Major motor carriers and their insurers maintain rapid response programs. When a serious crash happens, a team gets dispatched immediately, often reaching the scene the same day and sometimes within hours.
They arrive with a scene reconstructionist, a photographer, and counsel on the phone. They are there before the vehicles are towed and before the road reopens.
Most injured people are in an emergency department at that point. Some are in surgery.
That gap is the single largest structural disadvantage in trucking litigation, and it opens on day one.
What they collect while you are in the hospital
This is not speculation about their motives. It is standard practice in an industry with sophisticated risk management.
- Scene photography and measurement before anything moves. Skid marks, gouge marks, debris distribution, fluid patterns, sight lines, signage.
- Laser scanning or drone survey of the scene geometry.
- Download of the tractor’s engine control module before the vehicle is repaired or the data cycles.
- Driver interview, conducted with counsel involved, while memory is fresh and before anyone else has spoken to him.
- Witness statements, taken by an investigator who got there first.
- Securing the vehicles in a controlled facility.
- Post-accident drug and alcohol testing within the required windows.
- Preservation of internal records, at least the ones they want preserved.
By the time a family calls a lawyer, that record exists. It was built by professionals working for the other side, and it will be produced selectively.
The retention clocks that are already running
Here is what makes the delay so costly. The evidence that could balance the record has expiration dates.
| Evidence | Typical availability window |
|---|---|
| Intersection, business, and residential surveillance video | 30 to 90 days, then overwritten |
| Engine control module crash data | Limited ignition cycles, can be overwritten by continued driving |
| Electronic logging device records | Motor carriers are required to retain for six months |
| Driver vehicle inspection reports | Retention measured in months |
| Dispatch and load communications | Varies by carrier, often short |
| Driver qualification file | Retained during employment, then on a fixed schedule |
| Post-accident testing | Must occur within hours; missed windows cannot be recreated |
| Skid marks, debris, roadway evidence | Days |
| Witness memory and contact information | Degrades continuously |
None of these clocks pause because someone is recovering from surgery.
A case that is fully provable in week one can be substantially unprovable by month four, and nothing about the underlying facts will have changed. Only the record will have.
What has to happen instead
A preservation and spoliation letter, sent immediately, specific enough to name the actual artifacts.
“Please preserve all relevant evidence” accomplishes very little. An effective letter identifies the electronic logging device records for a named date range, the engine control module and any telematics data, the driver qualification file, the maintenance and inspection history for that unit, dispatch communications, the load documentation, the post-accident testing results, and the physical vehicles themselves in unrepaired condition.
It also puts the carrier on notice that litigation is reasonably anticipated, which is what converts routine document destruction into spoliation.
That letter needs to go out in days. In Houston truck accident cases it is frequently the highest-leverage document in the entire file, and it gets written before anyone knows the full extent of the injuries.
Why this changes what a case is worth
Insurers price uncertainty. That is the whole business.
Two cases with identical facts and identical injuries settle at very different numbers depending on how much doubt exists about liability. A file where the electronic logging data was preserved, the surveillance footage was secured, and the maintenance history was obtained is a file where the carrier’s exposure is knowable. A file built from a police report and inference is a file where they will litigate the percentage of fault, and every point they win reduces the recovery.
Texas applies proportionate responsibility. Every percentage point assigned to the injured person comes directly off the top. In a catastrophic case that arithmetic is measured in millions.
Preserved evidence does not just prove liability. It removes the argument.
What we do differently, concretely
Not a claim about caring more. A claim about method.
Aimée Robert built her career at Susman Godfrey and Beirne, Maynard & Parsons, handling complex commercial, pharmaceutical, and intellectual property litigation. Those are practices where cases are worked as though they will be tried, against corporate defendants with full-time counsel, and where discovery is contested seriously rather than exchanged politely.
That method applied to a trucking case means:
- Preservation demands out immediately, drafted to the specific artifacts.
- Independent download of electronic data rather than accepting the carrier’s summary.
- The corporate defendant treated as the defendant, not the driver alone. Hiring, training, supervision, dispatch pressure, maintenance decisions, and hours-of-service compliance are all in scope.
- Every layer of coverage identified: primary, excess, umbrella, broker, shipper, and any contractual indemnity.
- Experts retained early, and the file developed as though a jury will see it.
The firm is deliberately small. Aimée Robert works the file. That is the boutique half of the premise, and it is why the phone call happens with the person actually making the decisions.
What this means for you
If you are reading this within days of a serious crash involving a commercial vehicle, the urgent thing is not the filing deadline. You likely have two years. The urgent thing is the retention windows, and several of them are shorter than a month.
Do these now:
- Photograph everything you can, or have someone do it for you.
- Write down the names of every witness and responder you can recall.
- Do not give a recorded statement to the carrier’s insurer.
- Do not let the vehicles be repaired or salvaged.
- Get preservation letters out. This week.
Robert Law Group handles trucking and catastrophic injury litigation in Houston and Salt Lake City. See Salt Lake City truck accident claims for the Utah side of the practice.
Call 832-509-2303. There is no charge, and if the only thing that comes out of the call is that a preservation letter goes out today, that was worth the call.