Anytime you’re involved in a motor vehicle accident it can be devastating to your life. Even more devastating can be the difficulties you’ll go through in trying to resolve your claim when you’re not at fault. When the accident involved a commercial vehicle like a tractor trailer, you can multiple those difficulties ten-fold because the first priority of the trucking company is to save money and its business reputation.

Fortunately, there are a lot of avenues to pursue to find evidence when dealing with a truck accident. Knowing where to look is half the battle in proving your personal injury claim. Having a knowledgeable truck accident attorney becomes an enormous benefit to accident victims because they know which pieces of evidence may be key to your case, such as black boxes.

What is the black box and how does it work?

If you’ve ever paid attention to investigations on plane crashes, you’ve probably heard some official commenting that they were in the process of recovering the “black box” recorder from the crash site. Well, planes aren’t the only modes of travel that contain these devices. Today, most vehicles have some form of this technology, including big rigs.

A black box is a piece of technology that makes an electronic recording of everything about the vehicle’s operation and on-board systems. Also known as an electronic control module (ECM) or event data recorder (EDR), these tools are merged into the engines of semi trucks for the purpose of gathering and transferring valuable data about the driver and truck to the trucking company.

The black box was instrumental in the criminal case against a truck driver found guilty of reckless driving and involuntary manslaughter of a Hanover, Virginia firefighter in October 2020. Often in these cases, a civil suit is also filed for wrongful death for which the same black box evidence will be equally helpful.

Why are black boxes so important to truck accident cases?

When the goal of the trucking company is to defeat your claim, you need every piece of evidence available to leverage against them to win your claim or force a fair settlement. This means having the ability to prove driver negligence or vehicle defects that contributed to or fully caused the collision that resulted in your catastrophic injuries.

Information relevant to your accident that can be found on the black box includes:

• Mileage, which can factor into whether the truck has had proper timely maintenance performed
• Time on location, which can help piece together a timeline for the crash
• Whether the truck was speeding or driving erratically immediately before the crash
• When and whether the brakes were applied, which can signal distracted driving or driving under the influence
• Whether cruise control was activated at the time of the collision
• Whether there was a pattern of that truck operating above the speed limit
• Engine metrics such as temperature and load
• Errors and corresponding codes, which may help show defects that contributed to the accident
• Tire pressure, which is of significant importance if a truck loses control
• The frequency with which the truck was involved in a crash and period of time between accidents
• GPS location information that can pinpoint where the truck was at the time of the crash
• Any communications between the driver and trucking company such as emails that may signify the driver reported mechanical issues or suffered fatigue but was being pushed to meet a delivery deadline.
• Drive times may be used to determine if the truck driver violated the hours-of-service regulations and was potentially exhausted or distracted as a result

This data is usually only stored for a finite amount of time and depending upon the age of the engine in the truck that hit you, that time frame could be much shorter than you think. Typically, at most, data is stored for 30 days and is then recorded over. Because you have no time to waste, it’s detrimental to your case that you preserve that information as quickly as possible.

Schedule your free case consultation with the experienced Sevierville truck accident attorneys at Delius & McKenzie, PLLC by calling 865-297-4425, or we invite you to reach out to a member of our legal team through our contact page. We are honored to serve clients in Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, Seymour, Gatlinburg, and the surrounding areas in Tennessee.