Construction Zone Accident Lawyer in Indiana

Construction zones on Indiana highways require drivers to slow down and remain alert for speed limit reductions, lane changes, workers and construction equipment entering the roadway, and other potential dangers. The hazards inherent in a highway work zone increase if a semi-truck or tractor-trailer approaches.

Because of their size and weight, 18-wheelers and other large commercial trucks require more room than other vehicles to slow down and come to a stop. A moment’s inattentiveness by a truck driver, whether caused by fatigue, distracted driving, or any other factor, can be enough to cause a tractor-trailer to barrel into a construction zone and cause a serious accident.

The greater size and weight of large trucks also translate into greater destruction, injury, and death in a collision. Federal statistics show that 72% of people killed in large-truck crashes in 2017 were occupants of other vehicles. In many cases, the truck driver walks away from a crash that has injured or killed someone else.

At Craig, Kelley & Faultless LLC, our construction accident lawyers have extensive experience representing injured victims of large truck crashes. Indiana work zone injury attorney David W. Craig has handled hundreds of commercial vehicle accidents, representing clients from Indianapolis, Batesville, Richmond, Fort Wayne, and throughout Indiana.

Our construction zone accident attorneys can investigate the cause of a highway construction zone accident involving a commercial truck or a construction truck. If the truck driver or another party other than you was responsible for the accident that caused your injuries, we can help you seek full compensation for your losses.

Craig, Kelley & Faultless LLC is an experienced law firm that has successfully represented victims of truck accidents. Our law firm has the resources and commitment to determine what occurred in a large truck crash. Contact us online or by telephone at (800) 746-0226 for a free consultation about your accident and injuries. We have offices in Indianapolis and four other locations.

Why Truck Accidents Are Common in Indiana Construction Zones

The traffic congestion near a highway work zone illustrates the disruption that highway construction can cause. A construction zone may require closing one or more lanes of traffic and diverting traffic, which can create a bottleneck that causes a slowdown.

Highway construction zones are more likely in the warmer months of the year. Significant traffic backups are more likely during weekday morning and afternoon commuter rush hours.

To be safe, a work zone must be designed and erected to control the movement of motor vehicles through the designated area of construction, maintenance, or utility work and to keep traffic separated from workers and work equipment operating in the work zone.

Typically, a highway construction zone consists of four segments:

• Advance warning area, with signs and/or flaggers alerting drivers to the designated area ahead
• Transition area using barriers, channeling devices, and/or lights to divert traffic from its normal path and away from construction work
• Protected workspace for workers, equipment, and storage
• Termination area, which lets traffic resume normal route and speed.

In some cases, flaggers and/or lead vehicles will control the flow of traffic to allow safe travel through a construction zone.

Most construction zone accidents involving trucks are due to the truck driver failing to reduce speed adequately when entering a work zone. Sudden lane changes and traffic shifts in a construction zone may cause problems for a trucker who is going too fast or is not alert.

On a dry, level road heading into a construction zone, the stopping distance required for a large truck (80,000 pounds fully loaded) traveling at 55 mph will be almost 50% longer than what is needed for a passenger car. At 40 mph, it will still be 36% farther.

Large trucks also have higher centers of gravity, which makes a truck more likely to sway or rock due to pavement changes and crossover slopes, or significant lane shifts. Shifting cargo, particularly liquid loads, can exacerbate the effects on a truck’s handling.

Finally, trucks have more numerous and larger blind spots, which can make it more difficult to merge out of a closed lane or to see another vehicle attempting to merge into an open lane.

Most Common Types of Work Zone Crashes Involving Large Trucks

• Rear-end collisions. Most often, a semi-truck traveling too fast for conditions simply runs into the rear of the vehicle or vehicles ahead of it in traffic.
• These accidents may occur if the construction zone includes a lane shift and the trucker has trouble while merging or swerves to avoid a rear-end collision and in doing so hits another vehicle.
• Head-on collisions. Typically, a head-on collision is the result of a trucker swerving to avoid another collision, failing to negotiate an abrupt change in traffic direction, or the truck skidding across the centerline as it brakes. Head-on collisions are more likely during nighttime hours.

Trucks in which the driver has braked too hard can lock up and skid. A tractor-trailer may go into a “jackknife” skid in which tractor cab and trailer uncontrollably slide toward each other. Trucks may be tripped by stops, collisions, and/or resulting cargo shifts, and rollovers. Rollover accidents damage anything hit by the toppled truck and trailer or anything that runs into it, and cargo inevitably spills to cause additional damage or road hazards.

How Often Construction Zone Truck Accidents Occur

The National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse says there were 672 fatal crashes in work zones across the country in 2018, of which 203 (30%) involved trucks. Fatal truck accidents in construction zones caused 228 deaths in 2018 and an average of 236 each year from 2015-2017.

In Indiana in 2018, there were 21 fatal construction zone accidents, which matches the previous three years’ average. Nine of them (43%) involved large trucks. Truck-involved accidents killed 10 people in 2018.

The Clearinghouse estimates that there were 18,000 construction zone crashes involving large trucks in 2017 and 2,000 of them (11%) caused 4,000 injuries.

Overall, the Clearinghouse says commercial motor vehicles, which includes buses and trucks, are involved in almost 40 percent of fatal work zone crashes on urban interstates and over 50 percent of fatal work zone crashes occurring on rural interstates. Large commercial vehicles are also more likely than other vehicles to be involved in fatal work zone crashes on other principal highways in rural areas.

The National Work Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse is a project of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) in cooperation with the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Who’s Liable in a Truck Crash in a Construction Zone

Accident statistics and our experience investigating truck accidents tell us that in most cases a driver, usually the truck driver, is at fault for a commercial truck accident.

If the trucker is employed by a trucking company, the company is liable for its employee’s actions. It includes liability for a truck accident caused by the truck driver’s negligence. A motor carrier would also likely be liable if a malfunction of the truck, such as brake or tire failure, was found to have caused an accident.

In many cases, a motor carrier will insist that its truckers are independent operators and, therefore, the driver and only the driver is liable in an accident. Often a thorough investigation can demonstrate that the driver is an employee or that, legally, he or she should be treated as an employee. You may be entitled to make claims against the truck driver’s insurance and the trucking company’s insurance if they have separate insurance.

Occasionally, an investigation into a construction zone accident finds that the contractors erred in the design. Also, erection of the highway work zone should be held liable for an accident. There are standards for highway work zone design and, if they were ignored and an accident occurred because of this negligence, a case could be made.

However, this points to an important factor regarding highway construction zones: they are temporary and can be changed at a moment’s notice. It is likely for some change to the configuration of a work zone to be made after a serious crash especially if there is some indication that it can or should be made safer.

This makes it important to contact an attorney as soon as possible after being injured in a highway construction zone crash. At Craig, Kelley & Faultless LLC, we can move immediately to document the scene of your accident before it changes and evidence is lost.

How to Show Fault in an Indianapolis Truck Accident

To prove that a commercial truck driver or other party was at fault and is financially liable for your injuries and other losses, you’ll have to prove the elements of negligence.

This requires establishing that:

1. The party owed you a duty of care to act with reasonable safety
2. The party failed to fulfill that responsibility
3. That breach of duty caused the construction zone crash
4. The crash caused you harm and quantifiable losses

Duty of Care

The duty-of-care element refers to an individual’s legal obligation to act with reasonable care while engaging in acts that could foreseeably harm others. For example, drivers including truck drivers should comply with the reduced speed limit in a highway construction zone to avoid accidents.

In most construction zone accident cases, establishing the other party’s duty of care does not represent a difficult task. Operators of motor vehicles owe a duty to the public at large to operate their vehicles in a safe, cautious manner and obey all applicable traffic laws and regulations.

When a commercial truck is involved in an accident, the truck driver or the trucking company may be at fault. The driver may be liable for failing to operate the truck safely or following applicable laws or regulations. The trucking company may be responsible for the actions of its drivers.

Identifying the specific duty of care serves as an important foundation for the rest of your construction zone truck accident claim. The duty may arise from traffic laws, or from general obligations such as maintaining a vehicle in good working order, or from state or federal regulations governing the trucking industry such as driver hours-of-service limitations.

Breach of Duty

To develop a persuasive construction zone accident case, our attorneys will seek evidence to prove that the truck driver and/or trucking company failed to comply with their legal responsibility to operate the truck safely. This requires establishing what the truck driver or trucking company did or failed to do that caused the work zone accident.

For example, was the truck driver breaking traffic laws by speeding in a construction zone? Was the driver distracted by looking at a cell phone? Did the truck driver make a mistake due to fatigue after being behind the wheel longer than permitted by federal trucking regulations? Did the truck suffer a mechanical problem such as a brake failure because the trucking company failed to perform required inspections and maintenance on the vehicle?

If the truck driver broke the law, or if the driver failed to behave in a way that another responsible driver with a CDL license would, the driver may have violated the responsibility to drive safely and protect you and others on the road from harm. If the trucking company ignored proper hiring and training practices, safety regulations, or vehicle maintenance, the company could be proven to be negligent.

Causing a Construction Zone Accident

You must show that the at-fault party or parties’ breach of their legal responsibilities caused the construction zone accident and your injuries.

Proving this can be straightforward in many cases. But not all breaches of duty result in an accident—especially when there are multiple actors who may have breached their duties of care. In some cases, other circumstances can make it more difficult to establish that the truck driver or trucking company’s breach of duty caused the accident and your injuries.

For example, you might have been sideswiped by a truck that veered into your lane. But perhaps the truck driver veered into your lane because a construction zone lane merger was not properly marked or a piece of construction equipment suddenly moved into the truck’s path, requiring the driver to swerve to avoid a collision. In that case, the contractor that designed the construction zone may be liable as well.

In many cases, proving how a construction zone accident occurred and who is at fault requires relying on testimony from accident reconstruction experts. Accident reconstruction specialists can review the physical and photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony from a construction zone truck accident and, using their knowledge and experience, offer an opinion about how the accident occurred. Our law firm works with nationally recognized specialists in accident reconstruction.

Quantifiable Losses

Finally, to recover compensation after a construction zone truck accident, you will need to prove that you suffered injuries and losses that can be calculated or quantified. If you suffered personal injuries, you will likely be capable of establishing some amount of economic loss from medical bills and lost wages or income, in addition to losses arising from property damage such as damage to your vehicle.

However, when you have been physically injured, you also may be entitled to seek compensation for pain and suffering, reduced quality of life, or your family’s loss of your companionship and society due to your injuries. Unlike economic damages like medical expenses, vehicle damage, or lost income, no bills or invoice can prove the extent of these intangible, non-economic losses.

Instead, you would typically need to rely on other evidence, such as the severity of your injuries and the testimony of your family, friends, and co-workers about how the accident and your injuries have impacted your life.

How an Indiana Work Zone Injury Lawyer Can Help You

The dedicated legal team at Craig, Kelley & Faultless LLC can investigate the construction zone truck accident you were involved in to determine what happened and who may owe compensation to you. If you were injured by a truck due to another party’s negligence, have an Indianapolis work zone accident lawyer at our law firm aggressively seek just compensation for you.

We pursue truck accident claims for clients on a contingency fee basis, meaning that we only get paid after we win your case.

Our experienced attorneys also handle construction zone accidents in St. Louis.

Contact us today by telephone at (800) 746-0226 or online for a free consultation about your accident. If you are unable to come to us, we will come to you.

Testimonial

“I had such a positive experience. They helped resolve my case in a timely fashion and took away the stress. They were very helpful, kind, and knowledgeable. I would recommend them to anyone!”

Review by: Angela M.
Date published: February, 2022
Rating: ★★★★★ 5 / 5 stars