Deborah Lockridge
After a truck crash, how your company gathers information, what you gather, and how you preserve it are all critical.
For a professional truck driver, the moments after a truck crash, even relatively minor ones, can be disorienting. Knowing exactly what to do next can make a world of difference down the road when it comes to safety, insurance claims, and potential litigation.
How truck drivers and heavy-duty trucking fleets handle those first conversations, photos, and reports after a truck crash can tip the scales in courtrooms months or years later.
As explored in the first part of this series, it’s important to train truck drivers what to do after a truck crash. That includes showing empathy to others involved and gathering information at the scene. That information is important, for insurance claims, possible driver refresher training, and to defend your company if there’s litigation resulting from the crash.
How you gather information, what you gather, and how you preserve it are all critical.
The Truck Driver’s Role After a Crash
Award-winning fleet safety executive Jeremy Stickling, chief administrative officer for Illinois-based Nussbaum Transportation, says Nussbaum drivers are asked to get the other party’s information and get photos.
“When that doesn’t happen, you’re basically subject to the local sheriff or state trooper district getting their police report done, and now you’re waiting three weeks,” he says.
While some camera and telematics systems provide automatic notification to a trucking company when they detect a possible crash, Stickling says that’s more of a back-up than a primary method of notification.
In-cab video helps, says Stickling, “but there’s context outside of what the video gives us.”
What Drivers Can Document After a Truck Crash
Nick Saeger, assistant vice president for transportation products and pricing at Sentry Insurance, acknowledges that a crash can be a traumatizing experience for a driver and this might be a lot to ask of them.
“But if they have the wherewithal and they have the training, getting photos and video evidence of vehicles involved, your truck, the other vehicles that might be involved, and the scene itself, are great.
“Document the people involved,” Saeger says. “If you’re a driver and you can get contact information from the other drivers, that’s great. That gets it to the insurance company more quickly. If there happen to be witnesses in the area and you can get their contact information, again, that’ll speed the process for our claims adjusters.”
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Motor carriers should train their commercial truck drivers ahead of time about what to do after a crash, even a minor one. You also can make sure they have kits with anything needed with them in the cab to help them through the process. Some insurance companies can provide these.
And when drivers call in after a crash, a company rep should be able to coach them through those after-crash procedures.
Adam Lang, director of customer advisory services at Netradyne, spent nearly 10 years at Wisconsin-based Halvor Lines and was the recipient of HDT’s Safety & Compliance Award for 2020. When he was working for the fleet, he says, tablets were issued to drivers, which had an app that helped walk truck drivers through providing the basic details of a crash.
“Here are the photos, here is the location, how many vehicles are involved, and any photos of them,” he says. “Just the base information for an initial first notice of loss so that we could immediately turn that over to the insurance company and work in conjunction with them.”
Decide Early Who Will Coordinate Your Crash Response
In addition to truck drivers needing training in post-crash procedures, heavy-duty trucking fleets need to have processes, procedures, and people in place across the company to respond after a crash.
“First of all, you want a quarterback,” Lang says. “Someone has to have the ball.”
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That quarterback may differ depending on the severity of the crash and the day/time it happens. But whoever it is, that person is responsible for communication among dispatch and operations, the shop, road service, and the executive team.
Keep those communications immediately after a crash very fact-based, Lang says. “Don’t give out details that you don’t have. That’s not the time for it.”
Rather, he says, this stage of the response is more about the quarterback notifying other parties what’s happened, what information is currently available, and putting them on notice that they may be needed to jump in to assist with crash response.
Boots on the Ground After a Truck Crash
Your post-crash communications should include those responsible for insurance claims, whether it’s internal or external. They may want to get a claims adjuster or an insurance adjuster on site, or even an attorney if the crash is severe enough.
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For instance, Nussbaum works with its insurance carrier, which has partnered with an attorney. It just takes a couple of phone calls to mobilize a team to a crash site.
Having such a team on the scene can help ensure police report accuracy, Stickling says, and help identify if there’s anything on the scene “that could tell more of the story,” beyond what a driver may be able to gather.
“You can’t send out all the boots on the ground for $1,200 of property damage,” says Stickling. “But if we know we’ve got a major one where there’s serious injury obvious to the eye, or God forbid, a fatality, we are partnered with our insurance company and have a plan in place. And we’re going to try to mobilize and get people on site.”
Even Minor Crashes Can Lead to Major Liability
It’s important to develop a set post-crash process and procedure that drivers are trained on to follow in every crash, whether it looks like a major crash or not, and whether you think your driver was at fault or not.
Even crashes that don’t seem major at first could come back to bite you later, for instance, if a victim has a soft-tissue injury that wasn’t apparent at the time of the accident.
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In addition, Lang says fleets shouldn’t depend on the driver’s emotional or mental state when he or she calls after a crash to determine the seriousness of the incident.
“I’ve had drivers calling in where it was a minimal accident, where they were beside themselves and they sounded like something tragic had happened,” he says. “And on the flip side of things, I’ve had large incidents occur, but the sound of the driver is like, it’s just another day.”
Consistency Protects Your Trucking Company Later
From a defense attorney’s perspective, “I think you have to treat every collision as a potential lawsuit from the trucking company standpoint,” says Jennifer Akre, managing partner at Tyson & Mendes, a law firm known for defending against potential nuclear verdicts.
That doesn’t mean you have panic or to hire a lawyer every time, she says. What’s important is to create an accident protocol for your company, a list of actions to take every single time there’s a crash, no matter how minor.
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Sentry’s Saeger says insured carriers often ask why they need to inform their insurance company in a crash that was not their driver’s fault.
“Maybe your driver isn’t at fault,” he says. “But there may be multiple passengers in the other vehicle who also weren’t at fault — and juries tend to sympathize with those situations.
“Reporting claims immediately will really, really help you set you up for success in the future and set your insurance company up for success.”
Do You Need a Post-Crash Statement from Your Truck Driver?
Akre cautions against rushing to get an official written statement from your driver immediately after the crash.
She has seen more than one case where there was no way the accident could have happened the way the driver remembered it.
“Trauma does things to people,” Akre says.
“If you’re a truck driver and you’re in a major accident, and you believe that by fault of your own or just by the weight of your truck, you’ve injured or killed somebody, your memory of what happened 30 seconds before that traumatic event isn’t going to be incredibly accurate. And it can lead to issues later at trial.”
She says in many cases she has defended, drivers’ post-crash written statements include things that are physically impossible, or it’s discovered later that it goes against the evidence.
Akre says there’s no legal requirement for a trucking company to take a written statement of their driver.
“In a very severe accident that you know is going to be in litigation, I’d argue that you really don’t need a statement at all,” she says. “Let your lawyers handle it.”
Yes, she says, there is sometimes value in getting an official statement from the driver after a crash, for instance if the driver is about to be terminated and there are no other documents or videos to show the facts.
“But even in those cases, I would have somebody who is an experienced investigator, experienced attorney, somebody who works with these cases all the time, talk to the driver for a while first,” Akre says.
Lang says when he was at Halvor, he took a cautious approach in getting information from a driver after a crash.
“There might be times when the driver writes down some information regarding the crash, just bare bones, ‘This is what I recall,’ without opinion and without details that do not matter in this situation that might be misconstrued,” he says.
Lang’s process was to talk one one-on-one with a driver soon after the crash, ask them questions, and document the conversation.
However, he says, “I have the experience. I’ve been deposed multiple times. So I’ve been trained to recognize some things [to avoid]. I don’t want to ask questions that will be used against us and taken out of context.”
The police may take a statement, and of course, you’re not going to tell your driver not to talk to the police. But the more different statements are out there, the higher the chance of them not agreeing with each other. And a jury is going to wonder, in which one was the driver lying?
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If it’s obvious that there is fault on the part of the motor carrier, you should consider reaching out to the other party.
“This shouldn’t be a game; it should be genuine if your heart’s in the right place,” Stickling says. “If somebody’s hurt, you have somebody in touch with them right away. If something’s our fault, we want to make somebody whole.
“If we can get through to the other party and let them hear our voice early on,” he says, it can help to get ahead of what they hear from plaintiff attorneys who will try to convince them that the trucking company doesn’t care.
“If the other party feels like they’re going to be taken care of, maybe they’re a little less likely to go get that plaintiff attorney.”
As Lang says, “I feel that at the end of the day, honesty is going to prevail. And if something bad happened on the part of the motor carrier, it’s going to come out. So, it’s best to rip the band-aid off in a situation where the motor carrier may be at fault. Address that immediately and try to move for a fast and efficient settlement.
“Do what’s right, take care of the wrong you did, but get control of it so you can pay what’s fair.”
Whether it’s a fender bender or a fatality, the moments after a crash are critical. Equip your drivers with the tools, training, and support to respond safely and smartly. Treat every incident as a potential legal case — but lead with empathy, act with integrity, and stay ahead of the claim.
