SAIA trucking company is large and growing. The motor carrier keeps adding to its fleet of more than 5,000 semi trucks and in 2018 the company turned a profit of more than $100 million. Like all U.S. commercial motor carriers, SAIA is regulated for safety reasons by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). In a recent two-year period, SAIA trucks were involved in 309 crashes that killed eight people and injured 109 others, according to DOT.
Talk to a Truck Accident Lawyer
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f you or a loved one has been injured or if a family member has been killed in a collision involving SAIA, don’t sign anything from the company or its insurance agency. Be quick to seek your own legal representation. Your questions about a possible lawsuit against SAIA are legitimate and can be answered by the truck legal team at Pritzker Hageman, P.A.. If we agree to take your case, you owe us nothing until we win your case.
Trucking Lawsuit
SAIA has been sued in the past and one of the company’s drivers was found to have caused an infamous California tunnel crash that killed a 6-year-old boy and two adults. It was 2007 on Interstate 5 near Santa Clarita when a SAIA 18-wheeler driven by a 29-year-old trucker lost control and veered into a concrete barrier. The crash caused a major chain reaction behind the SAIA truck that also injured 23 people. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) later announced the main cause as being the trucker’s high rate of speed — not a so-called deficient brake system.
CHP investigators reconstructed the SAIA tunnel crash to estimate the truck’s speed. For lawyers who represent accident victims, cases can be won or lost based on accident reconstruction findings. Lawyers Fred Pritzker and Eric Hageman conduct their own truck crash reconstruction scenarios. In case after case their results differ from the initial accounts written by officers at the scene. At times, those summaries are written in haste and wrongly blame motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists or other victims. In addition, some commercial carriers have been known to try to turn the tables and blame victims for their crash injuries. Mr. Pritzker and Mr. Hageman pride themselves on holding trucking companies accountable for the negligence of their drivers
Unsafe Truck Driving
Federal transportation officials keep track of violations found by truck inspectors. It’s important for your crash lawyer to review those inspection results to get a snapshot of their safety record at a time when trucking is more dangerous, carriers are short on drivers and facing growing demand by the industry to hurry. In a recent two-year period that ended in early August, 2019, U.S. inspectors flagged 15 percent of SAIA trucks for vehicle equipment “out of service” safety issues. The company’s drivers also have been cited for violations of various kinds.
According to DOT’s Safety Measurement System, SAIA drivers were tagged over a recent two-year period for speeding 15 mph over the limit, failing to obey traffic controls, lane restriction violations, improper lane changes, using a hand-held cell phone while driving, failure to yield the right of way, inattentive driving, failure to use hazard flashers and driving while texting,
In June of 2018, a SAIA Motor Freight Line truck pulling tandem trailers crashed into a tree on the side of Interstate 10 in Fontana, California. The driver was not hospitalized, but a passenger in the rig died in the wreckage. News accounts of the deadly SAIA truck crash said the California Highway Patrol was studying what caused the driver to leave the road shortly before 1:30 a.m. The California fatal truck accident was one of the eight deaths in two years associated with SAIA crashes.