Injured in a Lexington Truck Accident?

Our Lexington Trucking Team

A truck accident can change your life in seconds. Injuries from a commercial truck can mean months of treatment, medical bills, lost paychecks, and a vehicle that is gone, with a trucking company and its insurer on the other side. A Lexington truck accident lawyer handles those problems for you.

You don’t have to face this alone. At Sam Aguiar Injury Lawyers, your case goes to our dedicated trucking team, which focuses exclusively on trucking and commercial vehicle cases. The trucking company has lawyers working quickly to minimize your case. Jon Hollan, Managing Partner of our Lexington office at 620 W. Main St., and Sam Aguiar are both named to the Trucking Trial Lawyers Association Top 10. With our Bigger Share Guarantee®, you always get more. You pay $0 out-of-pocket forever, and most cases qualify in under 10 minutes through a free case review.

Every case also gets a three-person team: a top-rated attorney, an experienced case manager, and a skilled legal assistant. Our Kentucky truck accident lawyers handle trucking cases statewide, and an accident between passenger cars goes to our Lexington car accident attorneys.

Carrier Records in a Lexington Truck Case

A Lexington truck case starts with the carrier, not only the driver: federal law requires the motor carrier to keep records a private motorist never creates. An interstate carrier must maintain an accident register for three years after each accident, with copies of accident reports required by state agencies or insurers, under 49 CFR 390.15(b).

Every interstate motor carrier operates under a USDOT number displayed on the vehicle. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration publishes each carrier’s registration, fleet size, driver count and safety record through the SAFER Company Snapshot, which is where a Lexington case begins to establish who answers for the load.

An accident on I-75 or I-64 through Fayette County can involve a carrier based in another state, a leased tractor, and a broker that never touched the load. Those layers decide which policy responds and which safety history becomes relevant, and they are why a Lexington truck case is not handled like a two-car accident. The firm’s Louisville truck accident lawyer page applies the same carrier-record analysis to the state’s other freight corridor, and the largest trucking companies in the US page covers how carrier size shapes that record.

Federal rules set minimum retention periods for three other carrier records:

Driver logs can be discarded on the same six-month timeline as the DOT and TRIMARC camera archives. A written preservation notice asks the carrier to keep those records, along with the truck’s electronic control module download, past their routine deletion dates.

Trucking Insurance Minimums

A for-hire interstate truck rated at 10,001 pounds or more that hauls general freight must carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage under 49 CFR 387.9. The minimum is $1,000,000 for oil, hazardous waste, and listed hazardous materials, and $5,000,000 for certain bulk hazardous loads.

Kentucky’s minimum for a passenger car is $25,000 per person under KRS 304.39-110, so a truck case starts with a much higher minimum. Other responsible parties, such as a broker, shipper, or maintenance vendor, may each have separate coverage, and the firm’s page on freight broker liability covers when a broker shares responsibility.

Kentucky Truck Accident Numbers

Kentucky’s 2024 Traffic Collision Facts report counts 9,736 accidents involving trucks, which it defines as vehicles registered at 10,000 pounds or more. Of those, 99 were fatal and 1,367 injured someone. Trucks made up 5% of vehicles in all Kentucky accidents that year, but 7% of vehicles in fatal ones.

Of those truck accidents, 32% happened on interstates or parkways, 47% on U.S. and state routes, and 21% on city, county, or other streets. In Fayette County, the interstates are I-75 and I-64, and the northeast section of New Circle Road alone carries more than 40,000 vehicles a day, according to the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’s Safe Streets and Roads for All grant application. Among truck drivers whose home state was known, 41% lived outside Kentucky.

In 2024 Kentucky accidents involving trucks, officers cited these driver factors: inattention (3,206 times), misjudged clearance (1,935), a vehicle not under proper control (1,198), failure to keep the proper lane (827), failure to yield (807), and following too close (442). On the trucks themselves, they recorded 132 load securement problems, 120 tire failures, and 59 defective brakes.

Each cause leads to a different record. A brake or tire failure leads to the inspection and maintenance file. A lane or following-distance question leads to the driver’s logs and hours-of-service compliance. A load securement problem leads to the loading paperwork and whoever secured the cargo.

Traffic Camera Footage

Sam Aguiar Injury Lawyers has direct access to DOT and TRIMARC traffic camera archives that reach back six months. In Fayette County, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s traffic cameras sit along I-75, from the Clays Ferry Bridge north through both splits with I-64, at interchanges including Newtown Pike, Paris Pike, Winchester Road, and Athens-Boonesboro Road.

Video from those cameras can show a truck’s lane position, speed changes, and following distance before an accident. The firm’s page on searching the DOT camera database explains how a recording is located by time and camera.

Case Stages After a Truck Accident

Lexington Truck Accident Case Review

A trucking company can discard a driver’s logs six months after it receives them, the same reach as the DOT and TRIMARC camera archives. Sam Aguiar Injury Lawyers puts its dedicated trucking team on your case, and the fee never increases if the case goes to trial. Call today for a free case review.