While commercial airline disasters have decreased in recent years, you may remember investigators looking for a downed plane’s black box. Known as the event data recorder, this black box contains vital information about the aircraft’s operations immediately before the accident.
Like commercial airliners, many tractor-trailers have black boxes. If you have suffered a catastrophic injury in a collision with a commercial truck, you should try to get ahold of the vehicle’s black box to determine the cause of the crash.
What information is in a truck’s black box?
A few decades ago, commercial truck manufacturers worried about warranty fraud. To keep truck drivers and trucking companies honest, concerned manufactures began installing black boxes. These boxes typically record many details about the vehicle, including the following:
- The truck’s speed at the time of the accident
- The truck’s steering wheel position
- The trucks’ brake pedal position
- The truck’s accelerator position
- The truck’s maintenance history
- The trucker’s communications with the trucking company
After a truck accident, you may want to work with a scene investigator to identify why the crash happened. The data inside the truck’s black box is likely to help with this investigation. When obtaining black box records, though, timing matters.
Why must you act quickly?
While the days and weeks after a truck accident may be a blur, you should act quickly to secure data from the truck’s black box. After all, many black boxes overwrite old data with new information. Similarly, a truck driver or trucking company owner may be able to delete black box records.
There are legal ways to prevent those responsible for truck accidents from tampering with evidence or erasing relevant records. Ultimately, though, getting your hands on the truck’s black box as quickly as possible is likely to improve your chances of receiving the financial compensation you deserve for your life-altering injuries.