Most car accidents tend to involve an element of negligence on someone’s part.
Most of us have been in a car accident or two or three over our lifetime. There are very few people, other than those who don’t drive, who can say they have never caused an accident or been in one. The interesting question when it comes to car accidents is, “Are car accidents really accidents or are they the result of just plain stupidity?”
Over the years that I have practiced personal injury law, I’ve seen an awful lot of things that would try the patience of a Saint. The things that people do in their cars just boggles the imagination. In fact, some of those things are so astounding it makes me wonder “why” people would do them in a moving vehicle in the first place. Cars don’t drive themselves and if you don’t control them, they control you.
Certainly people don’t get into a potentially deadly machine with the intention of getting into a crash. However, one wonders if they at times leave their brain cells in neutral while driving. While “you” may be a safe driver, that doesn’t mean the “other” person is, and that they aren’t doing something they shouldn’t either.
The examples I am going to mention in this article are cases that I have either handled or have heard about, and some of them will make you wonder how some of these people got driver’s licenses.
There was the case of the big rig driver who was watching an X-rated movie on his laptop computer while driving. He struck and killed a young mother and her child. There was one case involving a 20-year-old driver who was heading home after a long day at work. For some reason he decided to text while driving at highway speeds. He never saw the big rig that hit him head-on.
There was also the case of a teenager eating on his way back to school and trying to drive at the same time. He ran a red light and creamed the side of a TV news van, putting the driver into hospital. Along these same lines was the instance where a woman was trying to get a shoe off the floor of the driver’s side mat when she hit another vehicle and sent in into the oncoming lane of traffic. That vehicle flipped several times and killed all the occupants.
One of the more graphic cases I’ve ever heard about was the biker who zig zagged past a big rig and then abruptly cut back in front of him and jammed on the brakes because there was another car in the road. The trucker had no place else to go and couldn’t stop in time.
Think when you’re driving. It could save someone’s life, including your own.
Charlie Donahue is a New Hampshire personal injury lawyer located in Keene. Donahue handles injury cases in New Hampshire and across the United States. To learn more about New Hampshire injury attorney, Charlie Donahue, visit Donahuelawfirm.com.
