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Who Covers the Cost of Long-Term Care After a Crash with a Semi?
Who covers the cost of long-term care after a crash with a semi?
by sushmitha.p@thomsonreuters.com | May 7, 2020 | Catastrophic Injuries
Any motor vehicle collision can leave someone with severe injuries, but crashes between passenger vehicles and massive commercial trucks often prove devastating for the people in the smaller vehicles. The greater size and weight of the commercial truck can mean the total destruction of the smaller vehicle and catastrophic injuries for its passengers and driver.
Spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, severe fractures or even amputations are all possible as a result of a commercial trucking crash involving a passenger vehicle. Some injuries may require long-term care for the victim.
In that scenario, the medical expenses associated with the trash could easily be hundreds of thousands of dollars. If the truck driver is the one responsible for the crash, who will end up paying for that care?
Responsibility for the crash relates to financial liability
When law enforcement officers respond to reports of a crash, they typically try to gather as much information as they can at the scene of the collision in order to make an accurate determination regarding the fault for the crash.
The driver who is responsible for the collision will also be the one who incurs financial liability for the damages and injuries that result. This will leave their insurance policy to pays for property damage and personal injury losses resulting from the collision.
Commercial drivers carry more insurance for exactly these situations
The fact that big commercial trucks cause massive crashes and serious financial consequences is well known and documented. As a result, states require substantially more liability insurance for commercial vehicles than they do for smaller passenger vehicles.
Depending on the weight of the truck involved in the crash, the driver may have to carry at least $300,000 or $500,000 worth of insurance coverage. That amount of insurance will go a lot farther toward offsetting the costs of long-term care for a victim than a smaller passenger vehicle policy. However, it may still be possible for the combination of medical costs and lost wages to exceed the maximum value of the policy.
In that scenario, the injured party would need to look carefully to determine whether they have grounds for a personal injury lawsuit against the truck driver, their employer or even a third party, such as the manufacturer of a faulty component in the truck.