The deficient brakes behind many Louisiana truck crashes.

It happens more often than you might think: a fully loaded Louisiana truck crashes into a passenger car; the truck driver is blamed and wants to transfer the blame from himself to a failure of the truck. Experts step in and find out that the truck’s brakes are deficient due to poor maintenance.

In a large truck accident, pinpointing the exact cause of the accident is critically important. Not just because of the devastation accidents create, but also because motor carriers have become experts at deflecting blame to either the car driver or to the hapless truck driver, to the truck or trailer’s manufacturer, or to some logistics company, etc.

What a thorough expert testing of the braking system of the truck might show, however, is that the 18-wheeler’s brakes did not function properly, and that the responsibility for this sorry state of affairs lies squarely with the motor carrier. Why else did the crash investigator see just ten or twelve skid marks on the roadway, when all 18 wheels should have left tracks?

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Truck brakes will seldom fail entirely. What happens most of the time is that some brakes perform poorly, or that the entire braking system operates at a lower than normal level. Truck drivers, by law, are required to check their vehicle every day and to note any technical problem in their log book. These problems must be fixed before operating the vehicle.

Brake imbalance: Most trucks operate with poorly balanced brakes. The reason is that when one brake is found to be deficient, it will be serviced and brought back to a performance level that is higher than the other braking units. Carriers are reluctant to service all the brakes each time and spend time and money on balancing the system with each intervention. At times, the imbalance is due to mismatched system components, making some brakes work harder than others.

The consequences of brake imbalance on an 18-wheeler are serious: A brake imbalance will wear out some brakes more than others. After a while, the semi-truck relies on a shrinking number of brakes to come to a standstill. Brake imbalance has other effects, such as bringing the truck to jackknife, when the trailer’s brakes are deficient and the tractor’s drive axles are locked. Another result could be overheating brakes, for instance in a long steep descent, rapidly destroying their performance. 

Expert companies can make on-the-scene investigations and test the truck’s braking system’s performance in order to pinpoint accurately whether deficient brakes were the cause of or aggravated the accident.

If you were hurt in a serious truck accident in New Orleans or elsewhere in Louisiana, contact the attorneys of the Young Firm immediately for a FREE consultation on your case at (504) 680-4100 (local) or (866) 660-7220 (toll free) or by sending us an e-mail.