I’ve always wondered this. You know when your driving behind a truck that has rocks and dirt and stuff flying off of it? Can you sue for any damages done to your vehicle/body by said flying debris? Last night my girlfriend was driving behind a flatbed with some landscaping equipment on it and said that there was very large rocks flying off the truck. Large enough that she was very worried about her car being dented by all the rocks hitting it. But even more worring about the motorcylces in front of her getting hit and falling. It seems to me if you get the plates and the bussiness name off the truck that you should be able to sue for any damage done by the truck. I would imagine that there is some sort of law that states that your load must be tied down/covered securly. I guess the only hard part is proving that any damage on your car wasn’t there before you were driving behind that truck. Any ideas???
I am sure there must be regulations and laws against driving a vehicle with an unsafe load , that is the case here in the UK , and I would think that stones and rocks flying off a truck would come into that category. One of the most frightening experiences I had with this was when I was driving behind a farm tractor that was doing about 20 mph. I noticed that jammed between the double offside rear wheels was a whole house brick . With the wheels going at that speed I was fully expecting the brick to be flung back at my car . I stayed right back and waited till the tractor turned off into a field. I have also seen the spare wheel fall off a truck and smash into a following car. Luckily ( for me ) that car was between me and the truck.
What gets me are these big ugly dump trucks with crudely lettered signs on the back saying “Not responsible for winshields” (sic)
Of course they are RESPONSIBLE if a rock falls off and cracks a windshield. What they are trying to claim is that they are not LIABLE, which is a bunch of bunk, they are. Get the plate number, call the police, it will be handled just like a fender-bender with the police documenting the damage, insurance info demanded and insurance claims filed. The dump truck’s insurer will have to pay for your new windshield, period.
I can only answer this question for California, but indeed it is against the law to let anything fly off a moving vehicle except water or feathers from live chickens. Rocks are definitely an infraction, and grounds for recovery of damages from negligence.
However, you would have to sue them, as it’s only a traffic law. You might consider calling the truck’s operating firm and pursuing a settlement first.
It happened to me in New Mexico (sounds like a 50s novel, doesn’t it?) and I went to the on site head of the company that was doing the road construction and told him what had happened. At first, he blustered and tried to claim that his company was not responsible and even if it were my insurance should cover it, etc.
I told him that I would go get an attorney if necessary because my deductable was about what the windshield would cost. At that point he pulled out the business card of a winshield place in a nearby city and said that his company would pay for the new windshied, but I shouldn’t tell anyone that they were paying for it.
Apparently it is a pretty regular occurrence if the availablity of that business card was any indication.
Ah, but getting the plate number ain’t so easy. At least not here in Georgia, where insurers lobbied the legislature to pass a law that allowed dump trucks to put their tags on the FRONT of the truck instead of the back. I imagine they may have gotten similar laws passed in other states.
Neat lobbying trick, huh? I love graft.
Interesting that this thread would come up. About a month ago, I was driving down a busy road that had a patch of gravel on it, You guessed it…a big rig in front of me hit this and flung a bunch of pebbles up at my car, one of which hit the top of the windshield making a very small pit. The next day, it grew into a 1/2 inch crack, then an inch, and so on. Not that I thought to get the rig license plate at the time, but I wasn’t entirely sure it was his fault and not the idiot who left a big gravel patch in the middle of a well traveled road (it looked like a half assed attempt to fill in a large pot hole).
Regardless, I called my insurance company and they told me that while I have no deductible on ‘shattered glass’ the agent told me I’d be nuts to cash in on this for a windshield since it would inevitably lead to my rates going way up. At least I appreciated his honesty and he gave me the name of a windshiled place that was about 50% cheaper than all the others I called.
** Joey ** how close was your girlfriend to the truck?..in Texas at least there are situations where if you are following too closely it’s your own fault for getting dinged up…
I think the phrase to look for on the books is “unsecured load”. They’re definitely responsible, and it’s contemptable of them to try to get out of it by slapping a sign on an unsafe truck. When you see a dumptruck with something like “Gravel! Keep back 200 feet!”, you’re witnessing a crime. Oh, and don’t bother to call the “We care!” number that all trucks have on them – this is just to deter people from calling the local authorities, and avoiding fines. Call the cops, and sue for damages if your vehicle is damaged.
I have worked dispatching trucks, and can confirm that the truckers are liable. It was my job to assure they had insurance. The license plate is not the only source - most trucks bear numbers and names of the company which owns the container. From the container number, it is possible to track the driver. The company owns the container, but the truck portion belongs to the driver… and container companies have become tired of being the deep pockets that get sued. I often provided information about truckers to people whose windshields had been cracked.
Some of those rocks can really fly far. She even moved over a lane and was still getting nailed.
A friend of a friend once had an altenator fly in through his windscreen and carry on straight through the front passenger seat. As he was alone in the car it was a very very lucky escape.
A few years ago in Virginia, a baseball-sized rock bounced off a truck hauling a buldozer and badly cracked my windshield. I flashed my lights and the driver stopped and gave me his information.
I called his company, and their initial response was “Your insurance should cover it.” When I pointed out that this incident was not my fault, they rather quickly agreed to pay for a new windshield. In all, they were reasonable about it, and I had a new windshield without too much hassle.
I sent them a letter commending the driver for being willing to stop and be reasonable – I hope it didn’t get him in trouble.
Wait a minute, the physics behind it is that the wheel can fling the brick tangentially away in any direction. The highest backwards velocity it could reach is if it comes loose at the bottom of the wheel (ignore there being a road in the way for the moment). But the whole system is moving at the tractor’s speed. The brick would have zero velocity relative to the road! The other extreme would be the brick being flung forwards at twice the speed the tractor is going at (relative to the road). With the top of a tractor wheel being at eye-level…
Nothing from something moving in front of you is really flung back at your car. Of course it’s no fun to drive into a brick suddenly appearing to lie on the road, or to drive into something from between the two extremes that isn’t done yet with being flung or still falling when your car reaches it. People not securing their load are just plain <beeep>s. But with the exception of someone shooting at you, no foreign object from a car in front of you will approach your car faster than the speed you are driving at.
It won’t help with falling gravel you don’t see come flying at you, and with the traffic these days it may sound like a joke, but keep a distance greater than your braking distance and you are safe. Oh, maybe you’re not safe from the car behind you sticking at your bumper, but well.
And, for the sake of the people standing on the road in front of the tractor, next time should it happen to you, honk like a madman to make that tractor stop!