There are likely few more dreaded scenarios in the life of a woman than to be caught up in a serious car crash while pregnant with an unborn baby. Mother’s all around the country face dangers every day that could cause premature birth or other life-threatening complications to the mother and baby. Unnecessary and senseless car and trucking-related roadway accidents should not be something that places a woman or her unborn child in harm’s way.
As Baltimore personal injury attorneys, I and my colleagues spend our professional lives following the potentially life-threatening events that occur each year, many that affect parents and their children in ways that could have long-term effects on their health, livelihood and happiness. With bodily injuries resulting from car, truck and motorcycle wrecks happening daily all across the state of Maryland, it’s not surprising that a percentage of those collisions, which result in hospital visits, involve parents and children, not the least of which being pregnant mothers.
Having a child become hurt as a result of a traffic accident is one of the last things any parent wants to contemplate, but being on the verge of parenthood and being caught in a bad roadway collision is likely the worst case that a new mother could imagine. Nothing rocks a family to its core than a car or truck accident that takes the life of a young baby, much less an unborn baby. The shock and emotional pain felt by the survivors and other family members can take years, if not a lifetime, to recover from.
Sadly, these kinds of accidents happen more often than most people may realize. The types of highway and other road collisions can vary from time to time, but one of the more violent and potentially deadly car crashes involve the rollover kind of crash. The amount of abuse and veritable pummeling that an occupant of a vehicle which rolls at highway speeds is hard to imagine. Even race car drivers, who are equipped to handle a rollover crash, can be severely injured in a hig-speed rolling-type accident. It’s hard to picture the forces that a regular person, protected only by a three-point safety belt and air bags, may encounter in such an event.
Understanding that even the most fit and well protected professional driver can by badly injured or killed in a bad rollover wreck, placing a pregnant woman in a similar situation is next to impossible to imagine, especially from a survivability standpoint; both from the point of view of the mother and that of the unborn child. But these things happen quite often in the U.S., with sometimes tragic results. Our thoughts on this topic were brought to the fore after running across a news story about a young mother-to-be who miraculously survived a rollover crash in a sport utility vehicle near Joppa, MD, a little while back.
According to the news article, the 24-year-old pregnant lady was hurt following an afternoon car crash along a portion of Interstate 95 in Harford County. Based on information from the Maryland State Police, the accident occurred sometime after 3pm on a Thursday as the woman’s sport utility vehicle was nearing the Rte 152 interchange. Officials from the MSP stated that the firefighters and other emergency responders arrived at the crash scene in the northbound lanes of I-95 to find the SUV had rolled over, throwing the victim out of the truck.
Describing the pregnant woman as “seriously injured,” authorities stated that the victim was flown via MSP medevac chopper to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. At the time of the news articles, there was no mention by police or other source close to the incident as to whether the crash was caused by another vehicle, driver error or a possible mechanical malfunction affecting the SUV’s steering, braking or other critical control systems.
Woman ejected in I-95 accident near Joppa remains hospitalized, BaltimoreSun.com, August 31, 2012