As trucks become more advanced and accident recording devices become standard equipment, understanding how to access and leverage technical evidence is critical to proving liability and securing fair compensation for victims.
Here is what you should know about how technology helps.
Key Digital Evidence in Truck Accident Investigations
In recent years, commercial trucks have become essentially sophisticated data centers on wheels. They now contain advanced telematics systems, event data recorders, cameras, proximity sensors, and more.
This technical evidence provides tremendous insight into accidents – if you know where to look and how to retrieve it.
Electronic Logging Devices Capture Operational Data
Data shows that truck drivers that speed are dangers on the freeway. The same is true for distracted or fatigued drivers.
However, it is usually challenging for authorities to ensure compliance with various laws that prohibit such behavior. That was before ELDs came into the picture.
Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) are federally mandated for most commercial trucks to ensure compliance with hours of service regulations preventing fatigued driving.
ELDs actively record the truck’s speed, sudden acceleration/braking, idle time, and other operational metrics through the vehicle’s CAN bus networks.
This electronic data provides a second-by-second account of what the truck was doing leading up to and during a crash from sudden braking to acceleration to speed limits being exceeded.
ELD records can prove or disprove driver negligence and employer pressure to violate regulations – which could be a contributing factor in an accident.
Event Data Recorders Capture the Moment of Impact
Over 90% of modern commercial trucks have an Event Data Recorder (EDR) to monitor vehicle systems – much like an airplane’s black box. An EDR continuously captures huge amounts of data like vehicle speed, brake application, stability, seatbelt status, and engine performance.
By recording the vehicle’s dynamics immediately preceding and during the seconds of actual impact, EDRs can provide detailed insight into the factors causing the collision such as speeding, lack of evasive action, improper braking or swerving, rollovers, and more.
This powerful data proves exactly what the truck and driver did or failed to do leading up to the crash.
On-board Video Documents Driver and Road Conditions
Many commercial fleets now equip trucks with multi-camera video recording systems to monitor drivers and road conditions continuously. This video evidence can provide proof of driver negligence or exonerate them in contested liability claims.
Video footage indicating distracted driving, improper lane deviations, failure to slow in hazardous weather, or other human errors can establish driver liability. It also documents road, traffic and weather conditions surrounding the crash.
Forward collision, lane departure, and similar sensors on trucks can further detect unsafe conditions and driver actions. The driver safety system logs generated by these sensors make it easier to prove the elements of negligence whenever negligence is suspected.
Accident Reconstruction Software Models the Crash
After electronic truck data and video footage are collected, specialized accident reconstruction software analyzes it to simulate and visualize exactly how the collision happened.
Engineering animations and simulations are extremely useful for illustrating:
- The sequence of events across multiple vehicles leading up to and after the moment of impact.
- The movements, speeds, and relative positions of all involved vehicles.
- Which vehicle contributed most to the crash and should hold majority liability.
Reconstructions incorporate timecode, GPS coordinates, speeds, evasive maneuvers, weather data and other variables to create a 3D simulated environment modeling the accident from start to finish across time. This makes extremely complex multi-vehicle accidents easier for juries to visualize and understand.
Mobile & Social Media Evidence from the Scene
While trucks provide a wealth of data, eyewitnesses and accident victims themselves can also provide valuable evidence through mobile technology and social media.
As smartphone ownership increases, crash victims and witnesses now tend to photograph accident scenes and damage using their mobile cameras before vehicles and debris get moved.
These mobile photos and videos provide critical visual evidence about what happened from the victim’s viewpoint early on while they wait for first responders.
Witnesses may also immediately describe the accident on social platforms or post videos captured on their phones. These real-time social media posts document early accounts and smartphone footage from multiple eyewitnesses while facts are still fresh in their minds.
By preserving immediate, on-the-ground evidence from regular citizens, personal mobile data helps balance trucking company data in determining causes.
Emerging Digital Accident Investigation Technologies
Several promising new investigative technologies for accident scenes continue emerging:
Drones Provide Aerial Photography
Drones lend a bird’s eye view of accident environments that can be difficult for investigators to visualize from the ground. Aerial drone footage captures the entire crash site in context including vehicle positions, scrape marks, debris fields, fluid spills and other critical markers that re-constructors rely on.
Drone mapping is faster and safer than manually surveying evidence that could get disturbed at busy highway sites.
3D Laser Scanning Digitizes Environments
New handheld and vehicle-mounted lidar scanning equipment can digitally capture full 360-degree 3D measurements of environments in minute detail.
This permanent digital record preserves every physical nuance of an accident site for later analysis – much like scanning and archiving a crime scene.
HD Mapping Models Roadways and Conditions
Some companies now create extremely detailed 3D digital maps of transportation corridors recording the precise environment including road grade, lane markings, signs, sight lines, shoulders, buildings, and more.
This high-definition mapping data helps investigators analyze whether and how specific road characteristics may have contributed to the crash under the conditions.
As technology continues advancing, commercial trucks and ordinary vehicles will monitor more evidence and data. However, human professional analysis will still remain crucial for interpreting technical factors to determine root causes and prevent future crashes.
Why Advanced Evidence Matters to Families
Resolving truck accident cases relies entirely on understanding what factors caused the crash and where negligence occurred. Securing fair compensation for catastrophic injuries or wrongful death also requires irrefutable evidence concerning who or what was at fault.
Truck crash victims and grieving families deserve clear, data-driven answers – not intimidation or the runaround.
By capturing driver errors, company policy violations, equipment defects and other causes, commercial vehicle data and video technology bring accountability and justice after needless tragedies.
Advanced accident reconstruction further helps illustrate the sequence of avoidable errors and events that robbed a family of their loved one.
This empowers victims to push for fair resolutions in court and brings some closure knowing what exactly led to the heartbreaking loss of life.
While no data or legal outcome can ever bring back someone who died too soon in a preventable truck collision, understanding what happened provides solace during the grieving process – and helps prevent future innocent deaths by holding accountable those responsible.
Conclusion
In summary, integrated truck telemetry systems, forward-facing cameras, federal compliance logs, mobile devices, accident simulation software, aerial drones for mapping, and other technologies all play major roles in gathering irrefutable evidence concerning commercial trucking crashes.
When leveraged correctly by qualified legal professionals, technology brings accountability by conclusively proving causes and negligence – which translates to safer roads and fairer legal outcomes for crash victims who deserve justice.
As trucks continue getting more advanced, the race quickens between high-tech accident recording systems and trial lawyers’ mastery of accessing and interpreting this data.
But technical evidence alone does not win cases – only skilled legal experts who know how to collect the correct electronic records, decode them to understand key factors, and effectively demonstrate their implications in court or settlement negotiations can convert data into just outcomes.
In the end, technology does not replace qualified and compassionate legal counsel.
But when utilized fully by truck accident attorneys, it provides families of lost loved ones a high-tech view of events they would otherwise never access – so they can receive the transparency, compensation, and closure they deserve after preventable tragedies cause unimaginable hardship in their lives.
