Articles Posted in Auto Accidents

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In 2007, an Illinois factory worker was driving a motorcycle when an SUV turned in front of him, killing him instantly in the collision that followed. The decedent’s family brought an Illinois wrongful death lawsuit against the college student who was driving the SUV and received a settlement of $3 million.

Many drivers forget that automobiles and motorcycles function very differently and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. While a motorcycle is quick and easy to maneuver through traffic, it is also difficult to see. Whereas while it is hard to avoid seeing an SUV, it does have the disadvantage of being difficult to maneuver.

Prior to the settlement in this Illinois motorcycle accident case, the defense attorneys argued that the motorcyclist was at fault for not keeping a proper lookout of the SUV’s activity. But the obvious retort to this is that the SUV did not keep a proper lookout when he entered the motorcyclist’s lane. When driving it is important to remember to pay attention not only to your own vehicle, but to all of those vehicles around you.

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Parents will take much more precautions after they read about the $2.5 million settlement arising from an Illinois car crash involving two minors who were drinking in a Lake County, Illinois family’s home. One of the minors involved in the car accident is now paralyzed from the chest down. Baldwin v. Klairmont et al., No. 07 L 105.

In November 2006 when the minors were drinking beer in the Illinois family’s home, the wife was present and apparently allowed the underage drinking. The lawsuit alleged that the parents had a duty to supervise the activities in their own home. The family’s younger daughter had invited the two minor boys to their home where they proceeded to drink. The lawsuit asserted a negligence claim alleging that the family adults had several opportunities to stop the teens from drinking, but did not.

The teens left in a car after the husband came home and discovered that they were drinking. The vehicle that one of the minor boys was driving crashed into a utility box injuring him and his passenger. The lawsuit was brought under the 2004 Illinois Drug or Alcohol Impaired Minor Responsibility Act, which allows for civil penalties against adults who serve alcohol to minors and then injure someone else.

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Car and truck manufacturers have largely ignored the product defects causing insufficient occupant protection and rollover crashes until recently, relying instead on inadequate minimum government standards. However, this is changing in light of increased pressure from a consumer-friendly government coupled with years of having to compensate victims of rollover deaths and personal injuries. These manufacturers are now taking steps to protect the public.

In 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed an upgrade to the 1973 version of the federal roof crush standard for automobile manufacturers. At that time, the standard was so weak that most occupants in a rollover would be severely injured or killed. That standard merely requires a vehicle roof resist a static force of 1.5 times the empty weight of the vehicle or 5,000 lbs., whichever is less. This kind of standard does not reflect the dynamic forces that a vehicle typically experiences in an actual rollover. In virtually every rollover, the roof makes contact with the ground on one side or then the other.

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Evidence shows that bus passengers in Illinois and nationwide run a higher risk today than in the past. Whether due to poor oversight, poor bus design, maintenance problems, or inattentive operators, the level of safety on the average commercial bus is far from what it should be. If these issues are not corrected then there will be a continued rise in the number of injured and killed passengers and tragic bus crashes.

One way to stem the increase in passenger injuries and deaths could be an increase or stricter enforcement of regulations in place to protect the traveling public. Poor reinforcement of the current regulatory structure has resulted in an environment where a bus company and its drivers operate freely without any fear of consequence.

Another measure is to increase safety features. Research has proven again and again that an increase in safety features can increase survivability in bus crashes. Yet commercial buses are not nearly as safe as they should be. Unlike safety measures taken in airplanes or cars, advances in passenger safety on buses have been slow. There are many ways to make buses safer.

For example, seat belts have been standard on both airplanes and automobiles, but not on buses. Incredibly most buses are not even equipped with seat belts.

Buses could also be made more crash worthy. The strength of a bus roof depends on its support structure. The pillars between the windows of the bus are critical. The bus manufacturers have enlarged their vehicles’ windows for the convenience of passengers, but the support structure for the roofs has been compromised.

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New Year’s Eve is a time to celebrate the coming of 2009. Restaurants and bars in Chicago and nationwide are lively as many celebrate the holiday and the arrival of the new year with drinks and merriment. It is easy to imagine that New Year’s Eve is a risky time for drivers and pedestrians in Illinois and the rest of the states.

Holidays in general are the most hazardous times for drivers due to sharp increases in traveling and drunken driving. And when it comes to New Year’s Eve, research offers sobering statistics.

From 1986 to 2002, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has researched accident data in the United States, New Year’s Day ranks fourth in terms of most accident-related fatalities on a given day. Coming in at first and second are the 4th and 3rd of July, followed by December 23rd. Based on these statistics New Year’s Eve and Day are not the riskiest days of the year to be out celebrating.

Yet a closer examination of the statistics reveals something peculiar. While it might not be the deadliest day for those in vehicles, it is the deadliest day of the year for pedestrians. According to the IIHS study, New Year’s edged out Halloween as the having the highest incidences of pedestrian deaths. On New Year’s a large majority of these deaths can be attributed to the increase in drinking and celebrating. Half of the deaths involved alcohol impairment and 58% of the pedestrians who were killed had a high blood-alcohol concentration.

So this year when you are out celebrating the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, please remember to be safe and responsible. Happy New Year from the staff at Kreisman Law Offices.

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Typically Illinois courts reward and protect an injured party. For example, if one party is negligent because they ran into a stopped car at a red light, then the injured driver would normally prevail at trial. But this is not the case when the negligent driver was part of an ‘unavoidable accident’.

A recent Illinois trucking accident case ruled in favor of the defendant truck driver on summary judgment (Coole v. Central Area Recycling, 2008 WL 2955543 (4th Dist., July 28)) . The facts of the case were such that the court determined there was an ‘unavoidable accident’ so the defendant was not at fault.

In Coole, the truck driver was driving 5 mph over the speed limit as he approached an intersection; there was no stop light or stop signs controlling his movement. At the same time the plaintiff was also approaching the same intersection. She had a stop sign, but rolled through it and was struck by the defendant truck driver who was going over the legal speed limit. The truck driver contended that he didn’t have time to stop or avoid the broadside collision with Coole’s vehicle. Coole died as a result of the collision and her father brought a wrongful death lawsuit against the truck driver.

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In Illinois and most other states when an automobile owner permits another person drive their car then the driver’s negligence can be assigned to the vehicle’s owner.

For example, consider a Missouri case of Sam and his aunt Sandra [Back v. Winfield-Fire Protection Dist., No. SC 89001 (Mo. banc 2008)]. Sandra owns an automobile, but does not have a driving license, whereas her nephew, Sam, does. So when Sandra needs to go to a meeting she recruits Sam to drive her. On the way to her meeting Sam rear ended a fire truck that was partially parked in his lane with its emergency lights on.

As a result of the crash, his aunt was injured, and consequently sued her nephew and the fire protection district for negligence. Her nephew was dismissed after settling out of court with his aunt for $25,000. The case against the fire department continued on to trial, where the jury awarded $100,000 for her suffering. But because the jury found her to be 50% at fault in the accident, with the district also being 50% at fault, her damages were reduced by half.

The aunt appealed the reduction of her award by arguing that the trial court should not have instructed the jury that she could be held at fault because her nephew was negligent when he failed to keep a proper lookout. She felt that because she was a passenger she did not have a right to control it even though she owned the car.

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Chicago U.S. District Court Judge granted summary judgment in favor of the City of Chicago, dismissing the case brought against two Chicago police officers who ran over two young Chicago children. When it hit the children the officers’ unmarked car was driving at high speed with no lights or flashers.

The suit claimed that the City of Chicago and its two officers violated the children’s right to substantive due process under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The issue before the court was whether an Illinois auto accident caused by reckless driving forms the basis for constitutional liability under the substantive due process clause.

According to Judge Hibbler, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that recklessness in such a situation is not enough. The rule of thumb for establishing the threshold in a substantive due process challenge comes for the ruling in County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833 (1998): whether the behavior “is so egregious, so outrageous that it may fairly be said to shock the conscience.”
Under Hill v. Shobe, 93 F.3d 418 (7th Cir. 1996), it was held that reckless driving alone was not enough cause to impose liability under the due process clause. Furthermore, Lewis ruled that a high speed chase without the intention of causing harm does not meet the level of shocking one’s conscience.

Judge Hiller further reviewed the facts of the current case to determine whether the two police officers had intended to harm the two children. Evidence supported that the officer driving was indeed reckless when he struck the children. At the time the officers were speeding down the wrong side of the street with neither their lights or sirens on in an area near a school zone. According to the officers they were chasing a man with a gun. Yet Hiller felt that there was evidence to support the victims’ family’s claim that the officers were in fact avoiding traffic and there was no man with a gun. One of the boys struck by the police officers died, the other survived.

But while there was ample evidence to support the officers’ reckless behavior, there was no evidence that they had intended to harm the two children. Therefore Hiller reluctantly ruled in favor of the City of Chicago’s summary judgment and dismissed the case. However, Hiller did recommend to the family that they appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago for further review of the due process claim. That perhaps the Appeals Court would review whether the recklessness shown in the present case would be enough to shock the conscious and thereby violate the substantive due process clause.

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The parents of 8-month-old Joshua Flax filed suit against DaimlerChrysler after their son was killed in a car accident involving their 1998 Dodge Caravan. The wrongful death case centered on the allegedly defective design of the minivan’s front seat backs. Jeremy Flax, et al. v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., et al.

Joshua Flax was in the back seat of the minivan when it was rear-ended. The impact caused the front seat to collapse and its passenger to strike Joshua in the head, fracturing his skull. No other passengers were seriously injured and all parties agreed that Joshua was only fatally injured because of the product liability of the collapsed seat.

In late 2004, a jury found DaimlerChrysler’s seats to be defective and unreasonably dangerous, awarding a total of $105,500,000 to Joshua’s parents. This amount was later reduced, but the verdict was upheld all the way through the Supreme Court.

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NASCAR driver Michael McDowell walked away from a violent rollover car crash during a race at the Texas Motor Speedway earlier this year. After skidding into a wall and flipping across the track several times he climbed out of his crashed vehicle unhurt. This complete lack of injury is unimaginable in your typical car, but NASCAR vehicles come equipped with roll bars to prevent roof crush in rollover crashes.

Unfortunately your typical street car doesn’t come equipped with as stringent safety standards as those enforced by NASCAR. Currently the roof crush standard in the United States requires that the roof must be able to withstand pressure of at least 1.5 times the vehicle’s weight. This is the same standard which was established in 1973 and has remained unchanged since its inception. In 2005 Congress proposed that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) upgrade its standards in an effort to reduce injuries and fatalities from rollover crashes.

Recently NHTSA came to Congress with a proposal for increasing the weight ratio to 2.5. The minimal increase has drawn a lot of controversy with its opponents calling the increase ineffective. In 2007, over 10,000 people died in rollover crashes. In Illinois there were over 5,000 rollover accidents in just 2006. Yet the NHTSA estimates that its proposed increase would only result in 13 to 44 fewer rollover fatalities a year. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) stated, “If we have a little increase in roof strength that doesn’t result in a major decrease in injuries and fatalities, we’ve done nothing.”

And while the ratio change is minimal and drawn criticism as being ineffective there is another controversy surrounding the bill. Possibly worse yet the NHTSA proposal has a throw in; the agency inserted language which would preempt car accident victims from suing any manufacturer who met the minimum standard.

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