You have two deadlines after a truck crash.
Almost nobody tells you about the second one.

Yes — and usually more than one. Every state sets a statute of limitations for personal injury, most commonly two or three years from the date of the crash, and a separate deadline for wrongful death. If a government vehicle or entity was involved there is a third and much shorter deadline, sometimes as little as 60 or 90 days. Separately from all of these, there is a practical deadline before the evidence held by the trucking company is lawfully destroyed, which is often measured in weeks.

It depends on the state where the crash happened. Tennessee and Kentucky are among the shortest at one year for general injury claims; Maine, Minnesota and North Dakota run six years. Most states fall between two and three. But the state's headline number is not automatically your deadline: wrongful death often runs on a different and shorter clock, government claims override everything, and a minor's clock is usually paused. The calculator above works out which ones apply to your situation.

Because they are governed by completely different rules. The filing deadline comes from a state statute and is measured in years. The evidence deadline comes from federal record-retention rules and ordinary corporate practice, and is measured in months or weeks. Federal law requires a motor carrier to keep the driver's hours-of-service logs for six months. Dashcam footage and telematics data usually overwrite on a thirty-day cycle. Engine control module data has no retention requirement at all and can be lost the moment the tractor is repaired or put back into service.

Six months. Under federal regulations a motor carrier must retain the driver's Records of Duty Status and the supporting documents for six months from the date of receipt. After that the carrier may destroy them lawfully, and many do so on schedule as a matter of routine records management. Those logs are the evidence that shows whether the driver was over hours or fatigued — which in a truck case is frequently the whole question.

A spoliation letter, also called a litigation hold or preservation letter, is a written demand that puts the trucking company on formal notice that specific evidence must be preserved because a claim is anticipated. Once it has been served, destroying that evidence carries real consequences in court, including instructions to the jury that the destroyed evidence would have been unfavourable to the carrier. Before it is served, the same destruction is simply routine. This is why the timing matters: a letter sent in week three preserves records that a letter sent in month seven cannot bring back.

A much shorter deadline applies, and missing it usually bars the claim entirely regardless of how strong it is. Most states require written notice to the government entity long before any lawsuit — commonly 90 to 180 days, and as little as 60 days in some jurisdictions. Some states also shorten the underlying limitations period once a government entity is a defendant. This applies to municipal refuse trucks, state DOT vehicles, transit buses, school district vehicles and postal vehicles, and it is the single most common way a valid truck accident claim is lost.

Usually yes, and not always in the direction people expect. Wrongful death is a separate cause of action with its own limitations period, and in many states that period is shorter than the personal injury one — North Dakota allows six years for injury and two for death, Nebraska four and two, Utah four and two. The start date can also differ: many states run the wrongful death clock from the date of death rather than the date of the crash, and Kentucky runs it from the appointment of a personal representative, which is a probate step the family has to take first.

In most states the filing clock is paused, or tolled, until the child reaches the age of majority — 18 in most states, 19 in Alabama and Nebraska. That can push the legal deadline many years into the future. Two things do not get paused: the evidence, which disappears on the same schedule regardless of who was hurt, and in many states the government notice deadline, which can run out while a family is still assuming they have years. Waiting until a child turns 18 to investigate a truck crash means investigating a crash where no records survive.

No. Negotiating with an insurer, exchanging documents, receiving payments for medical bills, or being told a claim is under review does none of these things stop the statute of limitations from running. Deadlines are set by statute and a private conversation cannot change them. An adjuster who is still friendly and responsive in month twenty-two of a twenty-four month window is not doing you a favour, and the day the deadline passes the negotiating position changes completely.

Generally the state where the crash happened, though it is more complicated than that and it is genuinely a question for an attorney. Interstate trucking cases regularly involve a driver from one state, a carrier headquartered in another, a trailer owned by a third company, and a crash in a fourth state — and which state's law governs can affect the deadline, the damages available, and whether a comparative fault rule helps or hurts you. If you were hit far from home, that is a reason to get the question answered sooner rather than later.

Not necessarily, and no calculator is in a position to tell you it is. Several doctrines move deadlines: the discovery rule, where the clock starts when the injury or its cause was reasonably knowable rather than when it happened; tolling for minority or incapacity; and equitable exceptions where a defendant concealed information. Some of these apply exactly in situations like a head injury diagnosed months later, or a carrier that withheld records. Before you accept that a claim is closed, have a licensed attorney look at the actual dates.

No. Every calculation on this page runs in your browser. The state, the crash date, the date of birth and the computed deadlines are never transmitted, never stored on a server, and never seen by anyone. The only time information leaves your device is if you separately choose to fill in and submit the case review form — and that form is filled in from what you already entered, so you are never retyping anything.