Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

Despite attempts by numerous State Legislatures, including the Georgia General Assembly, to reduce distracted driving by making it illegal and imposing heavy fines on those who violate those laws, distracted driving continues to cause wrecks and personal injuries. The Georgia Legislature made illegal texting while driving (TWD) and yet I personally observe many Georgia drivers still holding their phones or Blackberries at the top of their steering wheels texting while driving, often at high rates of speed, on Ga. 400, the Downtown Connector, I-75 and I-85. It is infuriating.

A study by Virginia Tech Driving Institute revealed that those who resort to texting while driving are 23 times more likely to meet with an accident. A comparative study of texting while driving versus drunk driving statistics published in a leading car magazine in the United States revealed that texting while driving is even more dangerous than drunk driving. Studies reveal that a person who is texting while driving at the speed of 35 mph will cover 25 feet before bringing the car to a complete halt as compared to a distance of 4 feet which a drunk driver would cover at the same speed. According to the texting while driving death statistics compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) 5,870 people died in car crashes in 2008 alone. The same statistics revealed that 515,000 people were injured in various car crashes in the United States. Around 28 percent of all crashes in 2008 were caused by drivers in the age group of 18 and 29, who admitted to texting while driving. The popular belief, that the number of teenagers texting while driving is more as compared to adults, got a major blow when the texting while driving statistics 2010 compiled by Pew Research Center revealed that 47 percent of the adults resort to texting as compared to 34 percent of the teenagers. The same stats revealed that 75 percent of the adults resort to phone conversation while driving as compared to 52 percent of the teenagers.

There are numerous tools a driver has at his or her disposal now to prevent distracted driving. One such tool is an application you download on your phone that reads an incoming text to you, either on your phone’s speaker or your bluetooth device. For example, I have downloaded on my Blackberry an app called “Txt U L8r.” It is a free app created by Car and Driver and Chrysler that reads any incoming text to you while you are driving. I use a Bluetooth hands free device while driving and so this app reads an incoming text to me through my Bluetooth device. The app turns on automatically whenever I turn on my Bluetooth. I have to listen to a brief advertisement first that simply says “This message is brought to you by Chrysler” and then a nice voice reads the text. Then that same app sends an automatic reply text that reads: “I heard your message read by the Car and Driver Txt U L8r app and will get back to you when I’m done driving. Drive Safely. Sponsored by Chrysler.” I have received many compliments about using this app. Every time a friend of mine receives it in response to a text they send me, it sets a good example and makes folks think about what they are doing to eliminate distracted driving.

As a plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia who handles a great deal of wrongful death lawsuits from car wrecks and various motor vehicle accidents, I have been watching with interest the coverage of the wrongful death case in Florida involving millionaire John Goodman. Mr. Goodman is currently on trial for DUI manslaughter in which it is alleged he caused the death of another individual in a car wreck while driving drunk. Mr. Goodman, not surprisingly, denies the charges.

Mr. Goodman has well known and highly skilled trial counsel, Roy Black, who represents the wealthiest of the wealthiest Americans when they find themselves in trouble. Mr. Black is presenting a very creative, unique defense, i.e., that Mr. Goodman got drunk AFTER the wreck and was not drunk when the wreck happened and that something malfunctioned with Mr. Goodwin’s Bentley, a very expensive car, causing it to accelerate uncontrollably.

News comes out today that a civil suit against Mr. Goodman by the family of the decedent has settled. This is good for the family of the decedent. It gives them a little sense of closure, to the extent that can ever be had, and gives them a sense of justice, hopefully. In our Civil Justice System, the only justice that can be had by someone wronged is money damages, and there should be no apology made for that, because a jury can not bring a loved one back to life. All a jury can do is to make the wrongdoer pay money damages for justice.

Yesterday was a bad rush hour in Atlanta, with constant rain and poor visibility. Already bad traffic was made worse by the rain. It presented the right conditions for lots of car wrecks. I was heading home a little early but it was still just dusk…still enough light for street lights not to be on, but dark enough to present a real hazard to the Atlanta motoring public, especially with the rain. A driver directly in front of me on East Rock Springs Road in Atlanta, without any warning or explanation, ran right over a traffic calmer that looked similar to the one in the photo above. But this one was not exactly the same, because it didn’t have the proper markings or signage as the one above does. This driver ran right on top of the calmer, flattening three of his tires, knocking various things off his car and causing sparks to fly in the air. He couldn’t have been going faster than 30 m.p.h., because that’s how fast I was going and I was right behind him. That touch up with the “traffic calmer” undoubtedly cost that young man a lot of money in repairs to his car. Not much of a “calmer” to him! Fortunately, he didn’t seem to be injured.

There is a manual that all road engineers and departments of transportation, including the Georgia Department of Transportation, must follow when installing these obstacles in the middle of a perfectly good street. It is the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, known as the MUTCD, and it mandates that traffic calmers must have sufficient markings and signage to warn drivers of its existence. The fact that this unsuspecting driver yesterday drove right on top of the thing suggests this one was not properly marked. There are many ways to mark a traffice calmer to warn drivers, including reflectorized tape around the curb, or even delineator posts, as shown below.

This accident yesterday I saw harmed only the car, but it is not difficult to understand how these “calmers’ can do the exact opposite of what is intended and actually cause harm to a driver. These things are seemingly being installed everywhere these days. New ones have just been installed on 14th Street and Peachtree Street in Midtown between 14th and 15th. I have to try to avoid running over them every day. One particularly hazardous “calmer” is found on Peachtree Street in Buckhead near its intersection with Piedmont Road. It proved deadly when it lacked any lighting, lacked any reflectorized tape or paint, lacked any delineator posts and had no signage. Drivers at that time didn’t stand a chance against it.

In the wake of the tragic New Year’s Eve car wreck that killed Kathy Porter, the wife of Atlanta Braves trainer, Jeff Porter, many lay folks have asked me, since my practice in Atlanta is exclusively plaintiff’s personal injury, whether the Georgia State Patrol or the individual Georgia State Trooper would be liable for causing this wreck. There seems to be absolutely no dispute the Georgia State Trooper was at fault in causing this wreck. http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/witness-gives-account-of-1283677.html The question arises, however, whether the State of Georgia would be liable for the State Trooper’s recklessness? Or would the State of Georgia be able to avoid liability by asserting the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity, which allows the State in some instances to avoid civil liability completely?

The Georgia State Tort Claims Act (GTCA) allows injured individuals to hold the State of Georgia responsible for their injuries caused by the negligence or carelessness of State actors/employees in limited scenarios. First, the injured party must give the State of Georgia and the agency involved “ante litem notice,” or notice of the intent to bring a claim against the State, within 12 months of the negligent act or incident. Then the negligent act must fit squarely within the types of act for which the GTCA allows liiability; there are many exceptions in the statute itself.

And there are some trade-offs for even being able to bring suit against the State of Georgia. For example, one such trade-off is that the State’s liability for anything, no matter how egregious the conduct, is limited to $1 Million dollars. That means in any case in which a State employee’s negligence results in the death of another human being, the most the family of the decedent can recover is $1 Million dollars. And surely we can all agree that the value of the life of anyone is greater than a mere $1 Million dollars. Another such trade-off is the State of Georgia can never be punished by punitive damages, regardless of how unconscionable the subject incident was. For example, in the Kathy Porter case, there is evidence that this particular State Trooper had caused four prior wrecks. If we were talking about a private corporation’s employee who had caused four prior wrecks and killed someone in his fifth, a jury could decide to punish that corporation for continuing to employ that reckless employee by awarding punitive damages against the employer. Not so against the State of Georgia.