The other day, I was sitting in my living room and I heard the doorbell ring. I got up, walked to the door and by the time I opened the door, no one was there. Instead a UPS (United Parcel Service) truck driver was driving his big brown truck away and a package was on my front porch. I was amazed that in the 10 seconds it took me to get to my front door, a person had rang my bell, made his way to his truck, put the truck in gear and drove off. It occurred to me that the pressure to deliver a lot of packages and deliver them quickly placed on UPS truck drivers must be immense. Undoubtedly such pressure causes these UPS truck drivers to drive negligently causing accidents, injuries and sometimes death.
UPS is headquartered in Sandy Springs (near Atlanta) Georgia. It’s the largest shipment and logistics company in the world shipping more than 15 million packages per day and employing nearly 400,000 people.
Its main competitors are the United States Postal Service and FedEx. Known for their brown delivery trucks and uniforms, the company goes by the nickname “Brown”.
UPS Truck Drivers Are Governed by Federal Regulations
Federal regulations set the standards for UPS for the operation of their large fleet of trucks. Said regulations are designed to protect people like you and me. However, like many trucking companies, drivers, especially drivers who have a lot of pressure to deliver packages quickly, don’t always follow these standards and people get hurt, or worse. In fact, from late 2010 to late 2012, UPS truck drivers were involved in nearly 1,500 crashes. More than one-third of those crashes (over 500) involved injuries, including 39 fatalities.
The Federal law referred to in the preceding paragraph is prepared by the FMSCA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration). These laws are designed to protect the general public and include things such as:
- Driver training requirements;
- Maintenance and repair requirements; and
- Mandatory driver recording for hours on the road.
However, with UPS, it seems that accidents are generally caused because the drivers are just plain and simple in too much of a hurry. The UPS drivers are simply adhering to company directions of delivering packages as quickly as possible. Sometimes this “hurry, hurry, hurry” way of doing business is the cause of accidents. Since a UPS truck is much larger than the cars and SUVs that they are usually in an accident with, people tend to get hurt much worse than your typical passenger vehicle v. passenger vehicle auto accident.
Litigating a case against a trucking company is not the same as litigating your typical car accident case. UPS is a mammoth company and rest assured that the lawyers it hires to defend it in truck accident cases know their stuff. It is important that the attorney you hire for your UPS truck accident case is familiar with trucking industry regulations and is no stranger to the Courtroom.
Contact a Chicago Illinois UPS Truck Accident Attorney
If you’ve been in an accident involving a UPS truck, the odds are that the UPS folks have already started an investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the accident. It may be crucial that you hire a UPS truck accident attorney promptly to level the playing field. Our team of truck accident attorneys is here to help. Our initial consultation is free. If you hire us, our services are absolutely free unless and until we recover monetary compensation for you. Therefore, you can be assured that we will fight hard for you. Please contact us at (312) 957-4166. We can help.
