Too frequently these days do we hear of roadway accidents resulting from drunken driving. There is an all too common scenario that crops up numerous times every week here in Maryland, where a motorist or members of a family are injured or killed by an individual who decided to get behind the wheel in an intoxicated condition. As Baltimore personal injury trial attorneys, the lawyers at Lebowitz & Mzhen Personal Injury Lawyers, understand the anguish that such an event brings to friends and relatives of the victims, as well as the pain and suffering endured by those who are actually hurt in a crash.
Those who are only injured are fortunately spared the ultimate fate of being killed by a drunk driver, but often one or more of the victims can experience a long, hard road to recovery, which may never be quite complete. Amputated limbs, partial paralysis, and even quadriplegia can result from severe traffic wrecks; these are not simple injuries and can complicate a person’s life forever.
Whether the cause is a drunken motorist in a passenger vehicle or a drug-impaired commercial truck driver working over his or her legally restricted hours, the tragedy of a DWI- or DUI-related traffic accident is that it probably could have been prevented. But once done, it cannot be undone. The survivors are the ones who must pick up the pieces and try to press on with their lives, now scarred by a disaster they never caused, but with which they must deal, probably for the rest of their lives.
It is by every sense of the word, reckless for any thinking person to slide behind the wheel of a two-ton automobile when they have had too much to drink. Our law enforcement agencies and the courts act against those who have done so, but by the time a drunken driver has caused a serious car, truck or motorcycle collision, the damage has already been done.
As Maryland auto and commercial trucking accident attorneys, I and my colleagues have looked to the epidemic of drunken driving and the awful consequences it brings to families when a loved one is hurt or killed. The extreme sorrow and fear of what the future will bring, especially when the deceased victim was the primary breadwinner for the family, can be especially devastating.
As car and trucking accident attorneys, our job is to help the surviving family members become whole to some extent so that they can face the future with a little more certainty. Yet the cycle is bound to repeat — and the tears that we see sadly will continue — until one day society as a whole wakes up to the senselessness act of the drunken driver.
Will this ever cease? Simply consider the news on a daily basis as an indicator of our progress. We recall a bad accident in Anne Arundel County last fall where the two motorists involved in a traffic collision were both allegedly intoxicated at the time of the crash.
According to police, the accident took place in Pasadena, MD, on Tuesday when a man riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle northbound along Fort Smallwood Rd. tried to make a turn left onto a side road without yielding to oncoming traffic. As a result, the 46-year-old rider was hit by a Ford Escort in the opposing lane. Based on news reports, the motorcyclist received life-threatening injuries.
At the time of the news article, the man was listed in critical condition at Baltimore’s Shock Trauma Center. While speed was apparently ruled out as a cause of the car-motorcycle wreck, according to police investigators, local authorities did suspect alcohol, or possibly drugs as having contributed to the crash. Police also suspected the 20-year-old Ford driver may have been impaired at the time as well.
Both Drivers In Md. Crash May Have Been Under The Influence, WUSA9.com, October 17, 2012