A woman in Winston-Salem, North Carolina had serious injuries that are life threatening on Aug. 2 in a five-vehicle crash involving a tractor trailer on US 52 South in North Carolina.

The woman was driving a Ford Escape that had to slow down in traffic due to maintenance on the road. Her SUV was rear ended by a tractor trailer that did not slow down for traffic ahead.

She has been in intensive care at a local hospital since the tractor trailer crash. Police stated that a chain reaction crash involving three other cars also happened due to the tractor trailer running into the SUV.

The tractor trailer driver suffered minor injuries and was released from the hospital after the crash. The police are still investigating the crash; charges have not yet been filed.

Our View

Each of our Virginia personal injury attorneys would like to remind tractor trailer drivers of this: You possess a commercial truck driver’s license. This means that you need to take extra precautions when driving your truck. It is very important that truck drivers are always paying very careful attention to the road ahead. Being distracted by anything other than driving the rig can end in tragedy.

We do not yet know what distracted the truck driver in this serious truck crash in North Carolina. But we do know that distracted driving due to cell phones is one of the most common problems on our roads that leads to serious crashes.

Tractor trailer drivers are now banned from using regular cell phones when driving their trucks. The only types of cell phones that they are allowed to use are hands free devices. Our personal injury attorneys have seen cases where even a hands free cell phone can distract the truck driver. So we recommend that truck drivers do not use cell phones at all when driving.

Even if a trucker is using a hands free cell phone, its use could lead to an accident. And the truck driver and company could still be held liable for personal injury or wrongful death in a civil lawsuit.

Our Virginia wrongful death attorneys handled a $3.5 million settlement truck crash where a tractor trailer rear ended a slow-moving vehicle with a tire problem. Our legal work was able to show that the truck driver had violated several Virginia CDL rules, and we were able to settle that case successfully.