Articles Posted in Car Accidents

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According to police, 21-year-old Evan Hoffman had just been released from jail on bail an hour before his Jeep Cherokee crossed the double yellow lines on Beacon Street to crash head-on into a minivan shortly after 6am on June 26. The Newton car accident claimed the life of the van’s driver, Chelsea resident Jose Puzul-Peres. Hoffman has not been charged In the Massachusetts traffic crash, which is still under investigation.

Hoffman, however, was arrested at around 3am that day for allegedly kicking cars and smashing windshields on Beacon Street. According to police, the 21-year-old Newton resident was shirtless, swinging a belt at the windshields, and yelling at women on the street. He was arrested and charged with three counts of destruction of property and disorderly conduct. A bail bondsman then helped him get out of jail.

It was just on June 24 that Hoffman had gotten back the use of his driver’s license, after a one-year suspension, and was released from probation for a 2008 drunk driving conviction involving him crashing his mother’s vehicle and leaving the car accident site. Also, according to Registry of Motor Vehicles records, during the time that Hoffman’s license was suspended he was involved in a New York car accident. The records also indicate that the registration of the Jeep he was driving during the Newton car accident that killed Puzul-Peres had been revoked.

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The Massachusetts Senate and House have come up with a compromise proposal to combat distracted driving. Included in this agreement is a statewide ban on texting while driving, as well as a ban on cell phone use for drivers under the age of 18. Adults, however, will still be allowed to use handheld cellular phones while driving.

Prior to reaching this agreement, the House and Senate had separately passed two bills. The compromise bill will also include a new requirement that older drivers renew their licenses in person and start taking an eye test every five years beginning at age 75.

Already, 28 other states have passed texting while driving bans, and Massachusetts has been behind other states when it comes to law enforcement and educational efforts in the fight against distracted driving. Unlike 43 other states, Massachusetts still does not record data to determine what role distracted driving may have played in causing traffic crashes.

The new bill will go to state legislators for a final vote. If approved it will go to the desk of Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick, who is expected to sign it. The new law would then take effect in 90 days.

Our Boston injury lawyers are aware of the dangers that distracted driving can pose. Texting, talking on the cell phone, reading, watching movies on a laptop, scrolling through an iPod, and surfing the Internet on a Blackberry, iPhone, or other device while operating a motor vehicle are all activities that fall under the category of distracted driving.

People can actually get thrown in jail for causing a Boston car crash that resulted in injuries or deaths because they were distracted. Massachusetts motor vehicle crash victims may also have grounds for a Boston personal injury lawsuit against the motorist.

Mass. moves closer to ban on texting while driving, Bloomberg Business Week, June 22, 2010
Mass. lawmakers agree to ban texting while driving, Boston, June 22, 2010
Related Web Resources:
Cell Phone and Texting Laws, GHSA
Distracted Driving, Distraction.gov Continue reading

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Elia Adames, the Methuen motorist who failed to stop after her vehicle struck 2-year-old Jordan Pena on Tuesday, says she was scrolling through her cell phone when the Lawrence, Massachusetts pedestrian accident happened.

The collision tossed the toddler, who ran into the street while playing in the driveway, some 15-20 feet into a fire hydrant. He was flown to Children’s Hospital in Boston and was admitted in critical condition to the ICU.

Pena has head injuries. A hospital spokesperson said on Wednesday that his condition was upgraded to serious.

According to witnesses, Adames’s car was speeding when she struck the boy. Police found the 21-year-old driver after a witness managed to take down her license plate number. When they asked Adames if she knew that she’d struck the little boy, she started crying and said she’d heard a thumping sound while trying to find a number on her cell phone. Adames is charged with living the scene of a Massachusetts personal injury accident.

Distracted Driving
According to Nationwide Insurance’s yearly “Driving while Distracted” survey, 30% of the drivers surveyed who admitted to talking on the cell phone while driving now do this less often than they did last year. 4 out of every 10 drivers who text and drive also say they’re engaging in distracted driving less often in 2010. According to the insurance company, studies show that distracted driving is now the cause of one of every four US traffic crashes.

Cell Phone Use While Driving
Cell phone driving can prevent a motorist from paying full attention to the road conditions and ongoing traffic. This distracted driving habit reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving and a motorist’s reaction time can become delayed as if he/she were drunk. Most cell phone users never intend to injure or kill anyone while driving, but unfortunately, such catastrophic outcomes can result.

Lawrence Hit-&-Run Suspect May Have Been On Phone, WBZ, May 26, 2010
Survey: People talking, texting less while driving, Chicago Breaking News, May 27, 2010

Related Web Resources:
Distracted Driving, NHTSA
Distracted Driving, National Safety Council Continue reading

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A Plymouth County jury awarded Mark Lambert $4.3 million for Massachusetts personal injuries he sustained when snowplows pushed a heavy load of snow off a highway overpass on January 17, 2005. The snow, which an expert witness compared to a 3-b-8 foot block of concrete, struck Lambert’s Mack truck on Route 44, crushing his vehicle.

Lambert, who owns Rainbow Fruit stores, sustained serious back injuries. He claims that he has experienced constant pain since the 2005 car crash. He is unable to work and has had to undergo back surgeries.

The defendant of this Massachusetts injury lawsuit is PA Landers. In 2008, the company was ordered to pay the state $3 million and the federal government $900,000 for overcharging for the asphalt that was used during the Big Dig project. The company was accused of generating bogus weight slips for truckloads of asphalt over an eight-year period.

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According to a Texas Transportation Institute report, from 1999 to 2008 there has been a 10% increase in the proportion of deadly nighttime traffic crashes involving US teen drivers. This increase can be largely attributed to cell phone use and text messaging that, combined with the risks already posed by driving in the dark, can create “a perfect storm,” says Senior Research Specialist Bernie Fette.

Granted, distracted driving, poor visibility, and slower responses due to fatigue can negatively impact drivers of any age group regardless of the time of day or night. However, add to these hazards the fact that teen drivers are less experienced, easily distracted to begin with, and not as skilled as their more experienced adult counterparts when it comes to avoiding becoming involved in a car crash, and its easy to understand why teenagers’ car crash fatality risk at night has gone up.

Currently, in Massachusetts only school bus drivers are banned from using cell phones while driving and the state doesn’t have a ban on text messaging. This means that unlike in a number of other US states, where new drivers (if not all motorists) are not allowed to talk on the phone and drive at the same time, even the most inexperienced drivers are allowed to text/talk on the phone and drive here. This makes them a danger not only to themselves but to others.

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Toyota is recalling the 2010 Lexus GX 460 sport-utility to fix the software in the sport utility vehicle’s stability control system. Testing by Consumer Reports and Toyota found the vehicle to be an SUV rollover risk, and the automaker has taken immediate action to fix the problem.

So far, there are no reports of injuries or deaths related to the auto defect. The problem became public knowledge after Consumer Reports issued a “Don’t Buy” warning to car buyers because its testers found that the GX40 was in danger of rolling over during certain emergency situations. Toyota immediately began conducting its own tests and suspended the sale and manufacturer of its SUV’s to determine if there was a problem and if so, how to fix it.

The need for a recall is the latest bad news for Toyota, which has recalled more than eight million autos for sudden acceleration-related defects and brake problems. Last week, the automaker recalled approximately 600,000 1998 -2010 Toyota Sienna minivans because of concern that if road salt causes the carrier cable to corrode excessively, the spare tire may fall off, potentially causing a traffic crash.

Toyota has been trying hard to regain consumer confidence, which has faltered in the wake of so many auto defects and resulting injuries and deaths. Since the mass recalls, dozens of people have filed auto products liability lawsuits and wrongful death complaints against the automaker.

On Monday, the auto manufacturer agreed to pay the $16.4 million fine imposed by US safety regulators because it waited too long to address the “sticky” gas pedal defect that prompted a mass recall in January. US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says that by not acting fast enough to notify the public and the government about the problem-Toyota automaker may have known about the problem in September-the automaker put people’s lives at risk.

Toyota Recalls Lexus GX 460 SUV Rated ‘Safety Risk’, BusinessWeek, April 20, 2010
Toyota to Pay $16.375 Million Civil Fine, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, April 19, 2010
Related Web Resources:
Don’t Buy: Safety Risk–2010 Lexus GX 460, Consumer Reports, April 13, 2010
Recall Information, Toyota Continue reading

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Kayla Lackey’s mother Erin has reached a $1.8 million wrongful death agreement with Community Health Care Inc., a for-profit Massachusetts methadone clinic in Chicopee. Kayla was just 8 when she died in a Marlboro truck accident in April 2005 on Route 9. Stephen Fairchild, the driver of the pickup truck that struck the truck that Erin, Kayla, and two of her cousins were riding, was a patient at the clinic. He died from injuries he sustained during the truck crash.

Autopsy findings indicate that at the time of the head-on truck crash, Fairchild’s methadone level was “peaking.” He also had recently used marijuana and cocaine.

In 2007, Kayla’s estate sued the clinic and Putney doctor Walter Slowinski over the truck crash that claimed the young girl’s life. Slowinski, who prescribed anti-anxiety medication to the Fairchild while he was taking methadone, settled with the estate earlier this year.

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The dad of 19-year-old Julia Gauthier is suing her boyfriend and his mom for Massachusetts wrongful death. Gauthier died in a Lynn car accident on March 21 when the Toyota 4Runner SUV that her boyfriend, 19-year-old Christopher Maxson, was driving flipped over.

Maxson is accused of speeding, driving drunk, and driving through a stop sign before crashing his mother’s sport utility vehicle into three parked cars, which caused his vehicle to flip over. Gauthier was thrown from the Toyota. She went through the sunroof before landing on the pavement. Gauthier was pronounced dead at the Massachusetts car accident site.

Maxson, a Marblehead resident, has pleaded not guilty to charges of drunken driving, motor vehicle homicide while driving drunk, failing to stop, and driving to endanger.

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The US Department of Transportation says that consumers have filed complaints linking 34 car accident deaths to the acceleration defect that has prompted the automaker to recall millions of motor vehicles. While previous to Toyota’s decision to stop selling eight of its autos because of the sticking gas pedal defect there had been 21 deaths in the last 10 years linked to the acceleration issue, the NHTSA says that another nine complaints reporting another 13 fatalities and 10 injuries that have occurred in the last five years have been submitted.

One Toyota car crash involved a Harvard University professor who died after striking another auto because he was unable to control his 2005 Toyota Highlander. Two of the professor’s loved ones and the other driver also died.

In other Toyota collision news, a woman has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the automaker. She claims that her husband died because his Prius accelerated suddenly before crashing. Just last week, Toyota recalled 437,000 hybrids (Prius, Sai, and Lexus ) over anti-lock braking system problems. That same day, the automaker recalled 7,300 Camrys over a brake defect. On February 12, Toyota recalled 8,000 Tacoma trucks (2010 model) over possibly cracked front drive shafts.

Now, the federal government says it will open a formal probe into the over 150 complaints it has received regarding the Toyota Corolla (’09 and ’10 models) and possible steering problems. One consumer reported problems with the vehicle weaving around in the lane when it reached speeds of over 60 mph. The complaint noted that this problem has already caused four near collisions.

In 2009, the Corolla was the number one selling car in the world and ranked five on the US car bestseller list.

Our Boston auto products liability lawyers are offering free case evaluations to discuss your Toyota acceleration accident case. Auto defects that cause a motorist to lose control of a vehicle can lead to catastrophic car collisions that endangers the people in the vehicle as well as those who are on the road and in other cars.

U.S. government plans formal investigation into Toyota Corolla complaints, The Washington Post, February 18, 2010
U.S. Gets Additional Complaints of Crashes of Toyotas, New York Times, February 15, 2010
Toyota Recall News Reveals Tacoma and Prius Lawsuit, Newsoxy, February 15, 2010

Related Web Resources:
Toyota Motor Corp.

Toyota, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Continue reading

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The Massachusetts House passed a measure that would not only bar drivers in the state from talking on handheld phones, but also would prohibit them from texting while driving. The bill is the latest attempt by lawmakers to decrease the number of distracted driving accidents. A similar measure died in the Massachusetts Senate last year.

If these proposals become law, Massachusetts would be the 20th state, in addition to Washington DC, to ban texting while driving and the 7th state to ban handheld phones. Drivers under the age 18 would be prohibited from using any kind of cell phone when there are behind the steering wheel of a car.

The National Safety Council says that at least 1.6 million US car accidents occur every year because a motorist was talking on a cell phone or texting. While texting is even more dangerous than talking on a phone, because so many more people talk on the phone while driving it is the cause of more motor vehicle accidents. Drivers who text message cause 200,000 car crashes annually, while motorists who talk on cell phones cause 1.4 million auto collisions.

Distracted Driving Accidents
Talking on the phone and text messaging while operating a vehicle are now considered distracted driving activities that can be cited as grounds for a Boston injury lawsuit or a Massachusetts wrongful death complaint.

This latest Massachusetts measure also calls for drivers older than 75 to undergo a vision test every five years before they can renew their driver’s license. The AARP disagrees with any rules that single out elderly motorists solely based on age. However, concern has been growing in the state over the recent number of Massachusetts car accidents that have involved elderly drivers whose waning mental and sensory faculties appeared to have contributed to causing traffic collisions that injured others.

Mass. House OK’s driving safety bill, Boston.com, February 5, 2010
National Safety Council Estimates That At Least 1.6 Million Crashes Are Caused Each Year by Drivers Using Cell Phones and Texting, PR Newswire, January 12, 2010

Related Web Resources:
National Safety Council

Cell Phone Laws, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Continue reading

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