164,000 POUNDS

A loaded truck on a Michigan highway can weigh 164,000 pounds. A passenger car weighs about 4,000. That ratio is the whole book — not because the physics are interesting, but because of what it sets in motion the moment the vehicles come to rest.

A car crash produces a police report. A truck crash produces a response: a rapid-response team, a defense investigator, an adjuster from a carrier that handles these every week, and a set of electronic records that begin overwriting themselves almost at once.

Most families are still at the hospital when that starts.

164,000 POUNDS explains what actually happens after a Michigan truck crash, who is on the other side, and why the first seventy-two hours decide what can ever be proved.

Inside

• What a commercial vehicle records — electronic logging device data, engine control module data, telematics, dash and forward-facing cameras — and how quickly each is gone
• The driver qualification file, the drug and alcohol testing record, and the hiring history a carrier is required to keep
• The federal regulations that govern motor carriers, and how a violation becomes evidence
• Why the driver is rarely the only defendant — the carrier, the broker, the shipper, and the trailer’s owner
• How a spoliation letter works, whom to send it to, and what has to be in it
• Michigan no-fault benefits after a truck crash: who pays your medical bills while fault is still being fought over
• Why the carrier’s early settlement offer arrives before anyone knows what the injuries are
• The deadlines that quietly end otherwise valid claims

Written for the family, not the industry

This is not a manual for lawyers. It is written for the person who has just been handed a business card in a hospital corridor and does not know whose side that person is on.

What the firm does with it

The book explains the system. The 72-Hour Truck Crash Protocol sets out what the firm actually does in the first three days after a Michigan truck crash — which records are pursued in which window, and how quickly each one stops existing.

Joseph Dedvukaj has represented injured people throughout Michigan for more than three decades in motor vehicle and trucking cases, and is the author of several books on Michigan injury law published by Square Lake Press. See all titles →