Monmouth County New Jersey Motor Vehicle Accidents Law Blog

Insurance companies provide a valuable service for many people. They help accident victims put their lives back together. However, insurers in New Jersey are probably not entirely on your side when it comes to paying for the damages you incur from truck or car accidents. At Escandon, Fernicola, Anderson, Covelli & McPherson, we believe everyone deserves an ally in these types of struggles.

Serious injuries could change your life forever. It could take you years to realize the full extent of the injuries, especially if you try to avoid medical costs associated with diagnosis and therapy. Insurance companies know this, and it is often part of their strategy to delay you and keep you happy until the statute of limitation for your legal claim expires.

Sharing the New Jersey roadway with commercial trucks can prove unnerving for many motorists, because when cars and trucks crash into one another, the drivers and passengers in the smaller vehicles typically suffer most. At Escandon, Fernicola, Anderson, Covelli & McPherson, we recognize that air brake failure is a frequent cause of today’s semi-truck crashes, and we also understand that many incidents involving brake failure are avoidable.

According to Transport Topics, semi-truck drivers have a tendency to “ride the brakes” when maneuvering their vehicles down steep hills, but doing can, in some cases, lead to brake failure. If a truck driver presses the brakes the entire time his or her truck travels downhill, it can cause the brakes to overheat, lock up and even catch fire, potentially injuring not only the semi-truck driver, but everyone else in his or her path.

If you have ever been stuck in New Jersey traffic, you know first-hand the emotions involved when you are trying to get to your destination. Whether you are on your way to an important meeting or you are simply trying to get home from work, it can be frustrating to be stuck behind a slow driver or have someone pull out in front of you. Road rage is fairly common amongst drivers in New Jersey and throughout the United States. According to AAA, nearly 80% of U.S. drivers admit to having had feelings of road rage within the past year. The problem lies in the fact that aggressive driving behaviors can cause serious accidents. AAA also reported that as many as 56% of fatal car accidents involved some type of aggressive driving behavior.

Fortunately, you can minimize your risk of becoming involved in an accident caused by an aggressive driver by understanding how to spot the signs of such a motorist. These hazardous driving habits include the following:

There are rules and regulations currently in place that require New Jersey and the nation’s commercial truck drivers to rest every so often, and these rules exist to help prevent fatigued driving and improve public safety as a result. At Escandon, Fernicola, Anderson, Covelli and McPherson, we understand the current administration is considering loosening up the rules governing trucker drive times, and we also recognize how doing so could potentially endanger everyone else on the roadway.

According to the Associated Press, many business owners and others with interests in the trucking industry have long desired a more relaxed ruleset governing trucker drive times, and many drivers have too, hoping that relaxing the rules would give them more flexibility. Opponents to relaxing the rules, though, argue that commercial truck crashes are already on the rise, and that anything that could lead truck drivers to put in even longer days poses a serious threat to public safety.