Garbage trucks are an integral part of the city, towns, and highways. They are the common commercial vehicles that pass randomly through residential areas. These are waste disposal vehicles. The hapless fact is that garbage truck accidents are very common and are rising every year.
Two basic types of waste disposal vehicles are there. These are hauling trucks and collection trucks. The hauling trucks are usually the combination of trailer and dump truck. They generally move on the highways. They collect the waste materials from the populated areas and take them to remote landfills and dumping grounds or incinerators. Whereas, the collection trucks move from one house to other collecting cans with automated lifts. Manual labors also do the task. They ride on the truck’s rear and empty the can by their hands into the hydraulic compactor present at the rear. Collection trucks also empty the businesses’ and housing complexes’ dumpsters through lifting them overhead and unloading them. They are categorized into the front, side and rear loaders.
We can see garbage trucks almost everywhere. But, the accidents caused by these trucks leave with severe injury and sometimes death. The pedestrians, bikers, cyclists, and children are the most vulnerable ones. This is because these trucks operate in the narrow lanes where the population is very high. These trucks also make unpredictable moves and consist of many big blind spots.
The most common causes of garbage truck accidents are:
Negligence of the truck driver: Many times, it has been found out that the drivers operating the garbage truck are fatigues, inattentive or impaired. Again, the person can be distracted or overspeeding beyond the recommended limit in the populated zones. The drivers are caught to be neglecting the signal, driving on the wrong side, failing to brake or halt on time, etc.
Lack of proper maintenance: For any truck, routine maintenance is mandatory for smooth operation. Usually, some garbage trucks are maintained and repaired by private companies, whereas some others are left to the drivers. The responsible person or party who is supposed to maintain the garbage truck fail to do the required duty fruitfully. It should be checked if the hydraulic systems are operating accurately, but to the sorrow, it doesn’t happen always.
Scattering of the debris: Garbage trucks often overload the container with debris and keep on scattering them all over the road. It can result in serious accidents, especially if the truck is in high speed. Imagine, a truck carrying construction wastes is breaking the traffic by overspeeding, and suddenly a big chunk of concrete or other materials fly from the truck and hit another vehicle that is following the same way as the truck. In fact, debris that is not loaded properly can fall from the truck causing an accident.
Other drivers’ negligence: It is not that the accidents are only caused by garbage trucks. The garbage trucks may be moving at the right speed or collecting debris from the roadside that blocked some space that is shared by other moving vehicles. Sometimes, other vehicle drivers get frustrated or impatient and try to move in an unsafe manner, ignoring that a collector is crossing the road or another vehicle is coming from the opposite direction.
Lack of visibility of the bikers, non-vehicles, pedestrians: The garbage trucks have limited peripheral visibility. The drivers may not see anyone near or behind the truck. Children are the most vulnerable ones in this case as they are small in stature and can’t be seen at all from the big truck. Animals like dogs, cats, etc. can’t be seen too and can hit by the truck anytime.
Garbage trucks can’t be ignored as they are the necessary part of the healthy living. These vehicles help to keep the city and towns clean. Despite the growing safety measures like cameras, back up warnings, safety training, automatic lift systems, catastrophes still happen. If you or your loved ones are injured in an accident that has got a garbage truck involved, get in touch with a truck accident attorney to recover full compensation. Only they know the right tricks of sorting the challenging issues and held the right party liable for the accident. Few law firms are there who specialize in truck and vehicle accident cases. Discuss your case with them.
