Seven Causes of Truck Rollovers

Something is terrifying about seeing a truck rolling over. And yet, with frightening regularity, trucks on Florida roads leave their wheels and end up on their sides and roofs. In the best-case scenario, a rolled truck blocks traffic for a few hours, but its driver and others escape the accident unscathed. At worst, a rollover accident involving a truck kills and injures multiple motorists and bystanders.

In this blog post, we take a close look at the phenomenon of truck rollovers, why and how they happen, what parties can do to avoid them, and who has responsibility for paying compensation to those whose lives get turned upside down by a truck rollover accident. Contact a truck accident attorney today about your case.

Truck Accident Case Results:

• $3,200,000.00 – Wrongful Death – Trucking Accident: Recovery from a company truck that struck our clients’ vehicle head on, killing one and injuring another.
• $2,250,000.00 – Wrongful Death and Personal Injuries – Trucking Accident: Recovery from trucking company whose truck struck our client on the interstate at night.
• $1,475,000.00 – Wrongful Death – Trucking Accident: Recovery for the death of one client and for catastrophic injuries suffered by another.
• $1,970,000.00 – Wrongful Death – Trucking Accident: Recovery for death of our client caused when his truck was struck head on by another truck on I95.
• $600,000.00 –Wrongful Death – Trucking Accident: Recovery on behalf of a client who was struck and killed by an eighteen-wheeler when the truck violated the client’s right away.

Truck Rollover Overview

When a truck travels down a curved road, centrifugal force causes it to lean away from the curve. The result may be a rollover, in which the vehicle flips over. Tractor-trailers are particularly susceptible to the large center of gravity and variable weight loads carried by trailers.

How Common Are Truck Rollovers?

According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), people reported more than 17,000 truck rollover accidents in a recent year, where the rollover was the “most harmful event” in the accident. Rollover was the “first harmful event” in four percent of all fatal truck crashes that year but represented the most harmful event in 6.5 percent of all fatal truck accidents, and eight percent of non-fatal truck crashes involving injuries. Another resource reported that rollovers caused a disproportionately high number of fatalities.

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles does not publish truck rollover statistics specifically. But research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) found that Florida is far from immune from truck rollover catastrophes. Recently, there were hundreds of such accidents on Florida roads every year, accounting for dozens of fatalities and hundreds of injuries.

What do these numbers tell us? They reflect that although rollovers represent a relatively small portion of overall truck accidents, they predictably cause serious and fatal injuries on American roads.

What Causes Truck Rollovers?

The FMCSA studied the cause of large truck accidents. To begin with, they observed that “[t]he direct cause of any rollover is something that increases the roll moment about the longitudinal axis of the vehicle, generally either turning too quickly or allowing one side of the vehicle to drop or rise suddenly.” The study then identified the underlying causes for this rollover-inducing movement and grouped them into the seven categories discussed below.

Speed as a Cause of Truck Rollovers

“Speed is the biggest contributor to rollover crashes, being involved in 45 percent of the crashes,” according to the above study.

Truck rollovers happen because of speed or reckless driving, particularly frequently at curves in the road. About three-fourths of speed-related rollovers happen at curves, such as on-and off-ramps. More than 80 percent of those crashes happen because the truck driver misjudged the safe speed for entering and navigating a curve. (Similarly, unsafe speeds when the truck turns at intersections also often result in rollovers.)

Speed also contributes significantly to truck rollover accidents when the truck’s cargo is not stable or properly loaded. Trucks have a high center of gravity. A rollover can result when cargo causes that center of gravity to shift at speed.

Inattention as a Cause of Truck Rollovers

The second most common contributor to truck rollovers is truck driver inattention, which ranges from simply taking one’s mind off of the road, to sleeping, to distractions such as CB radios and (these days) smartphones. Any time a truck driver’s attention drifts from the road ahead, the risks increase that the driver will react to a road hazard by making a sudden change in direction that precipitates a rollover.

(Lack of) Control as a Cause of Truck Rollovers

The researchers also found that mistakes by drivers in how they control a truck contribute significantly to rollover accidents. The biggest culprit in this category was over-steering when changing lanes or swerving harder than necessary to avoid a perceived hazard. These too-sharp directional changes cause an imbalance that leads to a rollover, similar to when a driver enters a curve at an unsafe speed.

Related to over-steering is overcorrection in other words, correcting a lesser steering mistake with a greater one which can lead to a rollover for the same reasons. Finally, under-steering can cause rollovers, such as when the driver fails to steer a truck away from a road shoulder next to an embankment, causing the wheels to leave the road.

Visual Search Failures as a Cause of Truck Rollovers

The three categories above are somewhat specific to rollover accidents. The remaining four contribute to all types of truck accidents, rollovers included. First is a truck driver’s failure to perform an adequate visual search for traffic conflicts. This factor relates somewhat to inattention but specifically to not checking both ways at intersections or looking far enough down the road to perceive upcoming hazards.

Preoperative Factors as a Cause of Truck Rollovers

Two particular factors that occur before the truck takes to the road can contribute to rollover accidents. One is a driver’s failure to assure the security of a cargo load. As discussed above, a sudden and unexpected shift in cargo can contribute to a loss of control. The other factor is a pre-existing condition specific to the driver before he climbs behind the wheel such as a medical ailment that makes him unable to operate safely or a chronic lack of sleep.

Other Drivers as a Cause of Truck Rollovers

Truck driver behavior is not to blame for all rollovers. Rather, other vehicles on the road may collide with a truck or operate erratically, forcing trucks to take evasive action. In either case, a rollover can result.

Vehicle Condition as a Cause of Truck Rollovers

Failures of vehicle parts and systems brakes and tires, especially often cause a rollover. Drivers may contribute to these conditions by failing to inspect their vehicles adequately before taking to the road. Still, the responsibility for inspecting and maintaining a vehicle often lies with someone other than the driver.

What Hazards Do Truck Rollovers Cause?

Truck rollovers lead to potentially deadly road and traffic conditions. As noted above, rollovers lead to hours-long traffic tie-ups in the best case. But often, the hazards are far worse.

Here is a list of some of the more common truck rollover dangers:

• A collision between the truck and other vehicles. A truck can roll over onto or slide on its side into another vehicle. It can also obstruct a roadway making it impossible for other vehicles to avoid.
• Harm to the truck driver. If a driver is lucky, only his trailer rolls over in an accident. When the truck cab also flips, the impact can crush the driver’s compartment and lead to catastrophic or fatal injuries for the trucker and any passenger in his vehicle.
• Spilled cargo, exposures, and explosions. Trucks carry a wide variety of cargo on Florida roads. When a truck rolls, it risks spilling that cargo onto the roadway. Spilled cargo can create deadly hazards. Hard goods can obstruct the roadway and pose collision hazards. Liquid cargo can make roads slick. And toxic or flammable cargo can poison the air or ignite, leading to a deadly fire or explosion.
• Secondary vehicle-on-vehicle collisions. Even when no vehicle collides with an overturned truck, a rollover can lead to secondary accidents between other vehicles. This may occur from those vehicles swerving to avoid an overturned truck or its cargo, or because an overturned truck distracts other motorists and causes them to lose control of their vehicles.

Who Has Legal Liability for Damages in a Truck Rollover Accident?

As the discussion above details, rollover accidents have many different causes and lead to many different effects. A person who sustains injuries or loses a loved one in an accident involving a truck rollover may have the right to take legal action for compensation. But who is liable for paying that compensation? In truck rollover accidents, that is not always a straightforward question.

The job of an experienced truck accident lawyer is to sort through the various parties involved in a rollover accident to identify those with potential legal liability and the ability to pay.

The Many Potentially Liable Parties

The common causes of truck accidents listed above support the view that in many (if not most) cases, the truck driver’s actions led to the rollover. But that does not mean that the truck driver is the only party who may have liability for the harm the rollover causes, or even that the truck driver will be liable.

The average commercial truck has multiple parties legally associated with it. There’s the trucker, the truck owner, the owner of the cargo, and the trailer owner (who is often different from the owner of the tractor), for starters. There’s also often a company that loads a truck and an independent mechanic who regularly maintains it. And, of course, there are manufacturers of trucks and truck parts.

Plus, not every rollover results from anyone or anything associated with the truck. As we mentioned above, collisions with other vehicles or reasonable attempts to avoid them can also cause rollovers, as can some road conditions created by road crews and civil engineers. In short, there are lots and lots of parties whose actions may contribute to a truck rollover.

Any of these parties’ actions can contribute to a rollover. This means any of them can have a legal liability to the rollover accident victims.

Lawyers Investigate Causation and Resources to Narrow the List

After compiling a list of potentially liable parties for a truck rollover, a lawyer will typically try to narrow down that list by determining who could not have influenced the crash. Then, the lawyer will narrow that list further by identifying which parties can pay compensation, either out of insurance proceeds or from assets.

At the end of this investigative process, the lawyer aims to have identified one or more parties who:

1. Owed a duty of care not to harm the rollover accident victim.
2. Breached that duty of care through that action or omission.
3. Harmed the client.

This trifecta of elements of a claim can vary slightly depending on the circumstances, but it forms the backbone of most personal injury cases where a victim of someone else’s careless or reckless conduct seeks compensation.

Recap: Truck Rollovers Endanger Lives

Because truck rollovers are relatively rare, the odds are that most people will never have to face the aftermath of suffering injuries or losing a loved one in such a crash. But that’s most people. Anyone unlucky enough to encounter a truck rollover faces a high risk of injury or fatality. Knowing the common causes of truck rollovers can help you avoid an accident, but sometimes the accident finds you, as they say.

If you have questions about your legal rights after a truck rollover accident harms you or a loved one, consult with an experienced truck accident attorney today. There is no cost in sitting down with a lawyer for an initial meeting, and what you learn may help you pick up the pieces after a rollover disrupts your life.

Determining liability for a rollover is no easy task, and trucking companies will work to prevent liability when possible. You need the right legal help to seek and obtain the total compensation you need for your injuries and losses.

Trucking companies will have representatives gathering evidence right away, and this does not work in your favor as a truck rollover victim. You need a legal advocate fighting for your interests as soon as possible following the crash.

Reach out to a trusted truck accident lawyer today.