Unless you or someone you know has lost a loved one to a tragic traffic accident, it would be hard to understand the shock, pain and anger that one can experience in a short span of time. As experienced auto, truck and motorcycle accident attorneys, I and my staff know that even good people can lose their cool under stressful and highly emotional circumstances. The wake of fatal car and trucking-related roadway collisions can certainly reveal an array of emotions that many people have yet to suffer through. We hope you never have to.
It’s sad enough when a spouse, parent, sibling or grandparent becomes badly injured in a highway wreck. Seeing a loved one who, just days prior was jovial, vibrant and full of life, lying in a hospital bed facing an uncertain future can be very disturbing. With injuries ranging from ruptured vital organs and internal bleeding to spinal cord damage and traumatic brain injury, the outcome for any individual who has been caught up in a bad car or commercial trucking accident can be nearly impossible to predict, at least at the outset.
Doctors, nurses, surgeons and other healthcare professionals can provide high-quality medical care to a patient suffering from serious injuries as a result of a motor vehicle crash, but even the best care can be provided in vain if the injuries are too extensive or the trauma to intense. And this is assuming that the victim of the car accident is lucky enough to make it to the emergency room. Sadly, many victims of traffic collisions succumb to their injuries right there, at the scene of the crash.
In many cases, the depth of grief that the victim’s family will feel after learning of their loved one’s death is far beyond most people’s comprehension, unless you have experienced a similar event first-hand. As Maryland personal injury lawyers, my firm is dedicated to assisting families in their quest to recover monetary costs from the individual or individuals responsible for the victim’s death. Whether the negligent party was directly involved in the accident, or if his or her actions helped to precipitate a deadly accident, the venue for such determination is a court of law.
Initially, the police are usually the first to offer defense to the victim in the form of an accident report, which may or may not indicate who caused the crash and the other factors leading to the death of the person involved. Not long ago, a 38-year-old out-of-state woman was charged with drunken driving following a car crash that resulted in the death of the woman’s 11-year-old daughter. According to news reports, Maryland State Police charged a Pennsylvania driver with negligent manslaughter after her pre-teen daughter was thrown from the woman’s car and killed during a crash along the Rte 13 Bypass in Salisbury, MD.
Based on news reports, the driver apparently lost control of her car, which subsequently overturned. The ensuing rollover accident reportedly caused the 11-year-old daughter, who authorities stated was NOT belted in, to be ejected from the rear seat of the vehicle. Emergency workers found three other children in the car all with various non-life-threatening injuries.
In another news story, a Burtonsville resident accused of involuntary manslaughter after causing a fatal traffic wreck along a stretch of the B-W Pkwy was sentenced to almost five years in jail for the 2011 death of a one of his passengers. The crash, which happened in July 2011, allegedly involved the defendant’s use of PCP, which prosecutors argued left the driver incapable of operating his vehicle safely along the roadway. Two other passengers survived the fatal crash, which happened near the exit leading to Rte 197.
During the trial, it was shown that after accelerating the defendant’s car hit a guard rail, swerved back across the roadway, left the pavement and then collided with a stand of nearby trees. At the time of the accident, police stated that the man operating his vehicle while on a revoked license.
Woman charged after crash kills daughter, ABC2News.com, August 6, 2012
Man sentenced in deadly parkway crash, ABC2News.com, August 1, 2012