Inland Empire truck accident lawyerHit by a truck? We handle the company.

Inland Empire truck claims

This page is for people hurt in Riverside or San Bernardino County by a tractor-trailer, a box truck, a delivery van or another vehicle driven for a business, and for families after a death. It covers the freight picture, the 2024 death figures, who investigates, where cases are filed, public fleets and the county coroners. It does not repeat the law of employer and carrier responsibility, which is the same statewide and is on our commercial vehicle accident lawyer page, or the federal trucking rules on our Los Angeles truck accident lawyer page.

The warehouse belt

San Bernardino and Riverside counties had about 230 warehouses in 1980, roughly 970 in 2000 and over 4,000 by 2021. Those counts come from the Rose Institute's Inland Empire Outlook, Spring 2024, which drew on warehouse mapping by the Robert Redford Conservancy. Each of those buildings depends on trucks, and the trucks share the freeways and arterials with commuters.

The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) reports that the Inland Empire continues to see the strongest industrial growth in the region, built to support supply chain capacity. Its 2024 Goods Movement Technical Report counts Amazon delivery centers across the region and Southern California growing from the first in 2012 to 46 in 2022, with 78 percent opened since 2020. SCAG's own example of an online order traces the chain: a container trucked from the ports to a nearby warehouse, a 53-foot trailer to a fulfillment or sortation center in Ontario or Chino, a truck to a delivery center, and a last-mile van to the door.

Each leg of that chain is a different truck, and the company running each one has to be identified separately. A crash with the van at the end is covered in our delivery truck and van guide and our Amazon delivery van guide. A crash with a straight truck moving goods between buildings is covered in our box truck accident guide.

Freight corridors

The figures come from the Caltrans 2024 Truck AADT file, which estimates annual average daily trucks at each count point. Caltrans applies a truck share that is often older than the traffic count, and its metadata describes the last column as "the year the truck percentages were estimated or verified." By our sort of the same file, SR-60 at Archibald Avenue has the seventh-highest truck count in California. San Bernardino and Riverside counties hold 13 of the 30 highest truck counts in the state file and 39 of the top 100.

The CHP's Inland Division says its officers in the western part of the division "encounter some of the most intensely congested roads in the nation at the intersections of Interstates 10, 15, 215, and Highways 210, 91 and 60." Those interchanges are where freight traffic and commuters merge, and where a truck's blind spots, following distance and lane changes become the questions in a claim.

Truck deaths in 2024

• 38deaths in large-truck crashes, San Bernardino County, 2024NHTSA FARS 2024, our count
• 27deaths in large-truck crashes, Riverside County, 2024NHTSA FARS 2024, our count
• 65deaths in the two counties combinedNHTSA FARS 2024, our count
• 62deaths in large-truck crashes, Los Angeles County, 2024NHTSA FARS 2024, our count

We counted fatal crashes in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) 2024 file in which at least one vehicle had one of NHTSA's large-truck body types. San Bernardino County had 33 such crashes and 38 deaths. Riverside County had 27 crashes and 27 deaths. Together that is 60 crashes and 65 deaths, against 61 crashes and 62 deaths in Los Angeles County and 394 deaths statewide.

These are not only freeway deaths. Of the 60 Inland Empire crashes, 22 were on Interstates, 19 on state highways, 2 on U.S. highways and 14 on local roads, with 3 unrecorded. Interstate 10 had the most, with eight, and 18 of the 60 were in areas FARS codes as rural. Nationally, 70 percent of the people killed in large-truck crashes in 2024 were in other vehicles, according to NHTSA's Large Trucks: 2024 Data.

Investigators and crash reports

On freeways and state highways, the report usually comes from the CHP. Its San Bernardino Area office, for example, states that it "has primary responsibility for all traffic enforcement and traffic collision investigations which occur on freeways, state highways and unincorporated areas." The Inland Empire splits between two CHP divisions. Inland Division, headquartered at 847 E. Brier Dr. in San Bernardino, has area offices that include Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, Victorville and Barstow, plus the Mountain Pass Joint Port of Entry commercial vehicle facility. Border Division has the Indio, San Gorgonio Pass, Blythe and Temecula offices, and its commercial vehicle facilities include Desert Hills and Rainbow. A freeway crash near Temecula or Murrieta is therefore a Border Division file, as our Murrieta page explains.

For major crashes, the CHP's Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team (MAIT) program bases one team in Inland Division in San Bernardino and another in Border Division in San Diego. Each team has a sergeant, two or more officers, a Caltrans senior transportation engineer and a Motor Carrier Specialist who "is responsible for conducting in-depth mechanical inspections of involved vehicles." The program handles "major traffic collisions," not every crash. A MAIT report exists in some fatal truck cases and not in others, and we ask whether one was opened.

Whoever writes the report, a crash involving a truck rated 10,001 pounds or more that kills someone, sends someone for treatment or disables a vehicle calls for the CHP 555D truck supplement, which records the carrier's name and "all carrier identification numbers," according to the San Diego Police Department's collision manual. Our guide to evidence after a commercial vehicle crash covers that report and the company records behind it.

Courthouses for truck cases

Riverside County Superior Court assigns civil cases by zip code under an administrative order effective August 1, 2026. Unlimited civil cases, which include serious injury claims, go to one of three courthouses. The Riverside Historic Courthouse at 4050 Main Street takes most of the western county, including Riverside, Moreno Valley, Corona and Murrieta. The Palm Springs Courthouse at 3255 E. Tahquitz Canyon Way takes the Coachella Valley and the Blythe area. The Menifee Justice Center at 27401 Menifee Center Drive takes Menifee, Temecula, Anza and Aguanga.

San Bernardino County Superior Court's civil division is at the San Bernardino Justice Center, 247 West Third Street, on the court's locations page. Since December 11, 2023, the court has moved select civil matters within the jurisdiction of the Rancho Cucamonga and Victorville courthouses to those buildings, at 8303 Haven Avenue and 14455 Civic Drive, according to the court's announcement. The court's local rules require a Certificate of Assignment with every new civil complaint (Rule 404) and leave it to the Presiding Judge to designate by general order where actions are filed and heard (Rule 131).

The statute of limitations, the deadline to file a lawsuit, is the same in both counties: two years from the injury against a private company or driver (Code Civ. Proc. 335.1). The courthouse decides where the case is heard, not whether it can be brought.

Public fleets and claims

A bus, truck or work vehicle owned by a public agency changes the first deadline. A claim for injury or death must be presented within six months (Gov. Code 911.2). A late-claim application is possible within one year (Gov. Code 911.4), and a lawsuit must follow within six months of a written rejection (Gov. Code 945.6). A "public entity" includes a county, city, district, public authority and public agency (Gov. Code 811.2), and a joint powers agency is "a public entity separate from the parties" that formed it (Gov. Code 6507).

Omnitrans describes itself as "established in 1976 through a joint powers agreement" serving 15 cities on its about page. A Riverside County report records that the Riverside Transit Agency was "established in September 1975 by a joint powers agreement" between the Board of Supervisors and western county cities. San Bernardino County takes claims on its "Claim Against County of San Bernardino" form through Risk Management. Riverside County's claim form goes to the Clerk of the Board. Gov. Code 915 sets how a claim reaches any other local agency, and how a claim against the state goes to the Department of General Services. Federal vehicles, such as postal trucks, follow a separate federal process explained in our government and postal vehicle guide.

County coroners

When a truck crash takes a life, the county coroner investigates the death. In both counties the coroner is part of the sheriff's department, and both list deaths following an accident or injury among those they must investigate. In Riverside County that is the Sheriff-Coroner's Coroner's Bureau at 800 S. Redlands Ave. in Perris, (951) 443-2300, with a Coroner's East office at 47225 Oasis Street in Indio, (760) 863-8311. In San Bernardino County it is the Sheriff's Coroner Division at 175 South Lena Road in San Bernardino, (909) 387-2978.

The coroner's findings sit alongside the crash report and the company's records. Our guide to fatal commercial vehicle crashes and our Los Angeles wrongful death lawyer page explain who may bring a claim and what it covers. Our first 48 hours checklist lists the first calls a family makes.

Limits of the regional rules

• The law is statewide. Whether an employer, a carrier or a vehicle owner answers for a driver is decided the same way in Riverside as in Los Angeles. Our guide to suing the company covers it.
• The crash was near Temecula, Murrieta, Indio or the Banning Pass. The freeway report may come from a Border Division office rather than Inland Division.
• You were driving the truck for work. Workers' compensation usually comes first, and a claim against another company can run alongside it. See our post on a work-related crash.
• The carrier is based out of state. Its USDOT number still identifies it. Our guide to finding the company behind the vehicle explains how to read the markings.
• The crash was in Los Angeles or near the ports. See our port and drayage truck guide.

Inland Empire city pages

Each city page lists its own courthouse, trauma centers and CHP area office: Riverside personal injury lawyer, San Bernardino personal injury lawyer, Moreno Valley personal injury lawyer, Corona personal injury attorney and Murrieta personal injury attorney. Injury law beyond trucks, such as brain injury and catastrophic injury, applies the same way here.

After you call

An Inland Empire truck case uses California law and Inland Empire logistics. The law decides who may be responsible; the logistics decide which CHP office wrote the report, which courthouse hears the case, which coroner investigated, and whether a six-month claim is due. We work through both from the first call.

1. 1
   Tell us where it happened

   The road, the nearest cross street or exit, and what was written on the truck.

2. 2
   We identify the companies

   The carrier, the owner of the truck and trailer, any rental company and each insurer.

3. 3
   We get the reports

   The CHP or police report, any truck supplement, and the coroner's findings after a death.

4. 4
   We track the deadlines

   Six months for a public agency, two years for a lawsuit. No fee unless we recover.