Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

It is a morbid statistic to keep up with, for sure, but one the Georgia Department of Public Safety has been keeping for years, that it the number of Holiday Fatalities on Georgia Roads. This Thanksgiving Holiday (from Wednesday to Sunday) eleven Georgia citizens lost their lives on Georgia roads. As a plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer in Atlanta, who has represented many, many Georgia families who have lost loved ones in car wrecks, I know the pain these Georgia families are suffering right now, especially during the Holiday Season.

The Georgia state patrol reported 520 wrecks resulting in 231 injuries this year during the Thanksgiving Holidays, but that does not include reports of wrecks from other police agencies, e.g., municipal police departments. More people are on our roads for Holiday travel, so statistically, more people are going to be in wrecks. We don’t know how many Georgians suffered personal injuries from the 520 wrecks reported by the Georgia State Patrol, but we can pretty much assume there were numerous injuries. Many states launched a safe driving campaign just before Thanksgiving, but I didn’t see one for Georgia this year. Even other countries are ahead of the United States in this effort. For example, in 1997, the Swedish Parliament adopted the “Vision Zero” policy, which sets a goal of reducing roadway fatalities and serious injuries to zero. According to some knowledgeable commentators, when it comes to preventing death and serious injury, we too often focus on individual behavior and vehicle safety but ignore the crucial role of roadway design, which leads to one of the deadliest ingredients in any crash: speed. This is why I have brought numerous cases against the Georgia Department of Transportation, because Georgia Citizens shouldn’t let their DOT off the hook on state roadways that are inherently hazardous and that are killing people through no fault of their own.

Perhaps one Monday after Thanksgiving I will write here that the Georgia State Patrol reports no Holiday Deaths on Georgia roads. Wouldn’t that be something?

Monday, November 22, 2010

$750K deal reached in ‘Joshua’s Law’ case

By Greg Land, Staff Reporter

$750K settlement reached in “Joshua’s Law” case

1:17 pm, November 19th, 2010

The parents of Joshua Brown, the 17-year-old driver killed in 2003 when he lost control of his car on a stretch of wet highway north of Cartersville, reached a $750,000 settlement with the Georgia Department of Transportation just before the case was to go to a jury Friday.

How many Georgians have to die before the Georgia Department of Transportation does something to fix hazardous roads? At least more than one appears to be the answer to that question. In Chatham County, the interchange of I-95 and Georgia Highway 21 has been a hazardous road known to the GDOT for a long time, but it took a fatality last week finally to get the GDOT to act to try to protect the lives of Georgia citizens.

Here are the statistics for this hazardous stretch of road in South Georgia:Georgia Highway 21 off ramp

Total Accidents: 106

The Georgia Department of Transportation recently settled a wrongful death claim by agreeing to pay the Plaintiff $600,000.00 for the death of his wife. The Georgia DOT delayed resolution for several years and finally agreed to pay the settlement just before trial in Fulton County, Georgia. The claims in this case, Heller v. DOT, which was pending in Fulton County State Court, involved allegations that the Georgia DOT had allowed trees to grow up too closely to the roadway, presenting a deathly hazard for any member of the motoring public who, for whatever reason, happened to leave the roadway. This is what happened to the taxi Mrs. Heller was a passenger in when it hydroplaned during a rainstorm, causing the cabdriver to lose control of his vehicle and crash into a tree, killing Mrs. Heller.

Georgia DOT has a mandatory clear zone requirement, as set forth in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Roadside Design Guide, which Georgia has officially adopted. DOT cut down the trees by the side of I-85 in 2006 and has a larger tree-clearance program, DOT spokesperson David Spear said. “The principal concern relative to the DOT in this issue was the tree,” Spear said. “Relative to drainage and slope design we’ve not made any changes, nor are any warranted.”

The Georgia DOT even apologized to Mr. Heller for the death of his wife, an extremely rare gesture by the DOT.

If you think the Georgia DOT wouldn’t knowingly subject Georgia citizens to a hazardous road condition, think again.

Monday, October 25, 2010

GDOT agrees to second settlement

A San Antonio, Texas jury recently found a bus driver guilty of reckless driving for causing a rear-end motor vehicle collision while he was texting on his cellphone. The texting driver now could be sentenced up to 30 days in jail. He had requested probation in a plea deal, but District Attorney Susan Reed — who described the verdict as a warning to all who text while driving — said she’d like to see jail time imposed.

“This is setting a community standard,” Reed said after the verdict. “The jury and my office has said, ‘Don’t do this. You need to resist the temptation (to pick up the cell phone). It’s very dangerous.’”

Many of you know I have long crusaded on my blog against driving while texting (DWT). I was stopped in traffic on I-75 last night due to a rush hour wreck and took an informal survey of all of the drivers around me. I would say a good 8 out of 10 were texting while behind the wheel. Granted, traffic was stopped, but the new Georgia law prevents any texting whatsoever while behind the wheel. I wonder whether the newly enacted Georgia law against TWD is having the desired effect. U.S.D.O.T. studies on pilot programs show texting while driving has declined 68 percent in Hartford and 42 percent in Syracuse. It is too early to tell whether the Georgia law is having the same effect. Additionally, On Sept. 21, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood kicked off the 2010 National Distracted Driving Summit by announcing new anti-distracted driving regulations for commercial truck and bus drivers, rail operators and drivers transporting hazardous materials.

As a plaintiff’s personal injury attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, handling numerous car wreck cases, probably the saddest case of all is one that involves the death of a child. I have blogged before about the absolute necessity of back-up cameras in SUV’s, vans, trucks and really any vehicle that sits high off the ground. Now I see another child in Georgia has been killed by her own parent due to the lack of a back-up camera in the parent’s SUV. A back-up camera, which is very inexpensive, would have prevented this tradgedy. Many newer model vehicles now include these cameras as standard equipment. These cameras are inexpensive and easily found for purchase on the internet.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) estimates that in 2009 there were 292 fatalities involving backing over a pedestrian or bicylist. The NHTSA complete report indicates that among cases where the type of the striking vehicle is known, 78 percent of the backover fatalities and 95 percent of the backover injuries involved passenger vehicles. While people of all ages are victims of backovers, this report confirmed that children under 5 years old and adults 70 and older have an elevated risk of being backover victims compared to the rest of the population. Backover fatalities happen in a variety of areas with the most common area being the driveway, closely followed by other residential areas, public roadways, and nonresidential parking lots. Backover injuries tend to happen more frequently in nonresidential parking lots than other areas.