Commercial Vehicle Definition

What could be a more gruesome automobile mishap than to figure in a car accident that involves crashing in an eighteen-wheeler freight carrier truck with your Honda CRV auto smacking right off the middle of the commercial cargo? God forbid, being a victim of such a dreadful accident will leave you lifeless or at the very least, sustain you serious injuries and permanent disabilities.

Since commercial vehicles, like delivery trucks, utility company vans, and armored vehicles, are primarily used for transportation of goods or persons; they are larger and can create more serious damage than your regular Lancer personal auto. The impact is more catastrophic in the sense that they carry more weight and are larger in size when compared to an average passenger automobile.

The difference is such that when you compare a typically fully-loaded large eighteen-wheeler truck to a regular passenger car, you would be astonished to realize that the former can weigh well over 80,000 pounds while the latter only weighs approximately 3,000 pounds. Taking into consideration the difference between the size and the weight of the two vehicles as well as the laws of physics, any collision between a commercial truck and a regular passenger vehicle would most definitely result to a serious, if not fatal, injuries and permanent disabilities.

And while recent statistics says that commercial vehicle drivers are generally much more careful on the road than automobile drivers, the staggering number still shows that large truck crashes account for a big chunk of the entire car accident figures. In the year 2001 alone, a total of 5,350 fatalities and 133,000 injuries were recorded for commercial vehicle accidents. The unique danger posed by commercial vehicles like cargo trucks, semi-trucks and tractor-trail rigs is even complicated by the fact that it's made worse by the nature of cargo the freight truck is carrying.

As grave as this may sound, a person who gets himself involved in such a grievous commercial vehicle accident is not left empty-handed and groping in the dark. In the event that a loved one figures in a mishap with a commercial vehicle, say a ten-wheeler cargo truck, the surviving family members may be entitled to file a claim for compensation pertaining to the serious injuries, more so if it resulted to the wrongful death of their loved one. The right to recover the legal claim against the responsible parties will be filed in court and necessary action and sanctions will be determined by the judge and/or jury handling the case.