FREAK ACCIDENT INJURES 1 AFTER TRUCK CRASHES INTO HOME

On the morning of July 22, officials in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, reported a rather odd accident involving a commercial tractor-trailer and a house. According to Pennsylvania State Police and members of the Franklin County Emergency Services, a semi-truck traveling near the Foot of the Mountain restaurant somehow lost control and ended up crashing into a home in the 14500 block of Buchanan Trail West.

At least one person received a minor injury in the 7:35 a.m. crash, prompting officials to speculate that the roadway would be temporarily closed for several hours.

There are a few things you should know if you have been injured due to a preventable trucking accident. One of the most critical aspects of any large tractor-trailers is its ability to stop. Semi-trucks rely on air brakes as their principal means to decrease their speed. Although some drivers will claim that their brakes failed at a critical moment, these industrial air brakes are designed with multiple redundancies and rarely experience a complete loss of their braking power.

More commonly, the trucking companies who own the vehicles are often at fault for overlooking or simply disregarding necessary periodic brake inspections and maintenance. One of the telltale indicators of this type of negligence is brake imbalance. In these types of cases, forensic truck crash experts can spot poor maintenance based on whether there are substantial differences in the brake force applied to various brakes throughout the truck’s braking system.

Too often, mismatched brake components, unevenly worn brake pads and other issues cause some brakes to work harder to stop the vehicle than others. This can prevent a truck from stopping suddenly because the brake force pressure isn’t being applied evenly throughout the system. Imagine how your car might behave if only one of its four brakes clamped shut while the other three sat idle or barely working.

Fortunately, a truck accident attorney with experience in Illinois personal injury law can assist you by bringing in experts to examine the braking system in the truck that caused your injuries. You may be entitled to seek compensation for your injuries if those experts can establish that maintenance negligence contributed to your accident.

Source: Herald Mail Media, “One injured when tractor-trailer crashes into house near Mercersburg,” July 22, 2015