By Zneimer & Zneimer P.C., Chicago Pedestrian Injury Lawyers
Chicago has invested heavily in pedestrian safety in recent years. You see it everywhere: curb bump-outs, high-visibility crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, and redesigned intersections meant to slow cars and protect people on foot. People are encouraged to cross at crosswalks but that doesn’t prevent people from jaywalking.
“Jaywalking” is not a single offense under Illinois law. It generally refers to crossing a street:
Trucking cases turn on paper, data, and the consistent systems that a motor carrier must run every day and then produce when something goes wrong. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations require carriers to preserve and produce safety-related records, and they also require cooperation during investigations. A carrier must make accident records available to authorized investigators and provide reasonable assistance, including full and truthful answers. That obligation matters in civil litigation because plaintiffs often need the same core information to prove what happened, who controlled the operation, and whether the carrier ignored known safety risks. The Chicago trucking accident attorneys of Zneimer & Zneimer PC are familiar with the recordkeeping obligations of commercial carriers.
Start with the most direct recordkeeping duty. The regulations require each motor carrier to maintain an accident register for three years after the date of each accident. The register must include key fields that map neatly onto civil proof issues, including the date and location, the driver’s name, counts of injuries and fatalities, and whether hazardous materials were released. The regulations also contemplate preservation of official accident documentation, including copies of accident reports required by states, other governmental entities, or insurers.
In litigation, that accident register and those reports help identify every prior crash the carrier had to log, and they can expose patterns: repeat rear end collisions, repeated lane departure events, recurring brake issues, or a driver who keeps showing up in preventable incidents. Plaintiffs use that history to prove notice, to challenge “this came out of nowhere” defenses, and to support negligent hiring, negligent retention, negligent entrustment, and punitive exposure when a carrier kept rolling the dice.
When a commercial truck is involved in an accident, the collision happens in seconds. The accountability fight may last months or years. One regulation often decides whether the injured person can identify the right defendants quickly enough to preserve evidence and build a clean liability story. 49 CFR 390.21T requires a self propelled commercial motor vehicle to display two core identifiers. The vehicle must show the legal name or a single trade name of the motor carrier, and it must show the motor carrier’s USDOT number with the letters “USDOT” immediately before the number. The marking must appear on both sides of the vehicle. The letters must contrast sharply with the background. The marking must remain legible from 50 feet away while the vehicle stands still. The motor carrier must keep the marking in a condition that meets those requirements.
That is not cosmetic. It is a compliance obligation that demands daily execution. A carrier needs drivers, yard staff, and maintenance staff who understand what “legible from 50 feet” means in the real world. A carrier needs inspections that catch peeling vinyl, road grime, crash damage, poorly placed decals, and box trucks that collect soot until the company name disappears. A carrier also needs procedures for leased equipment and owner operators so the truck displays the correct operating identity when the load moves.
From a personal injury perspective, the marking rule influences four high stakes issues.
In trucking cases physics matters, but evidence often decides the outcome. The federal regulations, 49 CFR Part 390 include a set of record rules that sound administrative, but are important for trucking injury litigation.
This requirement drives operational behavior. A compliant carrier trains safety staff to maintain centralized records or at least a reliable index. A compliant carrier builds a process for pulling documents quickly from terminals, third party systems, and electronic providers. A compliant carrier also understands that records include more than paper. They include electronic images, electronic documents, and systems that must reproduce the information accurately.
A federal investigation into a fatal crash highlights why record integrity matters. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated a December 2022 rear end collision in Virginia involving a tractor trailer operated by Triton Logistics Incorporated of Romeoville, Illinois. NTSB The NTSB described how the truck traveled far faster than the bus and the driver did not brake before impact. NTSB Reporting on the NTSB findings described fictitious driver accounts in an electronic logging device system that allowed drivers to exceed hours limits, which the NTSB linked to driver fatigue.
Truck
A serious truck crash in Chicago and elsewhere can look simple in the first headlines and blame the truck driver. A few sentences, a few quotes, and the news moves on. However our experienced trucking injury attorneys know from experience that personal injury cases rarely start and end with the driver. Federal trucking safety rules acknowledge that safety starts before the driver turns the key, and place responsibility on the trucking company to know the rules, teach the rules, and require compliance.
The federal regulation, 49 C.F.R. § 390.3 state every employer must know and comply with the safety regulations, and every driver and employee must receive instruction and comply. Additionally, 49 C.F.R. § 390.11 says that when the regulations impose a duty on a driver, the motor carrier must require the driver to follow it.
What happens if you are driving in Chicago and you are driving through a green light when all of a sudden a police car from your and comes through the red light and crashes into your car and you are injured. Can you make a claim against the city if Chicago. As in many legal scenarios: “it depends”. The personal injury lawyers of Zneimer & Zneimer P.C. have handled these cases and they are always challenging.
Illinois law draws an important distinction between police officers driving in ordinary conditions and officers responding to an emergency call. That distinction directly affects the burden of proof an injured victim must meet in order to recover compensation.
Police Are Not Always Immune From Liability
Chicago has made major investments in bike lanes—especially protected lanes designed to separate cyclists from vehicle traffic. These projects aim to reduce crashes, improve safety, and encourage alternative transportation. But as winter sets in, a serious question remains:
If Chicago expects people to keep biking in winter, are the bike lanes being kept safe enough to actually use?
At Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C., we represent injured cyclists and drivers alike. Winter biking highlights a growing conflict between safety, infrastructure, and real-world conditions on Chicago streets.
Zneimer & Zneimer P.C. – Chicago Personal Injury Lawyers
Illinois winters mean snow piles, slick sidewalks, and black ice in parking lots and on outdoor stairs. Falls on ice can cause serious injuries – broken hips, wrist fractures, concussions, and worse. A common question the Chicago slip & fall lawyers of Zneimer & Zneimer hear is:
“If I slip on ice and get hurt, is the property owner automatically responsible?”
Chicago winters have a way of turning the familiar into the unpredictable. Streets you’ve driven for years suddenly feel unfamiliar beneath fresh snow, visibility narrows to a frosted tunnel, and road conditions shift hour by hour. The personal injury lawyers of Zneimer & Zneimer P.C., see firsthand how winter weather contributes to serious crashes—and this year, Chicago drivers face new roadway hazards that deserve special attention.
Below, we break down the risks, including a new and unexpected one created by recent roadway redesigns.
Tractor trailers do not “come out of nowhere.” When a driver says that, it often means the truck did not appear visible enough soon enough to give them a fair chance to react. That idea has a name in federal law. Regulators call it conspicuity. Injury lawyers translate that as “Can you see this thing in time to avoid getting killed by it?”
The personal injury trucking lawyers at Zneimer & Zneimer are well aware of the federal requirements imposed on commercial carriers to ensure their trucks and trailers are visible or conspicuous. Federal conspicuity rules set requirements for retroreflective sheeting and reflex reflectors on trailers and semitrailers. A trailer at night behaves like a moving wall. It can blend into the darkness until headlights reach it. By then, drivers may have no time or distance left to steer or brake. Conspicuity systems try to solve that problem by:
