Yes, truck crashes involving rigs operated by Schneider National Carriers Inc. killed 25 people in 24 months. In the same two-year period that ended May 2, 2019, a total of 976 Schneider trucks were involved in crashes. If you or a loved one were victimized in a Schneider truck accident, contact Pritzker Hageman law firm. Our commercial truck crash legal team has recovered tens of millions of dollars from at-fault trucking companies and other freight industry participants. Those settlements and verdicts don’t erase the physical and emotional losses suffered by our clients — but they hold the responsible trucking lines accountable for speeding, rear-end collisions, distracted driving, drowsy driving, careless driving and other negligence.
The orange-colored truck fleet operated by Green Bay-based Schneider National is one of the five largest semi-truck concerns in the United States. Schneider semi-truck drivers covered more than 1 billion miles in 2018. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) gave Schneider a “satisfactory’’ safety rating in a recent 2019 report, but the agency has documented an increase in danger posed by all semi-trucks to passenger vehicles. Over the past decade there’s been large increases in semi crash injuries and deaths nationwide.
The early-May FMCSA snapshot rating for Schneider trucking said 13.5 percent of the carrier’s vehicles were found to be “out of service’’ during federal safety inspections. Less than 1 percent of Schneider drivers were ruled “out of service’’ during federal inspection, but the company employs more than 13,500 drivers and the safety report doesn’t detail how many times speeding, truck driver fatigue, truck driver impairment, truck driver distraction or truck driver recklessness caused crashes.
Trucking Wrongful Deaths
Overall in the U.S., the number of people killed in fatal crashes involving large trucks and buses reached 5,005 in 2017, the latest year for which figures are available. That marked a 57 percent increase over the trucking death toll of 3,193 set in 2009. As always, the vast majority of the people killed in those crashes were occupants of passenger vehicles. Pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists also died in commercial truck crashes.
According to the new data set, about one third of truckers involved in the crashes were speeding — the leading factor. Distractions, including cell phone usage, was the second leading factor. Rounding out the top factors were failure to yield; alcohol or drug impairment; fatigue or careless driving. This most recent FMCSA crash report also raised an interesting statistic: Positive drug tests for drivers of large trucks in fatal crashes is increasing. They’ve increased from 170 in 2012 to 237 in 2016 and 252 in 2017.
All of this is happening in a business environment where drivers are in short supply and freight haulers are under intense demand to speed deliveries.
Truck crash attorneys Fred Pritzker and Eric Hageman conduct independent investigations of trucking crashes to clearly demonstrate at-fault driving. Accident reconstruction work at the law firm has helped win cases — in one instance disproving a hastily written police report that wrongly placed blame on the victim. The jury rejected the police finding in that case and awarded more than $1 million to our client in the death of a bicyclist who was run over by a semi-truck.
$36 Million Verdict
Hire a lawyer to handle your accident claim against Schneider National. According to FMCSA’s public information, the company had 2,463 “unsafe driving violations’’ on record as of April 2019.
A family sued Schneider National trucking in connection with a California freeway crash that catastrophically injured a 58-year-old woman who was a backseat passenger in a car that was clipped by a Schneider semi-truck and driver. The Schneider truck was attempting to pass a Toyota Camry at the time of the accident.
The Schneider truck crash lawsuit resulted in a $36.48 million verdict against the trucking company..The jury was from Riverside County Superior Court. At trial, attorneys for Schneider National attempted to place blame on the driver of the Camry. The jury found in favor of the plaintiff in a case that made local history for the size of the award.