, is that if I can keep a kid from being in an accident, then that’s the greatest reward I could have.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. And when you say, David, that a big part of it is just common sense, use common sense here. Just review what you said, take the ice scraper along, and that’s one of my pet peeves, too. And that is when you’re driving down the road and somebody does not clean the ice or the snow off the back windshield. It just drives me crazy. It’s like, you can’t see a thing there, you’re asking for trouble. And I guess, can the police pull them over and ticket them for that? I’m sure they can.
David Craig – Host:
They can. But the problem is, you hate to pull somebody over when it’s bad weather because you got ice, and you may create additional problems. And a big problem is, so I do a lot of truck accidents, semi-trucks, flatbeds, dump trucks and those types of vehicles. And I really hate it when you’re on the roadway and you see those trucks, because speed, like I said earlier, speed is, whether you’re in a car or whether you’re in a truck, speed is the worst thing in the world you can do when you’re driving on wet pavement, snow, ice, when visibility is adversely affected, all those things. And how many times have you been driving on the highway on 465 and cars fly by you or semi-trucks fly by you?
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. So, give us a little narrative about the difference between driving in ice and driving in snow. I think the biggest thing is time. You got to allow yourself extra time and just slow down, just take it easy. But talk about ice… Do you get more cases from ice accidents or is it from snow or both?
David Craig – Host:
You get it from all, and even wet pavement. The reality is, it’s almost worse. If it’s icy out and you know it’s icy, people then slow down a little bit more. The ice that gets them is the black ice that they don’t see underneath bridges, under areas where sun hasn’t been shining down. But I’d be honest, the biggest thing: even wet pavement, packed snow, those can be deceiving because people think they can drive on it. People think they have a four wheel drive vehicle, so they can just plow through, and they may be plowing through snow, but all of a sudden they hit ice and they can’t see it. Or they’re on wet pavement and they think, well, I don’t have to slow down.
Now if you have a CDL, if you’re a commercial motor vehicle driver and you have a CDL, the CDL manual tells you that you should decrease your speed of your truck by one-third if you’re on wet pavement, 50% if you’re driving on packed snow, and if you’re on ice, you have a duty to get off the road as soon as practical and as soon as you safely can do it. But how many times do you actually see, you’re slowing down on the highway and a semi blows by you on either wet pavement or snow or even when there’s patchy ice?
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. Absolutely. A lot of times, too, with those truckers, as fast as they’re going, I know they got a deadline, probably timed deadline to meet, but it can blow up that snow dust when they go by you. And if it’s light, powdery snow, you can hardly see, anything like that. So, I’m assuming a lot of the truck accidents are not always, but probably more often than not, the trucker’s to blame for it. Would you think? Or am I wrong?
David Craig – Host:
I think it’s a combination. I believe that most truckers are good, caring and professional people. Most of them have families; they’re trying to do their job. And thank goodness they do it because they keep our country open. And so most of them are doing an extraordinarily good job, but the bad ones are extraordinarily dangerous. The bad ones are the ones that are risking our lives. And when you’re driving 40 tons of steel, you can’t stop that thing on a dime, even on dry pavement.
I took our lawyers out to Montana, and I said, let’s all go drive semis. So, we went out to a strip out there, professional drivers, and they taught us and worked with us on how to back, how to drive. I wanted my attorneys to be aware that it’s a hard job. And then I wanted to just get on the highways, so you could see how cars interact with semis. They cut them off. They don’t appreciate the risk involved in driving too close or in a blind spot.
And so truckers have a tough, tough job. But the bad ones, they don’t care. The bad ones are in a hurry. They put profit over safety, and they endanger all of our lives. I don’t care if you’re a bad car driver or you’re a bad truck driver, you should not endanger other people’s lives. They do it. I’ve had cases where truckers have been on — they’re prohibited from using cell phones; they can use a Bluetooth — but they’re not allowed to hold the phone. Yet, if there’s ever a time you don’t want to use a cell phone, it is when you’re driving in adverse weather. You need to be paying 100% attention to what you’re doing. And not long ago, I handled a case up in Newcastle, State Road Three, where a guy was on his cell phone, had been on a cell phone for hours, driving in horrible conditions, slid through two traffic lights, and then on the third one, he hit my client and caused a brain injury.
Now, there’s no excuse for that. And so, you look at that, and as an attorney, you dissect it and try to figure out who’s at fault. In that case, my client did absolutely nothing wrong. But there are cases where cars are going too fast, as well, or they’re driving in too tight of quarters, they’re in a blind spot or they don’t appreciate the semi’s stopping distance, and they endanger the truck and themselves, as well.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. And you touched on it earlier, but just how about some of the rules for the truckers there? Do they have rules for wintertime, rules for summertime, rules for no time, or how’s that work?
David Craig – Host:
They do. So, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, those are the rules and regulations that apply to all truck drivers that are involved in interstate commerce. Also, most states have adopted it for intrastate commerce, as well. So, if you’re driving a heavy truck, 26,000 pounds or above — and a semi is going to be 40 tons —you’re going to have to follow the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations require that if you are an adverse weather condition, something that affects visibility or affects traction, you have to use extreme caution. And that makes sense, if you think about it. And so that could be snow. If it’s snowing so hard, or if it’s raining, fog, so many different things, or snow or ice or wet pavement, then you have to use extreme caution.
And then you look at the CDL manual, which requires you to slow down or get off the road. You look at the industry standards which say, hey, you look at things like your mirrors. If you’ve got moisture, if it’s raining and you look at your mirrors and you’ve got icicles on it, then you know that there’s probably ice on the roadway as well. And so there’s a lot of industry standard practices that truckers have to follow because they’re professional. They’re paid to drive; [they have to do things] that you and I driving our cars don’t have to do.
Randy Ollis:
Okay. And also, can you just mention some of the different types of cases that you’ve had with the truckers? We’re talking about winter weather, but anything else you want to add about the different cases you cover there?
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. It’s sad. Almost every winter when I see snow… I mean, when you see it, you’re seeing it from a weather perspective. When I see it, I see it from a safety perspective. And my kids are probably, they hate the fact that I start lecturing them about snow because I’m like, “Okay. Well, look, you’ve got to be careful. You stay away from semis, just stay away from them, even if you’re on the highway and be careful and drive extraordinarily slow and cautiously.”
I had a case out on I-70 where it was single file, so there was only one lane. The other lane, the passing lane was snow covered. My client was going towards Terre Haute around Brazil, and she’s going single file, there’s a car behind her, and they’re both going 40 miles an hour on the highway, on I-70.
A car’s coming off, a pickup truck’s coming off the ramp. So, my client sees this pickup truck coming out, so she turns her turn signal on and tries to move over into the snow-covered lane. Unfortunately, she loses control, her car spins, which would normally, she would’ve gone into the median, but there’s a semi flying at highway speed, not slowing down at all, in the left, uncleared lane, passing all these other cars that are in single file. And he hits my client as she spins and kills her. She’s a single mom, and he kills her. And the police report put fault on my client because she had started spinning.
So, other lawyers didn’t take that case. And I looked at that case and I said, “Well, what was that semi driver doing, passing traffic in the left lane that wasn’t cleared?” And so I got the witness statement of the car behind, and that person said, “Look, she had no choice.” A car was coming off the ramp. She just tried. She was going 40 miles an hour or lower, slower. She turned her turn signal on. But when she tried to move, the road was so icy, she just started spinning. And had that semi not been passing, she would’ve lived. And I was able to make a recovery for her and her family, or for her family.
But that’s the type of thing you see, truckers will say, “Well, we don’t have a problem. It’s the cars that are around us.” The bad truckers. But the reality is we all share the roads equally. We all have a duty, we all have a responsibility to drive slow, to drive carefully. Every winter when I see the snow and I see the ice, I know that I’m going to get phone calls, just like, it was a week ago or so, I got two semi cases that I called you on for weather reports because, two in a single week. And soon as that starts snowing, I know we’re going to get calls.
Randy Ollis:
You’re probably going to get more calls here, too, after all the snow we’ve had so far this January. So, just one other thing here, I guess, you mentioned the rapid response from Clint, one of your co-workers there. Can you explain more about that, what Clint does?
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. So, rapid response, because we do so many semi cases and because semi companies — think about it, a lot of them are huge companies or they have insurance carriers that are huge carriers — they can hire the best in the business. They hire the best lawyers; they hire the best claims people. They’re very actively and aggressively defending their claims and defending their drivers. And so when you’re a victim of a wreck, you need somebody on your side. I have a rapid response team. Clint Crabtree runs it. I have a private investigator, Patrick. He’s got a vehicle with flashing lights. As soon as a wreck happens, we do a couple of things. I talk to the clients, I talk to the family and reassure them that we’ll take care of it, and we’ll preserve the evidence. And then Clint gets starts working.
If it’s a weather condition, then he will hire a meteorologist like yourself to lock in, okay, what is the weather like? Did it play a factor? What were the roads? What was the precipitation? But then Clint sends my investigator out, and he goes out and looks for cameras. And in this day and age, I assume that every wreck is going to be on a camera, unless proven otherwise. There’s cameras on pole barns, there’s cameras on traffic lights, on lights over interstates, there’s cameras in vehicles. So, my investigator gets out quickly because those videos will only be preserved for a few days or weeks. So, we go out and say, “Hey, let’s find them.” If it is a city wreck, maybe it’s a gas station, they’ll hold them for 10 days and then re-tape over them.
So, we get out there, we look at the road conditions, we hire the experts, and then Clint finds out where the vehicle is and we send what’s called a “preservation of evidence letter” that says, “Do not touch this. Do not have your experts touch it.”
We will come out and inspect it and do any downloads on the electronic control module, the computer, and we will do it at the same time as your experts, but we want to make sure, we want to see, and particularly on snow or ice or wet [pavement], how fast was that semi going? Because the trucker may say, “I was going under the speed limit.” But as soon as he brakes hard or she brakes hard, then that locks in the speed of that truck in the computer.
I have experts who will download that, and Clint goes to every one of those inspections. I try to go to most of those. My investigator goes, and we download that and also look for the cameras that are inside the trucks, and we download that video. With these types of crashes, you want to move quickly. You want to make sure that the evidence is preserved because unfortunately, truck drivers, and sometimes they’re just not honest, but sometimes they –
Randy Ollis:
They try to erase the evidence if they can.
David Craig – Host:
Trucking companies, I’ve had to get subpoenas because they’ve started moving them out of state. I had another case, it was a bad weather case, and the driver was from Mexico, and he was bringing parts over from across the border up to a Ford manufacturer. He was coming across, driving in Indiana. Unfortunately, when he learned to drive in Mexico, he learned in warm weather. He did not learn how to drive in snow and ice, yet he was driving these auto parts up into Indiana, northern Indiana. And what happened was, he pulled back out of a factory at night, and his trailer became disconnected from the tractor, which then turned off all the lights. My client went underneath the side of the trailer.
In that case, they took that, and they were moving that equipment out of Indiana, and so we got a subpoena, we locked it down. And what we found out was that they were using the wrong type of grease on the fifth wheel. The fifth wheel is the great big thing where the trailer hooks into. He was using summer, warm-weather grease because that’s what he was trained to do; that’s what he normally did. But that doesn’t cause it to stick in cold weather, and so that trailer popped off, and we were able to help that family because of that. But again, if we don’t get hired quickly, we don’t get out there and we don’t send our rapid response team. We don’t preserve the evidence. We never know.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. So, how do you get the cases? Do you wait for the phone to ring or check out police reports or how does that work?
David Craig – Host:
We wait for the phone to ring. Fortunately, there’s only four lawyers in the state of Indiana that are board certified in truck accident law…
Randy Ollis:
Only four of you?
David Craig – Host:
Four of them in Indiana, and two of them are in my firm. Myself and my partner Scott Faultless, and we teach other lawyers how to handle these cases. We ran an Indiana Trucking Seminar for the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association last year. We’re running it again this year. Scott and I will be speaking down in Orlando in February at a conference on teaching other lawyers how to handle truck cases. So, a lot of our cases are referrals, where people know of us, and so they call us and refer cases to us. And they know, not only do we care about how to protect the family, but what’s important to me is how we treat people. And so we treat people in a way that, people make referrals to us because they know we’re going to treat them right.
Randy Ollis:
So, word of mouth is probably the best thing for you guys.
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Randy Ollis:
Just one more question, I don’t know how long you want to keep going. Remember, I’m retired.
What happens to the truck driver when they are at fault here? Do they lose their job? Are they just fine or, I guess it depends on how severe the case is, right?
David Craig – Host:
That’s a great question because one of the problems is that because a truck driver’s livelihood is at stake, sometimes they’re dishonest because they don’t want to lose their livelihood. So, they don’t want to admit that a wreck is their fault. I suppose you couldn’t blame them because maybe they’re the main breadwinner of their family, and so there’s a lot of incentive for them to fudge the truth. The trucking company has that same incentive because their statistics are kept. I can pull up a trucking company and tell you whether it’s a good company or a bad company. I can tell you how often their trucks are out of service, how often their drivers are out of service. So, the trucking company wants to keep good statistics, good stats. This is something that most people don’t know: when there’s a truck wreck, I’ve had the truck driver call to dispatch before they call 911.
My clients are trapped, maybe dying, but instead of calling 911, they call dispatch and they say, “Hey, I’ve been in a wreck. What do I do?” And they’ll say, “Okay. Call 911.” But then, immediately, the trucking company sends out their people. There are some lawyers on the defense side, on the trucking company side, that in their contract, it requires them to be at the scene of the wreck within so many hours of a wreck.
Randy Ollis:
Wow.
David Craig – Host:
So, sometimes before my client’s bodies are removed from a vehicle, there is a claims person, there’s an attorney, there’s an adjuster, there is an investigator at the scene of the wreck. And we handle truck wrecks, and I have lawyers licensed in Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Ohio. And it’s amazing to me, no matter which state you go to, there’s trucking defense firms, and most of them are required to get to the scene within a certain period of time.
And that can have an adverse effect because those lawyers are talking to witnesses, those lawyers talk to their drivers. I’ve seen cases where a driver’s story… I go out and I subpoena, and I eventually depose all the people around because I have found that sometimes a driver will be honest as soon as a wreck happens, and they are really sorry about what happens. Then, their team gets there, and all of a sudden, the story starts changing.
By the time they talk to the police, that story is completely different, but luckily, I go talk to the witnesses at the scene and we find that sometimes people call 911, they don’t even stay around, but they call 911. I can get that log from 911, get their numbers, and then I have my investigators go back and follow up and track them down.
Randy Ollis:
I did not know that. Hey, one more question. I keep saying that here, but when you get the cases, do you have a batting average? What percentages of the cases you get that you win and you can get money for your clients?
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. I think the great thing about our firm is that we’re extraordinarily successful. I don’t post my results on our website because I believe that it’s personal to my clients, and I also don’t believe in bragging about results. That’s just my nature. I don’t have a problem, some lawyers want to brag, they want to have press conferences and they bring their clients, and that’s fine. That’s them. The way I live my life, that’s just not my personality. I would rather help and inform people. But I can tell you that a very small percentage of these cases go to trial. If you work the case and you’re prepared to go to trial and the other side knows that you have a great reputation and that you are able to win. And the best way to win a trial is to be a decent human being.
I see lawyers, you see TV and movies, jurors are ordinary, average people. And in Indiana it’s six people and it has to be a unanimous decision. And I have enough faith in ordinary citizens, so they can cut through the BS and not. They know who’s exaggerating, who’s not a nice person, whether it’s a client or whether it’s a lawyer. I tell all my lawyers, and I’m proud of my lawyers; every one of my lawyers is recognized as one of the top lawyers in Indiana by the Indiana Super Lawyers, published by the Indianapolis Monthly Magazine. I’ve been fortunate enough to be one of the top 50. But the reason, I think, is because we just are who we are. You try to be a decent human being. Sometimes, I’ll tell you though, Randy, I get a call on a case and I can’t help them.
I had a case where a truck driver unfortunately killed my client, and I represented that family against the truck driver, and we were able to make a great recovery for that family. So, that family was able to buy a house and college and take care of themselves. And then that truck driver who killed my clients, he was killed by a truck about a year later, and his family called me. I was shocked. I was like, “Why is he calling me? Why is his wife calling me?”
And his wife called me and said, “David, I don’t know if, you probably don’t know me, but you knew my husband. My husband was in an accident and unfortunately killed your client. And he told me, if anything ever happened to me that I should hire you because number one, you were a great attorney, but also you were a good human being, that you treated him as a human being. He made a mistake, but you treated him as somebody, and you treated him in such a way that now that he’s gone, we would like you to represent our family.”
Randy Ollis:
That’s neat. I think that’s great, David. I always say, if you’re good, let your work speak for itself. And if you treat people with respect, you have a humble spirit, then usually you won’t have any problem finding work. Unfortunately, you don’t want to have too much work because it’s usually a tragedy involved here, but somebody’s got to do it. That’s your expertise. And again, you take the high road, and I think you’ve been blessed for that.
David Craig – Host:
I have a good friend of mine who’s a pastor, he always tells me, he says, “Dave, I think you’re the [most] blessed and also the luckiest guy I know.”
Randy Ollis:
That’s good.
David Craig – Host:
I said, I’ll take it.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. From a pastor, you’ll take that.
David Craig – Host:
I’ll take it.
You do want to try to prevent [wrecks], and I would tell people in the wintertime, just slow down. Don’t be in a hurry. Don’t put yourself in a situation where you have to drive fast. Stay clear of the semis. I would much rather, I spend a lot of our time educating people, trying to prevent these accidents. Unfortunately, enough of them are going to happen, and people are going to need our services, but I would prefer to do something else. There’s lots of other different types of law, but I know that that’s just not going to happen.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. Another big thing too is, and I know you’re going to agree, stay off your phone while you’re driving.
David Craig – Host:
Absolutely. And distraction… Young people, it’s also just the people in the car. So if you’re listening to this and you have young people, and again, as a parent, as a personal injury lawyer, I’m the worst parent in the world. My kids, I wouldn’t let them jump on trampolines…
But if you have young people and it’s snow and ice, take them out, go out with them. I don’t care if they’re 18, 17, if they haven’t driven in snow and ice, take them out. And then be careful about letting other kids ride together in a bad weather situation because, even if they’re not on their cell phones, if they’re distracted, it is so easy to make a mistake.
Randy Ollis:
And somebody told me, too, that our insurance rates are so much higher because of distracted drivers. There’s more and more wrecks here. May not be more fatalities, I’m sure there are, but that really affects our insurance rates because of distracted drivers.
David Craig – Host:
I probably wouldn’t agree with you on that one, Randy, just because you look at how much money these insurance companies are making—
And so I think that that’s what they say, but I don’t think they’re doing badly. But the reality is—
Randy Ollis:
They’re squeezing by, aren’t they?
David Craig – Host:
I think they’re barely getting by, but they’re getting by.
I would say that, for your own safety, just stay off of cell phones. It’s not worth it. And they can be distracting. Even with Bluetooth, there are trucking companies that will not allow their drivers to even use Bluetooth unless it’s an emergency, even though they’re allowed to under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations because there are studies that show that it’s distracting. If you’re talking to somebody and you’re trying to drive, and you’re carrying on a conversation, it’s distracting and you can be at risk.
Randy Ollis:
All right. I’ve run out of questions, David.
David Craig – Host:
Thank you so much again for being here and for asking the questions and giving us an update on the weather. And hopefully you’re right, it kind of steadies out and we’re okay for the rest of the winter.
Randy Ollis:
I’m enjoying retirement, but I’m still keeping my fingers in there and doing various projects.
David Craig – Host:
When you see bad weather, do you ever, does that make you want to go like, “Okay, I need to get into the station or I need to…”
Randy Ollis:
No, not a bit. I always like to sit back in the easy chair over here and watch the young ones at the station do what I did for 40 years, standing out in the cold. So, I kind of enjoy it on the other side now.
David Craig – Host:
And I want to comment on your picture back there on the [wall], so it is only appropriate that a weatherman, a meteorologist, has that on his walls.
Randy Ollis:
Yeah. We got that up in the [upper peninsula] of Michigan years ago. We saw it in a storm and I thought, I got to get that, that lightning, thunderstorm cloud right there. It’s just, it’s me. That’s my passion. It’s weather. So, had to get it. Had to bring it home.
David Craig – Host:
All right. Well, thanks again, Randy. Take care. God bless.
Randy Ollis:
Thank you, David. Blessings to you. Thank you.
David Craig – Host:
This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After The Crash. If you’d more information about me or my law firm, please go to our website. Or, if you’d like to talk to me, you can call 1-800-ASK-DAVID. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, then pick up my book, Semitruck Wreck: A Guide for Victims and Their Families, which is available on Amazon, or you can download it for free on our website, ckflaw.com.
