Texas Personal Injury Lawyers – Jim Adler & Associates – Blog

“Seeing is believing,” the old saying goes. While statistics can make believers out of some doubters, there is nothing like watching an accident happen. In this case, the deadly force of an 18-wheeler. When there’s a fatal accident with a truck, more often than not, the dead are found in the other vehicle. An animation by the National Transportation Safety Board on http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/animations.htm demonstrates the deadly force of a truck in an accident that left three school bus passengers dead and seriously injured two others. The truck weighed more than 79,000 pounds. It slammed into the side of the bus when its brakes failed. The NTSB said the poor condition of the truck’s brakes and inadequate truck inspections were the cause of the 2001 Arkansas accident. But the safety lesson for all drivers is clear: Don’t drive in or around 18- wheelers on the highway if you can avoid it. And watch side roads for truck traffic. There’s no room for mistakes. Note: The National Transportation Safety Board website also has scores of animations that recreate plane crashes, collapsing bridges and other accidents that have made national headlines, including the crash of a light plane into a Manhattan skyscraper in 2006 and the a Southwest Airlines plane that overran the runway in Chicago in 2007.