Truck accident settlement amounts in South Carolina

A truck crash claim in South Carolina isn't valued like an ordinary fender bender. What a case is worth here turns on state statutes and on federal safety law that South Carolina folds into its own rules: how much insurance sits behind the truck, whether the state caps your damages, how your own share of the fault is treated, and how long you have to file. The national hub explains how settlements work in general. This page covers the parts that are specific to South Carolina.

How much insurance sits behind the truck

The biggest reason truck settlements run larger than car settlements is the money available to pay them. A private driver in South Carolina only has to carry 25/50/25 coverage: $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident for injuries, and $25,000 for property damage.¹ A commercial truck in interstate service has to carry far more. Federal law requires a for-hire carrier hauling ordinary freight in a vehicle over 10,001 pounds to keep at least $750,000 in liability coverage.² Hauling oil pushes the minimum to $1,000,000, and certain hazardous loads such as explosives or bulk radioactive material require $5,000,000.² That floor is thirty times the state minimum for a car, and it's often what makes a serious injury claim collectible instead of theoretical.

Those federal limits govern interstate carriers. South Carolina reaches further. Regulation 38-424 adopts the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (49 CFR Parts 382, 383, 385, 387, and 390-399) and applies them to intrastate carriers too, so a truck that never crosses the state line still answers to the same hours-of-service and vehicle-maintenance requirements.³ A violation of those rules, a falsified logbook or a skipped brake inspection, often becomes the backbone of a liability case. One local variation: for intrastate carriers the minimum driver age is 18 rather than the federal 21.³

Your compensatory damages aren't capped

South Carolina places no cap on compensatory damages in an ordinary vehicle case. Medical bills, lost income, future care, and pain and suffering are all recoverable in full. The state's $350,000 limit on noneconomic damages sits in a separate statute and applies only to medical malpractice, not to truck crashes.⁴ That distinction matters because a catastrophic truck injury such as a spinal cord injury or a traumatic brain injury generates economic losses that would exhaust a passenger-car policy many times over.

Punitive damages and the impaired-driver exception

Punitive damages are where a South Carolina truck case can climb. The state caps them at the greater of three times compensatory damages or $500,000.⁵ The ceiling rises to the greater of four times compensatory damages or $2,000,000 when the conduct was motivated by unreasonable financial gain the defendant knew was dangerous, or when it would support a felony.⁵ The cap comes off completely in three situations that surface in trucking: the defendant intended to harm and did; the defendant pled guilty to or was convicted of a felony arising from the same conduct; or the defendant was under the influence of alcohol or drugs to the point that judgment was substantially impaired.⁵ An impaired trucker can face punitive exposure with no statutory ceiling at all. These figures are recalculated for inflation each year by the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office.⁵

The 51 percent rule can cut or erase your recovery

South Carolina uses modified comparative negligence. Under Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co., you can recover as long as your share of the fault is not greater than the fault of the parties you're suing, and your award is then reduced by your own percentage.⁶ Reach 51 percent and you recover nothing. If a jury values your case at $1,000,000 and finds you 20 percent responsible, you take home $800,000. Fault gets contested hard in truck litigation, and the state's own records show it isn't always the trucker who's blamed. In 2023, when a commercial vehicle and another vehicle collided, South Carolina crash reports listed the commercial driver as a contributing unit 38.8 percent of the time and the other driver 55.8 percent of the time.⁷

When the truck belongs to the government

A government-owned truck changes the ceiling. If a SCDOT dump truck or a county vehicle causes the wreck, the South Carolina Tort Claims Act caps recovery at $300,000 per person and $600,000 for a single occurrence, no matter how many agencies are involved.⁸ Punitive damages against a government entity are barred outright.⁸ The deadlines are shorter, too. You generally have two years to sue a public entity, extended to three years only if you filed a verified claim first.⁹ Finding out early whether a public agency owns or operates the truck can reset the entire valuation.

The deadline that ends the claim

The standard statute of limitations for a South Carolina injury claim is three years from the date of the crash.¹⁰ A wrongful death claim also runs three years, measured from the date of death.¹⁰ The clock is paused while the injured person is a minor or under a legal disability. Once it runs out the claim is gone regardless of its value, and the government exception above trips people up because it's a full year shorter.

Your own coverage can add to the payout

South Carolina requires uninsured motorist coverage at the same 25/50/25 minimums, so if the truck flees the scene or turns out to have no valid insurance, your own UM coverage responds.¹¹ Underinsured motorist coverage isn't mandatory, but insurers have to offer it up to your liability limits, and you can only turn it down in writing.¹¹ Against a properly insured carrier sitting behind $750,000, UIM rarely comes into play. Against a small or non-compliant operator, it can be the difference.

What the South Carolina numbers show

Commercial vehicles are a thin slice of traffic and a thick slice of the harm. Of the 1,047 people killed on South Carolina roads in 2023, 125 died in crashes involving a commercial motor vehicle.⁷ These vehicles were involved in 113 of the state's fatal collisions that year, about 11.6 percent, while accounting for just 2.2 percent of all collisions.⁷ Many of the trucks are passing through rather than local: 43.7 percent of the commercial drivers in these crashes held out-of-state licenses.⁷

Getting the claim moving

Two records shape most South Carolina truck claims from the start. The official collision report, completed by the investigating officer, is where fault and vehicle information first get written down; you can request yours through South Carolina crash reports. If your vehicle was totaled or lost resale value, that's a separate claim from your injuries, handled on the diminished value page. Because truck cases involve layered insurance policies and federal safety records that get destroyed on a schedule, most people bring in a lawyer early; you can find one through the legal directory.

This article is general information about South Carolina law, not legal advice for your situation.

Sources

1. S.C. Code Ann. Section 38-77-140, minimum motor vehicle liability limits. https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t38c077.php

2. 49 CFR Section 387.9, minimum financial responsibility for motor carriers of property. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/387.9

3. S.C. Code Regs. Section 38-424, adoption of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations for interstate and intrastate carriers. https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/south-carolina/R-38-424

4. S.C. Code Ann. Section 15-32-220, noneconomic damages cap (medical malpractice only). https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t15c032.php

5. S.C. Code Ann. Section 15-32-530, limits on punitive damages and the exceptions to those limits. https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t15c032.php

6. Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co., 303 S.C. 243, 399 S.E.2d 783 (S.C. 1991). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1265650/nelson-v-concrete-supply-company/

7. South Carolina Department of Public Safety, South Carolina Traffic Collision Fact Book, 2023 Edition (Part I general information and Part V, Commercial Motor Vehicles). https://scdps.sc.gov/sites/scdps/files/Documents/ohsjp/fact%20book/2023%20Fact%20Book.pdf

8. S.C. Code Ann. Section 15-78-120, South Carolina Tort Claims Act damage limits and bar on punitive damages. https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t15c078.php

9. S.C. Code Ann. Section 15-78-110, time limitation for actions under the Tort Claims Act. https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t15c078.php

10. S.C. Code Ann. Section 15-3-530(5)-(6), three-year limitation for personal injury and for wrongful death. https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t15c003.php

11. S.C. Code Ann. Sections 38-77-150 and 38-77-160, uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t38c077.php