Peoria Illinois Personal Injury Law Blog

As the farming season enters its peak, more and more farm vehicles are operating on county and state highways. Some farm vehicles, such as trucks and livestock trailers, can match the high speeds of other vehicles on these roads and not create much of a hazard. Many farm vehicles, such as cultivators and tractors, are designed only for slow speeds, and they create the potential for collisions with faster moving vehicles. A recent truck accident in McDonough County demonstrates how this speed differential can become deadly.

A 64-year old Macomb man was driving a tractor north on the highway when he was struck from behind by a box truck. The driver lost control of the truck, and it ran off the highway into the median, where it stopped. The tractor was heavily damaged, and the force of the impact threw the driver off the tractor. The tractor operator was flown to Peoria, where he died from his injuries at a local hospital. The driver of the truck was not injured.

When driving down an Illinois freeway, a reader of this blog may have seen this scary sight: a massive truck barreling down the road and weaving from lane to lane as though its driver had lost control of it. Big trucks can be tough to maneuver, but the cause of swerving trucks is often one that is completely preventable. Fatigue affects truck drivers when they do not take enough breaks during their driving days and abide by the hours of service regulations that govern their actions.

Hours of service regulations are established by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. They apply to drivers of large cargo trucks as well as drivers of busses and other passenger-based vehicles. In essence, they determine how many breaks a driver must take during a day, how long those breaks must be, where the driver must go to sleep, and if the driver may return to driving during the same 24 hour period.

Personal injury claims are a necessary component of the civil legal system because they allow individuals who have been harmed by the negligence and recklessness of others to recover the losses that they have endured. Illinois victims of slip and fall accidents may use personal injury theories of law to sue for their losses and recover the damages that they need to become whole in the wake of their accidents. While some victims may be able to pursue their claims without any serious hurdles, some face claims of contributory negligence from the parties that they have sued.

Slip and fall accident victims generally sue the property owners of the properties where they suffered their incidents. These property owners have a duty to provide their guests and invitees with safe accommodations and to remedy any foreseeable risks that those individuals may encounter. If a property owner takes reasonable precautions and a person is still harmed on their property, they may claim that the victim caused their own damages.

When a person reacts in a dramatic or overly responsive way, they may be counseled to act reasonably so that they can appropriately reflect on the problem or situation that has confronted them. An unreasonable person may exhibit a lack of control over themselves or a failure to take appropriate actions given the circumstances of their situation. Each day on Illinois roads, new auto accident victims are made when they encounter drivers who behave unreasonably.

In fact, the legal theory of negligence revolves around the concept of reasonableness and how a reasonable person would react if subjected to a set of particular conditions. Negligence occurs when a person fails to meet their standard of care to others, and that standard of care is generally dictated by how a reasonable person would behave. For example, a reasonable person would not use a cell phone while driving because it is a distraction, and therefore a driver who did use a cell phone and caused an accident may be found negligent of the harm inflicted on others.