Maryland Car Accident Attorney Blog
High-speed car and commercial trucking accidents can result in extensive and serious injury to the victims of such automobile collisions. This goes for vehicle occupants, but bystanders or pedestrians can also be at severe risk of bodily injury or even death when it comes to being hit by a passing car or truck. The chance of critical or fatal injuries on our nation’s expressways and higher-speed rural roads can be increased by a number of factors, not the least of which is inattentive (sometimes impaired) drivers.
With summer upon us, it’s probably a wise idea to be more alert than usual due to the number of vacationers and other potentially distracted drivers on Maryland’s roadways. Whether it’s a parent driving a car-load of noisy children, a younger driver talking with friends in the front seat or a delivery truck driver searching for the next exit, the range of distractions are many and varied these days. And we won’t even get into the potential number of motorists who may be driving while intoxicated.
As we’ve said numerous times before, car, truck and motorcycle accidents occur frequently everywhere across the state. Having worked as Maryland personal injury attorneys for many years, I and my legal staff know that it doesn’t take much to turn a pleasant drive to the beach into an unexpected trip to the hospital. Whether here in Baltimore, over in Columbia, or out in Washington, D.C., a roadway collision can be a life-changing event for some victims.
Our warning goes out to drivers who may be encountering roadside emergencies along the way. Firefighters and police officers are almost constantly placing themselves in danger just standing at the side of the road tending to their individual jobs. With traffic passing these public servants mere feet away, one wrong move and that patrolman or emergency responder could be struck by a vehicle going upward of 70mph. The results are too awful to even contemplate. The most we can say is to give those police, fire and ambulance workers a wide berth whenever you see them on the roadside.
That said, we point out that patrolmen, firemen and tow truck drivers do themselves become the victims traffic accidents, through now great fault of their own. A news article a while back hammered this home and then some. According to news reports, one Arundel police officer was injured in the course of a routine traffic stop when a passing vehicle crashed into another vehicle that had stopped for the traffic emergency.
Based on police reports, Cpl. Kevin Mont had stopped a car along a stretch of Riva Road in Annapolis a little after 9pm. The subject vehicle was sitting in the left lane, with Mont’s cruiser — emergency lights flashing– apparently right behind that car. The patrolman got out to ask that driver to pull his vehicle onto the right-hand shoulder; in the meantime a second vehicle was slowing down as it approached the scene. As the officer was returning to his patrol car a car, a third car, whose driver was apparently unaware of the ongoing incident in the left lane, reportedly plowed into the second car at what police described as a high rate of speed.
At that point, Officer Mont was running for cover to avoid injury by the impending collision; however the force of the crash was such that the second car was punted across an adjoining median, striking the policeman and throwing him into the opposing lanes of traffic.
According to news articles, the driver of the third vehicle, a man from Lothian, MD, got out of his damaged vehicle and ran from the crash site along with two of his passengers. Police located the passengers not long after and eventually caught up with the driver, who police stated would be charged with causing the accident.
Mont was apparently treated at the scene and then flown by medevac chopper to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore where he was listed in serious yet stable condition a day later.
Lothian Man Charged in Accident Involving Officer, Patch.com, April 18, 2012
Arundel police officer struck during traffic stop, BaltimoreSun.com, April 16, 2012