Chicago Personal Injury Law Blog

In March, a well-publicized tragedy occurred when a pedestrian bridge under construction in Miami, Florida, collapsed over a busy roadway. You and other Illinois residents may be interested in learning how construction accidents can affect non-workers in the wrong place at the wrong time, as well as the potential for long-term physical and emotional damage.

You may be familiar with this story, in which six people were killed – one was a construction worker, and the other five were people stopped in their vehicles at a red light beneath the bridge. Investigators are still unsure of what exactly caused the collapse of nearly 960 tons of concrete and metal onto the roadway, which flattened the cars underneath.

If you have ever found yourself surrounded by semi-trucks on the expressway, you know how scary it can feel to be dwarfed by these giant rigs. The combination of trucks' heavy weights and high speeds plus your car does not always make for a good result.

Commercial truck drivers are held to high safety standards, but serious accidents continue to happen. Here is a look at some of the most common causes of truck accidents and what you can do to stay safe when driving around trucks:

It could be argued that a great portion of responsibility in building a successful truck accident claim is on the attorney's shoulders. This is certainly true because a good attorney knows how to collect the right evidence to support your claim and knows how to present this evidence to the court. However, we believe that a team approach is often the best way to build a winning claim.

A team approach means that the plaintiff and the attorney work together to strengthen the case. Playing such an important role can often imbue the victim of a truck accident with a sense of purpose, which can help with emotional and physical recovery. A team approach does not mean that you do the lawyer's work. Rather it simply means that you play an important role in standing up for your rights and keeping your case on track for success.

Sometimes even the most minor fender bender can leave a victim with serious injuries. Other times, a car accident leaves the vehicle completely destroyed while its occupants walk away without a scratch. In other words, it is not possible to predict the outcome of car accidents with any true accuracy.

However, it is easy to see injury patterns in many cases. In turn, these injury patterns can allow drivers in Illinois to understand what can, but might not, happen to their bodies in a car accident.

• Broken bones: It may not feel like it at the time, but breaking a leg or an arm in a serious car accident is actually a great outcome if you consider what could have happened. Breaking one or more bones is a common result of car accidents.
• Head injuries: As you might expect, injuries to the head can be very serious. Common head injuries include concussions, traumatic brain injuries, skull fractures and other types of damage.
• Back injuries: Back injuries can also be serious, especially if the spinal cord suffers damage. Common injuries to the back include disc injury, spinal cord injury and paralysis.
• Chest injuries: The trunk or torso protects vital organs like the lungs and the heart. When victims suffer chest injuries, it could result in cardiac arrest or internal bleeding.
• Neck injuries: Common injuries to the neck can range from serious ligament and neck muscle injury to generalized swelling and pain. Some car accident victims have even experienced temporary vocal cord paralysis from injuries to the neck area.