Here in the south, warm weather often beckons for outdoor adventures and road trips. Thus, the question of whether it’s legal to ride in the bed of a pickup truck in Mississippi arises frequently.

With its sprawling rural landscapes and deeply rooted truck culture, Mississippi offers plenty of opportunities for riding in the bed of a pickup truck. However, safety regulations and state laws govern this practice, prompting individuals to inquire about its legality and safety implications.

Let’s delve into the details to understand the rules and considerations associated with riding in the bed of a pickup truck in Mississippi.

As you travel down the interstate, whether we’re talking about the ones that surround Jackson, MS, including I-220, I-20, or I-55, or even area highways, routes, and just your average surface streets, you’re bound to encounter your fair share of work zones. These are the ones where you’ll find county, city, or state workers tinkering away, fixing potholes, resurfacing or lining streets, and more. You may be accustomed to seeing roadside signs or public service announcements (PSAs) about worker safety and wonder how big of a problem work zone-related accidents must be—especially ones involving large trucks. Keep reading where we’ll discuss just that.

Driving anywhere can be a risk, because even if we’re paying attention and driving defensively, other drivers around us may not be driving as safely as we do. This makes it all the more dangerous when we drive near large trucks like 18-wheelers because large trucks can’t stop or maneuver like smaller cars can, and they have much larger blind spots.

Accidents involving large trucks cause much greater damage and are often far more deadly as they can easily create a multi-vehicle accident. It’s important to know what courses of action are available if you’ve been involved in a large truck accident, and that information is easier to access and understand when you talk to experienced lawyers like our team at Pittman, Roberts & Welsh, PLLC.

It takes a significant amount of skill and knowledge to safely drive tractor-trailers in even the safest driving conditions. When conditions are anything less than ideal, truckers must take extra care when sharing the road with other vehicles.

Unfortunately, even the safest and most experienced truck driver can still cause an accident—especially if the weather isn’t great.

Truck accidents involving bad weather can be especially severe, resulting in serious injuries and significant amounts of property damage. Bad weather doesn’t give truckers who cause crashes a free pass. Weather and poor driving conditions are not an excuse for negligence, and we should expect professional drivers to exercise even greater caution than usual when the weather is bad.

Sharing the road with tractor-trailers can be stressful, but we trust that commercial vehicle drivers do everything within their power to travel safely on Mississippi roads. A recent report indicates that some of that trust could be misplaced.

Drug use among truck drivers and operators is at its highest levels since the establishment of the Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) in 2019. Let’s take a closer look at current drug use trends in the trucking industry and what that could mean for the safety of Mississippi motorists.

If you were involved in an accident with a large tractor-trailer, you may be owed compensation for expenses like medical bills, lost wages, auto repairs, and much more. Securing that compensation can be an uphill battle, though, especially if you are dealing with an insurance company that refuses to acknowledge liability.

Your ability to recover, repair your vehicle, and return to as normal a life as possible hinges on your ability to negotiate a full and fair settlement with the trucking company and its insurer. This is no small feat, and even the most well-intentioned accident victim will not have the skills and knowledge required to hold the trucking company accountable for what happened.

Truck accident injuries are often catastrophic for occupants of smaller motor vehicles. If you were injured in a collision involving a tractor-trailer, you may be owed compensation for your lost wages, medical bills, and more. Trucking companies have powerful insurance companies and lawyers on their side, so you’ll need a knowledgeable and aggressive attorney who is prepared to advocate for your rights.

At Pittman Roberts & Welsh, PLLC, our attorneys are familiar with the most common causes of truck accidents resulting from negligence. We thoroughly investigate every case to determine what exactly caused an accident and who was at fault. With this information, we build strong truck accident cases that can stand up to the insurance company’s scrutiny.

Most of us drive alongside large trucks on a daily basis, no matter whether we only navigate city streets here in Jackson or highways and major interstates. While sharing the road with truckers makes some of us uncomfortable for various reasons, one danger you may not often consider is the prospect of a truck having a defective hitch.

A collision with a large truck is a life-altering experience. A fully loaded tractor-trailer unit can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds and around 35,000 pounds when empty. The average midsize motor vehicle only weighs 3,300 pounds, making your car no match for a commercial truck.

Driving is a task that requires all your focus, attention, and effort. You might feel this more acutely than ever when you are sharing the road with big trucks like tractor-trailers. Your vigilance behind the wheel may not be enough to prevent a collision, though.

Big truck drivers are notoriously overworked, with companies pushing them to spend long hours on the road as they transport consumer goods across Mississippi. Fatigue is a serious, ongoing problem in the trucking industry, and it’s putting you and everyone else on the road at risk for a trucking accident.