Florida Truck Accidents Among Most Frequent in US
Miami, Florida - When large commercial trucks crash, the accidents are rarely “minor fender benders” and the results are often catastrophic. With over 8 million trucks on the road, accidents involving these vehicles are a fact of life.
But the chances of a truck accident occurring, especially a fatal truck accident, are higher in Florida than almost any other state and higher in the Miami area than in all but two other locations in Florida. Florida ranks third in the nation in fatal truck accidents. Only Texas and California have more.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, a disproportionate number of truck accidents occur in just three areas of Florida:
1). Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa on Florida’s west coast;
2). Polk County, which includes the cities of Lakeland and Bartow in Central Florida, and
3). Miami-Dade County, which includes the cities of Miami, Homestead and Hialeah in
South Florida.
One reason for this is because a higher volume of large trucks, including semi tractor-trailers, travel through these communities than in most others.
There are some roads that are particularly dangerous within these communities. For example, Interstate 60 connects Florida’s East and West coasts and runs right through Polk County near Lakeland and Bartow in Central Florida. I-60 is basically a country road – much smaller than most interstates. Similarly, Krome Avenue, in the Miami area, hosts many tractor trailers and is also just a two lane, country road. Another smaller road that sees an unusually high number of truck accidents is Overseas Highway, which runs through Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon and Key West in the Florida Keys.
Truck accidents are also a familiar sight on Florida’s larger highways (The Florida Turnpike, I-95, I-75, I-595) just because of the volume of large trucks traveling on them. But the interstates are not alone.
The Florida Injury Lawyers at our firm have extensive experience in representing the victims of truck accidents in each of these areas and throughout the State. Through our experience, we have learned not only who the best expert witnesses are in the trucking industry and how to use the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations to prove negligence on the part of truck drivers and the trucking companies that employ them, but also that there are usually multiple factors involved in determining the cause of an accident involving a large commercial truck.
In the year 2002, large trucks were involved in over 70,000 accidents across our state according to Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV). That represents almost 1/3 of all Florida motor vehicle accidents for that time period.
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