Williamsport PA Personal Injury Law Blog

When Pennsylvania employees go to work, there are laws that protect them and provide certain safety standards for employers to follow. If these standards are not met and an employee is injured on the job, that employee may be eligible for workers' compensation.

Workers' compensation benefits can include lost wage benefits, medical expenses and death benefits. These benefits could be temporary or permanent -- if there is a permanent disability.

Trucks, by their very nature, can cause large and unpredictable crashes. Trucks can weigh up to 80,000 pounds. One wrong move, a careless mistake or even poor conditions on a Pennsylvanian road can cause complex truck accidents. These accidents often have the potential to involve multiple vehicles.

Whether a truck accident involves many cars or just a few, they often lead to serious injuries for those involved in the accident. When a smaller vehicle becomes entangled in an accident involving a tractor-trailer, the risk is amplified. It is when this occurs that the chance for fatalities also increases.

As this blog has mentioned in the past, more and more elderly drivers are on the roads in Pennsylvania. With larger numbers of older drivers, there are more accidents involving the elderly. These accidents can become lethal when a large truck is involved. Truck accidents can cause very serious injuries for the parties in other vehicles and the elderly may be at increased risk of injury.

Recently, Pennsylvania experienced another larger truck accident. In this case, an elderly driver apparently caused the collision. According to witnesses, an elderly motorist failed to yield before entering U.S. Route 220. This failure to yield resulted in this vehicle crashing into the side of a large tanker truck. The tanker truck was carrying approximately 2,500 gallons of diesel fuel. The tanker truck then turned over and rolled two different times. The elderly driver was seriously injured and taken to a local hospital, while the driver of the truck was apparently unharmed.

Any accident involving a moving vehicle has the potential for serious injuries, and the dangers are even greater with truck accidents. Earlier this month, central Pennsylvania saw another of these dangerous multi-vehicle accidents. This time all of the vehicles involved were trucks.

The collision along Route 30 in Lancaster County that shut down a mile-long stretch of road for four hours involved three trucks: a moving truck, a full-sized pickup truck and an 18-wheeler. According to the police report, the moving truck slowed to turn right from Route 30. The pickup truck then slowed to allow the moving truck to turn. The 18-wheeler did not slow as the moving truck turned and smashed into the pickup truck, which in turn hit the moving truck. The trucks then hit a 229-year-old building on the corner of the road before coming to a stop.