Articles Posted in Car Accidents

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Between 1999 and 2016, Ford Motor Company made a lot of money selling defective Super Duty trucks. Over 5.2 MILLION of the defective trucks were sold during the time period. The roofs on the trucks were dangerously weak and prone to collapse in the event of a rollover. This put vehicle occupants at risk of serious injury or death. Though Ford Motor Company knew about these risks, the defects remained concealed from the general public. As reports of injuries and fatalities mounted, Ford Motor Company continued to sell the defective trucks. No safety recall was issued.

In April 2014, two unknowing victims, 62-year-old Voncile Hill and her husband, 74-year-old Melvin Hill, were driving their 2002 Super Duty F-250 on a highway in Georgia when one of their truck’s tires blew out. The truck overturned, the roof caved in, and the elderly couple was crushed and killed.

In the negligence and wrongful death lawsuit that followed, attorneys for the couple’s estate sought out to prove that the couple would have survived the wreck if the truck’s roof had not been defectively designed and manufactured. At trial, the personal injury attorneys presented evidence of nearly 80 similar occasions where accident victims were either killed or seriously injured due to roofs on the defective trucks caving in during rollover accidents.

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$12,500,000 RECOVERY – PLAINTIFF PEDESTRIAN STRUCK BY BUS TURNING LEFT FROM BEHIND HIM AS PLAINTIFF WAS IN CROSSWALK – NYCTA’s INVESTIGATION TEAM CONCLUDED THAT PLAINTIFF WALKED INTO SIDE OF BUS SOME 70 FEET FROM CROSSWALK – PLAINTIFF OBTAINED TRANSCRIPT OF INITIAL CALL BETWEEN DRIVER AND NYCTA THROUGH STATE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW, IN WHICH DRIVER INDICATED THAT INCIDENT OCCURRED AS BUS WAS TURNING – PLAINTIFF WOULD HAVE ALSO POINTED TO OBSERVATIONS OF INDEPENDENT EYEWITNESS WHO WAS NOT REFERENCED IN NYCTA REPORT

Queens County, NY

The plaintiff pedestrian, 40 at the time, contended that as he was crossing in the crosswalk, the defendant driver of a NYCTA bus made a left turn from behind him without making adequate observations, striking him with the left front of the bus and rolling over him. The plaintiff maintained that he suffered severe crush injuries to the lower half of his body and that the injuries included a severe wound to the groin , and the need for a hemipelvectomy in which the leg was amputated at the hip. The defendant sent out a “rapid response investigative team” who concluded that the incident occurred approximately 70 feet from the intersection, after the defendant had completed her left turn and that the plaintiff had walked into the side of the bus. The police report was largely consistent with the NYCTA position.

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A Brooklyn Supreme Court jury has awarded $11.03 million in damages to a deliveryman who was struck from behind by a car as he carted Mexican food on his electric bike. But because of a “high-low agreement” between the parties, arrived at during a nearly two-week damages trial held this month, he will collect $3 million.

Jun Chen, now 41, was riding on his bike in May 2015, on Broadway in lower Manhattan, when he stopped at a red light, according to his lawyer and court documents. As the light turned green, he slowly gained speed when a 2012 Honda sedan, driven by defendant Allan Cooper, “took off fast” from the light and struck Chen from behind, according to James Napoli, Chen’s lawyer.

Chen, who had a bag of Mexican food over the handlebars, was thrown from the bike and landed hard on his right knee before rolling around the pavement in pain, according to Napoli, founder of Caesar, Napoli & Spivak, a 10-lawyer personal-injury firm in Manhattan.

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A Chinese deliveryman on an electric bike was awarded $11,033,527.64 on Friday , November 16 by a jury after a trial in Kings County (J. Silber) where the plaintiff, a Chinese delivery person, was operating an electric bicycle on Broadway near Fulton Street, in New York, New York, when he was struck by a vehicle owned and operated by Defendant.

Plaintiff moved for summary judgment on the issue of liability under the common law principle that a rear-end collision establishes a prima facie case of negligence on the part of the operator of the rear vehicle. The court granted Plaintiff’s summary judgment motion on the issue of liability. Therefore, the matter proceeded to a damages only trial.

Following the collision, Plaintiff was removed from the scene of the incident to New York Presbyterian Hospital – Lower Manhattan, where he was treated and released.

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Since Labor Day, the city has experienced an uptick in bicycle-related accidents. In mid-September, a female cyclist was fatally struck by a box truck in Tribeca. Several days prior, a Citibike rider was run over in Midtown and suffered injuries to her leg. Earlier this month, a cyclist struck a child near Central Park West. The child was taken to Mt. Sinai St. Luke’s in serious condition.

On November 5th, daylight savings will end, meaning twilight will descend upon the city earlier in the day, and the potential for biking accidents will increase. These accidents don’t just put cyclists at risk; reduced visibility is a hazard for pedestrians, as well. For these reasons, it’s wise for all travelers to review the laws and best practices for biking in the city.

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A collision between a personal vehicle and a big rig can be devastating. Those involved may experience injury or death, while their loved ones are tasked with caring for them (if they’re lucky), or making arrangements for a memorial service (if they’re not). Under such tragic circumstances, the victims and their families should be provided with fair and adequate compensation to aid with their expenses. However, many commercial trucks carry the absolute minimum amount of insurance coverage— and typically, that’s not nearly enough.

The federal minimum for liability insurance for truckers is $750,000. Although that may sound like a lot of money, the damage that tractor trailers inflict in a collision often dwarfs this minimal sum. Congress set the minimum at $750,000 back in 1985, and has not been changed it since. It has not even been adjusted for inflation. If it were, the minimum would now be $2.2 million. Needless to say, the victims of collisions caused by negligent truck drivers are increasingly finding themselves fighting for compensation that is woefully insufficient to cover their medical bills.

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It seems as though every time we turn on the news, we’re met with another story about an auto recall. Some of the most infamous include GM’s faulty ignition devices, responsible for the deaths of at least 169 Americans, and the defective airbags manufactured by Takata, which killed 14 and injured over 180 Americans. In 2016 alone, 53.2 million cars were recalled.

It is illegal to sell new cars if they have not been repaired after a recall. However, there is no federal regulation that specifically prohibits used car dealers from selling recalled vehicles as “safe”— even if they have not been repaired.

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Mayor Bill de Blasio brought the Vision Zero plan to New York City in 2014, with the goal of reducing the number of deaths caused by traffic collisions to zero by 2014. While the first two years of Vision Zero led to fewer traffic deaths, the initiative has not been as effective as many New Yorkers hoped.

Every day, auto collisions still occur by the hundreds throughout New York, totaling 53,000 since the start of 2017. Last year, the city actually saw a rise in the number of pedestrian deaths.
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Toyota, Tesla, Google, and other automakers have promised that driverless cars will revolutionize the personal transportation industry within the next five to ten years. They cannot promise, however, that driverless cars will be immune from accidents.

The death of Joshua Brown, a technology consultant whose autonomous car failed to apply the brakes before colliding with a semitrailer truck, is tragic evidence of these cars’ limitations. In the aftermath of his death, lawmakers are left to answer: Who is responsible when a driverless vehicle accident occurs?
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Remington Walden, a 4-year-old boy from Georgia, was driving with his aunt on a spring day in 2012 when a pickup truck rammed into the back of their 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Though the pickup truck caused only minor exterior damage to the Jeep, it punctured the vehicle’s fuel tank. Within seconds, Remington Walden, who was fully conscious, was engulfed in flames. He died about a minute later.

Walden’s death was many things: a tragedy, a life taken too soon, and every parent’s worst nightmare. It was not, however, unavoidable. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which manages the Jeep brand, was officially warned on at least three separate occasions that 1993–2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees had a substantial design defect. The fuel tanks were mounted behind the rear axle, an anomaly in the car industry, making them extremely vulnerable in rear-end collisions. When hit even at low speeds, the tanks produced deadly fires.
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