Posts Tagged ‘Motor Vehicle Accidents’

It’s bad enough that many drivers on our roads today are operating vehicles while using cell phones, texting, eating or undergoing other distractions.

Now a new annual survey from GMAC Insurance shows that one in five licensed drivers couldn’t pass a written test that covers basic driving laws in the states where they live.

That’s not something to feel good about. Essentially, according to the survey, one of every five drivers who are operating vehicles on the road alongside you may not remember the most basic traffic laws.

Fabulous news as we all head out onto the highways for the Memorial Day holiday weekend, isn’t it?

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/blueclue

According to a story posted yesterday on CNNmoney.com, one in five licensed drivers – which includes about 38 million drivers – failed a 20-question written traffic law review test given by GMAC Insurance. The study, called the GMAC Insurance National Drivers test, included 5,202 licensed drivers from 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the story. The drivers were asked questions pulled from motor vehicle driving exams given in their states.

To pass the tests, drivers had to answer at least 70% of the questions correctly. The tests also included questions about driving distractions including texting and cell phone use while driving, the story said.

So what was the average score of the 5,202 drivers who were surveyed?

Would you believe a 76.2% passing grade, which is down from 76.6% last year, according to the story.

Should this perhaps be a call to action? Should we consider setting up mandatory re-testing programs so that drivers have to undergo a written review of traffic rules every five or 10 years to prove their mettle on the roads?

If it would be helpful, we at MyPhillyLawyer wouldn’t oppose programs like that if they truly could help drivers recognize and constantly think about the dangers that lurk on the streets when they are operating a motor vehicle.

Among some of the things drivers forgot were fundamental traffic rules, according to the CNNmoney story, such as the number of feet that are needed to maintain safe following distances and what to do when approaching a steady yellow traffic light.

The problem is, admittedly, that we take those tests once when we are first getting our driver’s licenses and then we never seem to look at those traffic law manuals again in our lives. It’s no wonder many of us don’t remember such things.

But that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be a good thing to review periodically for all drivers, no matter how long they have been driving.

This could be especially important nowadays since many drivers are already paying less attention due to all the distractions in their cars, from iPhones to complex car stereo systems to cell phones and more.

We all certainly want to be driving on the roads with fellow drivers who are paying attention and who have a clear and recent recall of the traffic rules that we all must heed to when driving.

So could periodic re-testing of all drivers make us all safer in our vehicles?

That’s certainly a topic worth reviewing and discussing on a national scale.

Maybe, just maybe, such a once-ever-10-year mini-refresher could help us all be better and safer drivers.

In the meantime, though, if you are the victim of a vehicle accident due to one of those less-than-properly-skilled drivers, remember that we at MyPhillyLawyer.com are here to aggressively represent you and your family in the event of someone else’s negligent conduct.

And oh, while we are enjoying this long holiday weekend, maybe you might take a few minutes and review the Driver’s Manual that’s filled with all these rules from the Department of Transportation in your state. There’s some good information in them that you can review about many of the traffic regulations you might have forgotten about over the years.

Drive safely, and let’s be careful out there.

If you have full coverage auto insurance, this means you have comprehensive, collision and theft insurance for your car. However, it does not mean you will receive all of the coverage you can purchase.

In this month’s video blog, Dean Weitzman of MyPhillyLawyer explains the difference between full coverage and full tort. He explains why you should make sure to have full tort in order to protect you and your family in the event of a serious car accident.

For more information, please contact the firm at 866-920-0352 for a free initial consultation.

Are you willing to give up your rights to be compensated fully for ALL of the damages caused by another?

If you are injured in an accident, you can be sure that you want to recover every dollar you are entitled to for your treatment and for your pain and suffering.

But insurance companies for years have been trying to fight you tooth and nail to minimize what they pay out to you for pain and suffering due to your injuries so they can maximize their profits at your expense.

This is why we are constantly being bombarded in the legal world with proposals for caps on pain and suffering awards for injured people – a maximum dollar amount that can be paid to injury victims based on numbers pulled out of a hat, rather than on reality. Those proposals come from insurance companies and their very active, highly-paid lobbyists, who want to keep the money from you so they can keep it for themselves.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/stuartbur

Caps are not fair for injury victims. They say that your pain and suffering, no matter how severe or long-term, has a finite value and that your case is not worth any more than the arbitrary figures designated by the caps. Such caps are only good for the insurance companies.

Caps have been introduced under the argument that they’re helping to control escalating health-care costs. But that’s not true. The costs of actual health care aren’t changing via such caps. The “savings” are only being seen in the payouts by insurance companies that are trying to pay out as little as possible to injury victims. That’s an insult to the victims.

Insurance companies argue that caps help them control costs for everyone by stopping inflated damage awards. If that were the case and if those lower payouts were saving them money, why don’t we all see lower insurance premiums as a result? Because they’re pocketing the savings to fatten their own wallets, all at the expense of victims who are seriously injured in accidents and are being limited by unfair caps on their damage awards.

If a cap on pain and suffering awards is set at $250,000, for instance, then an injury victim would be limited to only that amount for their case in their lifetime, even if their injuries were so severe from burns, a vehicle crash or other catastrophic event that they could no longer work. That is outrageous.

How about if we turn the whole world of injury payments upside down and put the onus on the real perpetrators? What if you are a victim of medical malpractice and are severely injured due to an error by your doctor or hospital? Then why not create a $250,000 maximum payment cap for your injuries from the insurance company, and force the errant doctor and hospital to pay for any and all medical treatment above that for the rest of your life? Then the ones who actually caused your grievous injuries are being forced to remember it each day because they’ll have to pay for your care. That might make it more real for them the next time they treat a patient.

In states across the nation, this issue of damage caps and their legality is being reviewed. A $500,000 cap on medical malpractice damage awards imposed several years ago in Illinois was struck down last month by the Illinois Supreme Court, according to a story in BusinessWeek.  The court found that “the limits set by the Legislature violate the state constitution’s separation of powers principle,” the story said.

This is a key theme in the fight in Congress today as the health care reform proposals continue to be batted around between Congress and the White House. Many Republicans in Congress continue to argue that such damage caps are a good way to rein in health costs. Well, that may sound like a great sound bite, but that will change the minute you are involved in a serious accident or are the victim of medical malpractice. That’s when you’ll realize that your rights are being limited all in the name of “solving the nation’s health care crisis.”

Instead, caps of pain and suffering damage awards are arbitrary and protect only the insurance companies, doctors and hospitals. They are not looking out for the victims of such tragedies. Instead, it’s an attempt to deprive innocent victims of their day in court.

Yes, as a personal injury attorney, I do have a vested interest in this emotional topic. But that doesn’t make my premise wrong. When you take away the rights of the individual in favor of a corporation, which is what damage caps are doing, then I can never side with the corporation. An individual’s rights are paramount to those of the insurance companies. I am not ashamed to say that.

After hearing all the evidence and rendering a decision, if a jury verdict is too high after a trial, there are natural controls to fix that problem and make the award fairer. The trial judge can lower the award, as can state Superior Court and Supreme Court judges, if necessary.

We don’t need caps. That’s a red herring.

There’s yet another effort underway in the state Legislature to try to change the decades-old laws that forbid beer sales in convenience stores and grocery stores across the Commonwealth.

Right now, you also can’t buy a six-pack of beer in a beer distributor in Pennsylvania — you can only buy a full case by law. You are, however, able to buy individual six-packs of beer from bars and restaurants that have liquor licenses which permit them to make such sales.

According to a story this week in The Philadelphia Inquirer, state  Sen. John C. Rafferty Jr., a Montgomery County Republican, is the latest state lawmaker to try his hand at expanding the legal sale of individual six-packs through beer distributors and grocery and convenience stores across the state, arguing that it’s about “consumer choice” and opening up freer competition for beer sales. Some convenience store executives, including Stan Sheetz, the CEO of the Sheetz convenience store chain, support the idea, according to the Inquirer. “We support this bill because it treats adults like adults and it protects the rights of beer drinkers,” Sheetz told the paper at a rally held in Harrisburg to promote the effort. His company has tried in the past to gain permission to sell individual six-packs of beer but has been stymied in the courts. That hasn’t deterred his company, however.  “Our beer laws are backward, they’re counter-intuitive, they’re inefficient, and they’re hypocritical,” he told the Inquirer.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/janisr

Well, he just may be right about Pennsylvania’s beer sale laws. They may truly be backward and counter-intuitive and inefficient and even hypocritical. But that’s fine, because they’re also smart. There are already plenty of places to buy beer here, at beer distributors by the case and in bars and restaurants by the six-pack.  No one who wants to buy beer is being denied the opportunity to buy the stuff.  But we certainly don’t need to make beer sales available at every street corner of every town and city across this state. We’ve got enough problems with under-aged drinking, drunk driving, alcohol-related crimes and other social ills caused by alcohol abuse.

Make it easier to buy and consume beer across the state just to allow a bigger revenue stream for stores and beer companies? That just doesn’t make sense from any standpoint at all.  It’s not an idea that would get a great reception from groups that are fighting these same kinds of problems every day, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

That would be a decision that would likely mean more alcohol-related vehicle accidents, crimes and incidents of under-aged drinking.

It’s a bad idea, a terrible precedent and an idea with no social merit. In fact, it’s irresponsible and wrong.

We need more libraries on street corners, more senior centers, more drug and alcohol treatment programs and more youth centers.

What we don’t need are more places to buy beer.

Jan. 26, 2010 UPDATE:  Toyota announced that it will immediately suspend production and sales of eight vehicle models bound for the U.S. market to further investigate and repair the cause of sudden acceleration that has been plaguing some Toyota vehicles since last year, according to The New York Times.

For the second time in less than four months, Toyota is recalling millions of their cars and trucks in response to incidents of sudden acceleration being reported by some drivers, which have resulted in loss of vehicle control, accidents, injuries and several fatalities.

This time, the company said the recall affects about 2.3 million vehicles to correct what is being called “sticking accelerator pedals on specific Toyota Division models.”

Last fall, about 4.2 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles were recalled in connection with similar concerns about sudden acceleration, but at that time the company said the problems appeared to come from apparent pedal entrapment by incorrect or out of place accessory floor mats.

According to Toyota, about 1.7 million of those Toyota vehicles are subject to both overlapping recalls.

The latest recall is finally beginning to at least acknowledge what many affected Toyota vehicle owners have said all along — that the sudden acceleration problems were likely caused by more than just improperly positioned floor mats in the past.

A typical vehicle speedometer in a modern automobile is shown here in this photograph. Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/fountain_of_useless_info

These recalls follow another alleged safety matter related to Toyota vehicles that occurred  last September.  In that case, the company  was sued by a former corporate attorney who alleged that Toyota illegally withheld critical information about hundreds of rollover crashes involving injuries and deaths. That case is still in its early stages.

If you own one of the affected vehicles in the recalls, be sure to contact your vehicle  dealer to schedule the required repairs as soon as possible.

And if your vehicle should be affected by a sudden acceleration episode, here’s what you need to know, based on an ABC News video report.  If your Toyota or any other vehicle should accelerate on its own, apply the brakes and shift the transmission into neutral. Then use the brakes and steering to stop and control the vehicle safely. The engine will be racing noisily, but you can shut it off safely with the ignition key once the vehicle is stopped.  Don’t shut the key off as you are still moving because that will cut off your power steering and power brakes, and will also lock your steering, which you don’t want to do.  After stopping the vehicle, have it towed to your vehicle dealer and have it repaired.

You also could have legal rights beyond the recalls and repairs for any injuries or damages that you suffer as a result of these vehicle issues.  Don’t sign anything or give up those legal rights until you have evaluated your situation and your options.

Fueled by the goal of drastically cutting their expensive electricity bills, cash-strapped municipal governments around the United States have been changing over from traditional light bulbs to new energy-saving light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in traffic lights at thousands of intersections.  But unlike “impact studies” that often have to be done for zoning, planning and road construction projects, no one seemed to think twice about the impacts of such a move.

Yes, it saves plenty of energy to move from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs, but an unforeseen problem has arisen in states where winter means ice, snow and sleet — the new LED bulbs don’t give off resulting heat that in the past has melted snow and ice from the fixtures so frozen precipitation doesn’t block the critical signal lights from the view of  drivers.  Can you imagine pulling up to a traffic light that you can’t see because the red, yellow and green lamps are covered over by snow and ice?  What in the world are you supposed to do?

This type of traffic light with traditional incandescent light bulbs uses more energy but also melts collecting ice and snow during the winter months so the lights aren't accidentally blocked by precipitation. Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/inhauscreative

Tragically, vehicle accidents have started occurring across the nation as a result of the cool-running LED traffic lights,  according to a news story last week in The New York Times.  Road crews in Wisconsin are having to use brushes to manually clear snow and ice from LED traffic lights this winter, the story said, and some signals are being fitted with special shields that are sloped to allow collecting snow and ice to fall away from the lights.  One traffic accident near Chicago last April left a woman motorist dead when her car was struck by a pickup truck in an intersection due to a red light that was apparently blocked by snow, according to the Times. Four people in the pickup were injured in the crash.

The problem is that this is the kind of thing that can happen when government agencies do things in a vacuum without really taking a good, hard look at what they are doing.  That would include things like recommending a knee-jerk move to LED lights under the guise of energy savings without looking at any other factors.  Knee-jerk reactions are often a government strategy, and that’s not good planning.

This is a great example of why governments and their agencies  need to thinking more often with a team mentality.  Governments need to gather engineers, lawyers, and other specialists before enacting changes that can have fatal consequences.  Politicians too often buy into their own talking points and then convince themselves that  they know more than the engineers and specialists do.  They make decisions without using the experts who can advise them.  Did anyone ask traffic engineers about using LEDs to see if they would have raised issues about snow and ice and LEDs?  Perhaps not.

Maybe the LEDs are the greatest thing since sliced bread because they save energy, last longer and are brighter than incandescent bulbs, but the point is that such decisions should be made with all the gathered information at a government’s disposal.

In the meantime, energy-efficient LED traffic signals are one more potential hazard that drivers have to deal with as they cope with snow and ice this winter in cold climates such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Let’s be careful out there.