Texas Accident Victims - News You Can Use

Case Reveals Cracking Problem in Great Dane Flatbed Trailers

Houston, Texas -- Vujasinovic & Beckcom is currently handling a case in which a passenger car made contact with the back of a Great Dane flatbed trailer.  According to government regulations and safety rules, trailers must have "underride guards" in place on the backs of the trailers.  These underride guards are designed to provide safety in the event a passenger car hits the rear of a trailer, which the trailer industry admits is a foreseeable event.  If there were no underride guards on trailers, when cars hit the back of them, it is likely that the car will "underride" the trailer.  This means the car slides under the trailer.  When this happens, typically the trailer will come crashing in to the compartment space of the car, usually resulting in catastrophic injuries and death.  The underride guards are designed to prevent passenger cars from underriding the trailer, in that they stop the car before it completes the underride process.

In this particular case, upon impact the underride bar on the Great Dane trailer simply broke off, which allowed the car to underride the trailer.  This caused massive intrusion in to the compartment space of the car, and horric injuries to the young mother and her toddler son.

Vujasinovic & Beckcom consulted with multiple experts in various specialty fields.  The experts found cracks on this trailer where the underride guard was attached, before it broke off in this crash.  Then, the experts located many similar Great Dane trailers across the United States, and inspected them for cracks.  The results of these experts' work is astonishing.  They located multiple Great Dane trailers which exhibit almost the exact same cracking pattern as existed on the trailer in this case.

What does this mean?  It means that there are likely numerous, perhaps thousands, of Great Dane trailers on our public roadways with a most serious hidden danger:  underride guards that are in place, but don't work.  It is as if none of these Great Dane trailers have any underride protection at all, protection the government mandates they provide.  And, this is worse than if the trailers simply did not have underride guards, because at least they could be easily spotted and removed from the roadway.  No, these trailers have the underride guards in place, and upon looking at them, anyone would assume the trailers are safe.  This is because they cannot see the creeping cracking patterns developing behind the equipment, which renders the outwardly visible underride guards virutally useless. 

This hidden danger resulted in horrific injuries to the young mother and her toddler son who hired Vujasinovic & Beckcom.  If nothing is done about this problem, it will likely cause more catastrophic injuries and certainly deaths in the future.

If you or someone you know has experienced a similar problem, please ask them to contact our law firm.

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