Car Accident

Published on: October 21, 2016

Family of Teen Killed in Car Accident Sue State, Allege Poor Road Design

Early one morning in November 2014, a popular 17-year-old senior left her South Carolina home – and never returned. Her family didn’t know where she was headed at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, and they don’t know why she didn’t follow the highway’s sharp curve. What they can say with some certainty is that had a guardrail been positioned around that curve, she may not have careened off the road, down an embankment and head-on into a cluster of trees.

She died on the scene of blunt force trauma to her head. Her family has since filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the state’s Department of Transportation, alleging the agency was negligent in failing to erect a guardrail that could have saved her life.

Authorities with the state declined to comment on the pending lawsuit, which accuses officials with the agency of knowing a guardrail was needed, but failing to act. Coincidentally, the family’s lawsuit was filed the same week as National Teen Driver Safety Week. Continue reading →

Published on: October 12, 2016

Deadly Crash Leads to Airbag Lawsuit for 4 Orphaned Sisters

By Dean Freeman

A fatal car accident killed both their parents and their 90-year-old grandmother. Three of the four sisters had been in the car at the time of the collision, headed to a family reunion in Texas. They were seriously injured, but survived.

It wasn’t long after the crash that questions started to arise about what had happened and why. Specifically, what was going on with the airbags and why didn’t they deploy? As the Star-Telegram reports, the family was traveling in a Kia Sedona minivan. They were struck head-on by a Pontiac Bonneville when the driver crossed the center line while traveling on U.S. 67. The oldest sister was working and not traveling to the reunion with them that day.

Recovering from physical and emotional injuries, the sisters allege the local car dealership disconnected the fuse to the airbag system. In a lawsuit filed two years ago, the sisters say that when the dealership removed the cable from the deployment sensor, they also fraudulently replaced the seat sensor. The pre-owned vehicle dealership sold the deceased parents the van at one of its discount lots. Plaintiffs say the dealership employees’ actions caused the injuries and deaths in the crash. They do not allege defendants caused the crash, but rather that the injuries sustained were much more severe than they otherwise would have been. Continue reading →

Published on: October 5, 2016

Distracted Driving Victims Seek to Hold Cellphone Makers, Wireless Companies Liable

By Dean Freeman

A Texas woman sped down a Texas highway in her pickup truck, scrolling through her iPhone for messages. She was so distracted, court records would later show, that she slammed her truck into a sport utility vehicle. The driver and front seat passenger died instantly. A child passenger in the back seat was left permanently paralyzed. That was in 2013.

These kinds of distracted driving accidents are sadly not all that unusual. However, they are preventable – and not just by the person behind the wheel. A lawsuit filed against Apple in this case alleges the cell phone company had the technology prior to this accident to stop drivers from accessing their phones while the car is in motion. What’s more, the product liability lawsuit alleges, the company, in its application for a patent on that technology, cited the fact that phones are used for texting and texting and driving is a major public health issue and state legislators and local law enforcement officials had not been able to get a handle on the matter.

The driver in this case was later convicted of negligent homicide. She is serving five years on probation. Meanwhile, the families of her victims want accountability. They want to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening to another family. But what are the chances they might actually succeed? What responsibility do cell phone companies have for the actions of their driving customers? Continue reading →

Published on: September 30, 2016

Florida Traffic Engineers Propose “Diverging Diamond” to Slash Intersection Crashes

By Dean Freeman

Authorities in Delray Beach are investigating an intersection crash at Federal Highway and Northeast First Street, where a fitness club mogul in a Lamborghini t-boned an 82-year-old Uber driver in a Buick. Investigators believe speed and alcohol were factors in the crash, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

But what if those two vehicles never needed to cross paths? This is the theory behind the traffic re-engineering proposed by Florida Department of Transportation. Although we typically think of “advancements” in travel these days as being technological or electronic, this has to do with good old-fashioned road design. It’s called the, “diverging diamond interchange,” or DDI.

The goal of this design is to not only reduce the amount of potentially hazardous left turns, but also to make it tougher to enter a highway on-ramp traveling the wrong direction. Continue reading →

Published on: September 22, 2016

Distracted Driver Problem Weighed by Researchers, Florida Legislators

By Dean Freeman

Although the distracted driving problem appears to have remained steady from 2014 to 2015, researchers with the NHTSA say there is one area of concern: Young drivers who visibly manipulate their electronic devices.

That’s according to the latest research by federal analysts with the traffic safety administration, which reaches conclusions based on researcher traffic counts, as well as anonymous driver surveys. Analysts physically sat at intersections across the country and observed and recorded driver behavior for 11 hours at a time. Researchers looked to see whether there were visibly manipulating their phones, talking on visible headsets or holding phones to their ears. They also cross-compared this data with the surveys and scaled the data to a national level.

What they discovered is that while overall, the texting-and-driving/ visible manipulation of electronic devices fell slightly (2.2 percent, a statistically insignificant amount), there was an increase of .5 percent total. In fact, 5 percent of those 16 to 24 were seen doing this, as were 2.1 percent of those 25 to 69. This might not seem like a lot but consider another figure: The rate of drivers holding phones to their ears. That fell from 4.3 percent in 2014 to 3.8 percent in 2015. That sounds like good news, until you consider that this still means 542,000 passenger vehicles were being driven by someone using a handheld cell phone at any given moment of a typical day in 2015. That’s alarming. Continue reading →

Published on: September 16, 2016

Teens at Higher Risk of Injury, Death in Florida Car Accidents

By Dean Freeman

The voice on the line was that of a retired police officer who had come across many accident scenes in his career. But in that 911 call to dispatch at the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, that voice, although clearly and succinctly describing the situation, revealed the sheer awfulness of it.

“We have people trapped in the car unconscious. We’re trying to get the door open. I have one, two people in the back seat unconscious. It’s pretty bad.”

By the time active duty emergency crews arrived, they would find one of four teens inside that vehicle, an 18-year-old recent Nease High School graduate, was dead. Five others – including two 18-year-old sisters (two in a set of identical triplets) – were seriously injured. Additionally, two others in another vehicle – a 20-year-old driver and his 19-year-old passenger – were seriously injured as well. Three of the teens injured are high school students, including the two sisters. According to a GoFundMe page for the sisters, they face “a long recovery.” The decedent, according to his obituary, had been studying computer engineering at the University of Central Florida. Continue reading →

Published on: August 28, 2016

DUI Injury of Child Spurs Dram Shop Lawsuit Against Bars

By Dean Freeman

The mother of a child left paralyzed, brain damaged and forever scarred has filed a lawsuit against not just the man who was driving drunk that night, but also against the two bars that served him that night.

This lawsuit, filed separately from the three others brought by the estates of three persons killed in the drunk driving crash that night, alleges the driver downed 13 beers – plus a free shot of liquor – at two bars in the hours before the crash. At just 26, he worked as an assistant baseball coach at Anderson University in South Carolina. But that night, instead of guiding youths to greatness, his actions ended the lives of three young people, a 17-year-old girl, a 20-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man. That same recklessness nearly claimed the life of an 11-year-old girl, and probably would have had it not been for the quick and brave actions of a sheriff’s deputy with paramedic training who was first on scene. He found a faint trace of life, and gave her an emergency tracheotomy, right there on the scene.

Now, according to The State newspaper, that defendant has been convicted of numerous felonies relating to his actions that night. The young girl whose life was saved? She is now 13 and requires around-the-clock medical care. Her mother is now seeking justice from the business establishments she say should have known better than to continue serving the defendant driver alcohol, knowing he was clearly already drunk. Continue reading →

Published on: August 24, 2016

ACE Fire Underwriters v. Romero – Fatal Tractor-Trailer Crash

By Dean Freeman

In many Orlando car accidents, the amount of insurance money available is contingent upon the language of the policy. The language must always be clear, as any ambiguity will be interpreted in favor of the insured.

That said, insurers do have the right to limit their payouts in the event of a crash, so long as they do so clearly and upfront.

In the recent case of ACE Fire Underwriters v. Romero, a dispute over the language of the policy would mean the difference between a $1 million wrongful death payout and one that could be as much as $2 million (or at least $1.55 million under the terms of a partial pre-trial settlement). Continue reading →

Published on: August 18, 2016

Road Debris a Major Hazard on Florida Roadways, AAA Reports

By Dean Freeman

It seems almost everyone has a story about that one time they were involved in a crash or encountered a serious hazard due to an unsecured load or debris cluttering the roadway. Florida Rep. Jamie Grant (R-Tampa) recalled his best friend’s mother was killed when an engine fell off the back of a trailer and flew through her windshield. Others have talked about encountering construction tools flying off the back of trucks, swerving to miss a mattress lying in the highway, losing control due to ripped tires on the roadside or a huge tree branch that was causing an obstruction.

While these incidents can result in thousands of dollars in property damage, serious injury or even death for those who encounter these dangers, the person who was responsible, if they are caught, might expect a ticket with a few hundred dollars fine or, if someone dies, up to 120 hours of community service.

Many argue that’s simply not enough, particularly in light of a new report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which reports this is a much bigger problem than we may have previously understood. According to the latest news, there are approximately 50,000 accidents reported every year that are caused in some way by road debris. That’s nearly double the number noted in a previous report from 2000 indicating there were 25,000 of these incidents every year. Continue reading →

Published on: August 11, 2016

Khoury v. Seastrand – Asking Car Accident Jurors About Specific Damages

By Dean Freeman

Jurors may be asked about – and dismissed for prejudices regarding – specific large damage awards in a car accident lawsuit, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled.

In Khoury v. Seastrand, the court weighed an appeal by a defendant in a car accident lawsuit who alleged various errors by the trial court, including “indoctrination of the jurors” during the voir dire portion of the trial.

Voir dire is the preliminary, pre-trial examination of a juror by the judge or an attorney. Lawyers may request dismissal of certain jurors for biases – real or perceived – that could affect those persons’ ability to render a fair verdict. Continue reading →