The truck accident attorneys at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers, LLC at (888) 424-5757 will ensure your commercial vehicle crash claim has the highest chance of approval to get the compensation you need.
Discuss your compensation claim with a law office that will protect your rights and obtain the compensation you might be entitled to receive related to an I-39 truck accident.
Interstate 39
Interstate 39 (I-39) is a multi-state freeway beginning at Rib Mountain, Wisconsin (State Highway 29) and ending in Normal, Illinois (I-55). The highway runs near and through Wisconsin and Illinois Counties, including McLean, Woodford, Marshall, LaSalle, Lee, Winnebago, Rock, Columbia, Marquette, Portage, and Marathon.
Initially, the Interstate Highway System planners proposed a low-priority project on a north-south route from Salem to South Beloit. By the early 1970s, the planners proposed an auxiliary highway route from I-57 at Rockford.
Construction on the nearly 330-mile-long freeway began in the early 1980s, opening to traffic in 1984. The final section was completed in September 1992.
Current highway junctions with I-39 include interstates:
- 43 (Beloit)
- 55 (Normal)
- 74 (Normal)
- 80 (LaSalle)
- 88 (Rochelle)
- 90 (Cherry Valley, Portage)
- 94 (Portage)
I-39 serves Illinois and Wisconsin Midwest transit hubs, moving private and commercial vehicles on northbound and southbound lanes. Originally, I-39 was constructed as a replacement for the infamous “Killer 51” (State Route 51) divided highway.
However, the dense traffic creates dangerous hazards for all motorists when heavily loaded trucks travel at high speed, leading to catastrophic crashes resulting in severe injuries and death.
What Crash Accident Victims Should Know
Typically, collisions involving passenger cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks require minimal paperwork through insurance carriers claiming property damage and injury. Alternatively, crashes involving commercial semi-tractor-trailers often leave victims with catastrophic injuries and wrongful death.
Filing a compensation claim against the trucker that caused the accident can be complicated. In most cases, a trucking company hired an employee to operate their vehicle, meaning the company is likely partially responsible for causing the accident.
A personal injury attorney building a case to obtain all available compensation will determine how many parties might be at fault for causing the crash.
Potential defendants in a compensation claim or personal injury lawsuit could include:
- The trucker whose negligence led to the accident;
- The trucker’s employer (trucking company) failed to provide sufficient supervision and training to ensure everyone’s safety;
- Maintenance companies and crews that failed to ensure that the truck was safe;
- Operating by fixing faulty brakes or replacing bald tires;
- Commercial vehicle manufacturers that sold their vehicles with defective parts;
- Road maintenance crews that created hazardous conditions during adverse weather or in construction zones
Trucking companies will often employ high-priced attorneys to minimize their liability, experienced in deflecting liability toward the victim. These cases are often built on respondeat superior doctrines.
Alternatively, an attorney working on behalf of the injured victim (plaintiff) builds cases using valuable evidence that proves their claim. The evidence might involve the trucker’s driving logs, blood test results that identify drug impairment, maintenance, and fuel receipts, electronic monitoring system (black box) data, and the State Highway Patrol’s report.
Wisconsin and Illinois I-39 Truck Accident Reports
Local news reports reveal the dangers of traveling in congested traffic and adverse weather conditions when sharing the road with fully-loaded commercial tractor-trailers. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), thousands of individuals are injured and killed yearly on the nation’s highways.
The 2018 Illinois DOT truck accident statistics revealed 13,071 accidents resulting in 122 deaths in 2235 injuries that year.
Most of these accidents involve commercial vehicles, semi-tractor-trailers, long-haul truckers, and 18-wheeler crashes in passenger vehicles, resulting in severe injury and death. Some recent accidents posted online by news media include:
Columbia County, WI, January 2021 – Wisconsin State Patrol responded to an early Tuesday morning collision involving two semi-tractor-trailers on I-39/90 near mile marker 121. The accident near Arlington closed northbound lanes until crews cleared the accident scene.
Results from the preliminary investigation indicated that nobody was injured in the accident.
Dane County, WI, June 2020 – Wisconsin State Patrol closed portions of I-39 for hours to handle an early Friday morning accident occurring in the dark. The accident happened near County Highway K, involving a commercial tractor-trailer.
The horrific series of accidents began with a rear-end collision involving two semi-tractor-trailers. That accident had no injuries. However, sometime later, a commercial vehicle hit the vehicles in the first accident scene, severely injuring two Wisconsin state troopers, and a highway worker later transported to the University of Wisconsin Hospital.
The Wisconsin DOT released a dashcam video of the final chain-reaction accident involving eight vehicles occurring around 7:00 A.M., resulting in multiple deaths and injuries.
Four people were injured and four killed in the accident involving four passenger vehicles, a dump truck, and three commercial tractor-trailers. The video footage from an approaching commercial vehicle shows the semi-rear-ending other vehicles before rolling off the right-side distress lane into a ditch.
Rock County, Wis, September 2020 – The Wisconsin DOT reported a deadly crash on I-39/90 at Mile Marker 165. News outlets reported that the early Wednesday morning accident happened around 4:00 AM.
News stations reported a semi-tractor-trailer driving in the southbound lane crashed into a concrete median before colliding with another commercial vehicle in the northbound lane. The collision caused the second commercial vehicle to ignite.
A twenty-nine-year-old trucker was pronounced dead at the accident scene. Preliminary forensic examination results revealed that the second semi-tractor-trailer driver died from crash-related injuries.
Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) transported the other trucker to a local area hospital.
Rock County, Wis, March 2020 – A seventy-two-year-old trucker died in a freeway accident at US Highway 20 and I-39 outside Rockford, Illinois. Illinois State police responded to a call at about 10:00 AM Monday that a semi-tractor trailer had blocked the Bypass US Highway 20 off-ramp.
The preliminary investigation indicates that the semi-tractor trailer on the southbound lane left the roadway before rolling over. The Winnebago County coroner pronounced one person dead at the scene.
Wisconsin Department of Transportation
Were you injured, or was a family member killed in a freeway commercial vehicle crash? Contact our personal injury lawyers at (888) 424-5757 to schedule a free consultation to discuss your legal rights.
Our freeway injury attorneys at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC can provide legal counsel on filing and resolving personal injury compensation claims. Our law firm will never charge a fee unless we can secure a financial award for you in your case.
Families who lost a loved one through a preventable death can file a wrongful death lawsuit for all damages, including medical bills, lost earnings, loss of consortium, funeral and burial expenses, pain, and suffering.
All information you and your loved ones share with our personal injury lawyers is confidential through an attorney-client relationship. Our Chicago vehicle accident attorneys currently follow CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Covid-19 guidelines on social distancing to maintain everyone’s well-being.
Our practice areas include automobile accidents, workplace injuries, premises liability, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse, product liability, and wrongful death. Our lawyers currently represent injured clients throughout Illinois in Cook County, DuPage County, Lake County, Peoria County, Sangamon County, Will County, Winnebago County, Aurora, Chicago, Joliet, Schaumburg, and Waukegan.
