At Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner, Personal Injury Lawyers, you will find attorneys and staff members who are experienced in handling accidents caused by large trucks.

   Big trucks are everywhere in Southwest Florida - dump trucks, delivery trucks and cement trucks often make dozens of trips and deliveries a day, joining semis jostling for space with tourists, full-time and seasonal residents on our congested roads.

   Trucking companies have a duty to put safe trucks and safe drivers on the road. When they don't, motorists who are struck by large trucks are often critically injured or killed.

   It is easy to underestimate the dangers motorists face daily when they share the highways with large trucks. Dump trucks can weight 70,000 pounds when fully loaded. A semi can weigh more than 80,000 pounds - over 20 times the weight of a 4,000-pound passenger car.

   Advocacy groups report as many as 20 to 30 percent of the trucks on Florida roads are running overweight at any given time. Such groups have pushed for lawmakers to increase fines for years, arguing fines in the $100 range provide little deterrent compared to the profit to be made when big trucks run purposefully overweight.

   While only about 1 percent of big trucks were too heavy when weighed at highway weigh stations in 2006, safety advocates contend such scales are avoided by overweight trucks. That same year, Florida Department of Transportation officers weighed 34,282 trucks using portable scales and caught 17,504 - more than half - running illegally overweight.

   And there is increasing concern that skyrocketing diesel, which has nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008, could force trucking companies to cut costs anyway they can, including maintenance and safety.

   The attorneys at Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner, Personal Injury Lawyers, know the devastation caused by such accidents is a tragically regular occurrence. National Center for Statistics and Analysis indicate more than 1 in every 10 fatalities is the result of a trucker-related crash - over 5,000 a year at mid-decade and continuing to rise.

   And Florida is among the most deadly.

   That same year, Florida accounted for almost 1 in 10 of such fatal accidents, second only to Texas as the state with the most fatal trucking crashes.

   If you or someone you love has been seriously injured or killed by a large truck, we urge you to call our firm today for a free appointment to discuss your case. You can come to any of our offices in Fort Myers, Naples, Cape Coral, Arcadia, Sebring, Port Charlotte or Venice or we will arrange to visit you in your home or hospital room.

   If we think we can help, Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner, Personal Injury Lawyers, will pay for the cost of building your case and fighting for your rights and you'll pay us nothing unless we win.