May means flowers for mom, the start of summer vacation (at least in some places), and the start of the 100 deadliest days of the year for teens and pedestrians.
365 days a year, teens cause more traffic accidents than any other age group. During the summer, this already high figure skyrockets 25 percent. Distracted driving and purposeless driving fuel this increase. Quite simply, many teens don’t watch the road. Furthermore, they’re less likely to take unnecessary risks and drive recklessly while driving purposefully (e.g. to school).
Summer is deadly for pedestrians mostly because more people are out and about when the weather’s warmer and the days are longer. Furthermore, kids aren’t in school, as mentioned above. Most children don’t go to the corner, stop, and look both ways before they cross the street. The longer days also mean extended dusk and twilight. Driver visibility is often poor at these times.
During the 100 deadliest days, and all the other days of the year, a Marietta personal injury lawyer obtains the compensation these victims need and deserve.
Vehicle Collision Injuries
Today’s cars and trucks are much safer than the ones on the road twenty-five years ago. Today’s cars and trucks are also much faster and heavier than ever before. This combination often leads to one (or more) kinds of head injuries, such as:
- PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which occurs in about 50 percent of all car crashes, is a specific kind of physical brain injury. Extreme stress, such as the stress of a serious car crash, knocks the brain’s chemical composition out of whack. The resulting imbalance causes symptoms like depression, hypervigilance, and depression.
- mTBI: A concussion, or moderate Traumatic Brain Injury, often isn’t too serious by itself. However, the cumulative effect of mTBIs causes CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a condition normally associated with athletes who’ve sustained too many concussions. This degenerative brain injury is normally fatal.
- sTBI: The extreme motion of a car crash usually causes a severe Traumatic Brain Injury. This motion could include a head hitting an airbag. When that happens, the brain, which isn’t much bigger than an oversize coffee mug, slams against the inside of the skull, causing bleeding and swelling. sTBIs are normally permanent injuries. Dead brain cells usually don’t regenerate.
These injuries are difficult to diagnose and treat. sTBIs are a good example. Initial head injury symptoms include disorientation and neck soreness. Accident shock, a temporary condition, has the exact same symptoms.
So, when doctors assess patient symptoms, they often confuse an sTBI with accident shock. Furthermore, since adrenaline masks pain, many patients tell their doctors they “feel fine.”
As a result, a head injury victim leaves a hospital or clinic with a serious brain injury. The longer the bleeding and swelling continues, the more serious the injury becomes. Very soon, it becomes untreatable.
A Marietta personal injury lawyer connects victims with doctors who accurately diagnose and treat their head injuries and other collision-related injuries.
Issues for Injured Passengers
Sometimes, teen tortfeasors (negligent drivers) injure other people in other vehicles. Sometimes, their negligent driving injures passengers in their own vehicles. Since passengers are such a major cause of distraction, Georgia law limits the number of non-family passengers teen drivers may have in their vehicles at one time. But as most of us are aware, teens aren’t particularly well-known for their strict adherence to safety rules.
Many injured passengers hesitate to exercise their legal rights because they don’t want to “blame” the teen driver, with whom they usually have a close personal relationship, for an “accident.”
Civil claims compensate victims. They don’t blame anyone for anything. In fact, most out-of-court settlements include no-fault provisions (the tortfeasor doesn’t admit or deny responsibility for causing the crash).
Furthermore, driver mistakes, like distracted driving, cause over 98 percent of the car crashes in Georgia. We all make mistakes, and we must all accept the consequences of those mistakes. In this context, these consequences include paying compensation for injuries.
This compensation usually includes money for economic losses, such as medical bills, and noneconomic losses, such as pain and suffering.
Pedestrian Injuries
Normally, pedestrian injuries are worse than vehicle occupant injuries. Pedestrians aren’t protected by steel cages and multiple restraint systems. In addition to head injuries, serious passenger injuries often include:
- Excessive Blood Loss: Frequently, exsanguination is the official cause of death in a pedestrian accident. The same motion that causes a head injury causes internal organs to smash against one another. As a result, they usually bleed badly.
- Broken Bones: Many pedestrians don’t break their bones. They shatter their bones, forcing doctors to surgically reconstruct them using metal parts, such as pins and screws. The additional, and more expensive, surgery means longer, and more expensive, physical therapy.
- Spinal Cord Injuries: The spine is basically a long chain of nerves. Any impact could knock these nerves out of alignment. A more severe impact, like the impact of a pedestrian accident, often wrecks these nerves, causing permanent paralysis.
The average injury-related medical bill in a catastrophic (life-threatening) injury claim is more than $100,000. Attorneys ensure that victims have the resources to pay these bills without dipping into their own pockets.
Legal Issues in Pedestrian Accident Claims
Passenger injuries often involve emotional issues, and pedestrian injuries often involve legal issues, such as the sudden emergency defense.
This defense excuses negligence if the tortfeasor reasonably reacted to a sudden emergency. Usually, a jaywalking pedestrian isn’t a sudden emergency. Instead, a jaywalking pedestrian is an everyday hazard, like a stalled car, which the duty of care requires drivers to avoid.
The comparative fault defense could apply in pedestrian accident claims as well. This doctrine shifts blame from the tortfeasor to the victim. For example, an insurance company lawyer might agree that the tortfeasor was speeding and blame the accident on the jaywalking pedestrian.
Once again, the duty of care comes into play. This duty applies no matter what anyone else does. If tortfeasors have a chance to avoid accidents, they must do so. They cannot sit back and let them happen.
Summers are dangerous. For a free consultation with an experienced Marietta personal injury lawyer, contact The Phillips Law Firm, LLC. We do not charge upfront legal fees in these matters.
