Articles Posted in Car Accidents

Atlanta car accident lawyers strongly believe that parents have a big role to play in setting a good traffic safety example for their teenage children.That’s why the results of a new survey came as a disappointment.The survey claims that many parents are distracted while driving, even while they’re teaching their children how to drive. Distracted driving results in an enormous number of auto accidents involving serious personal injury and wrongful death. Therefore, it is extremely important that new drivers are taught about he dangers of distracted driving by their parents. In order to convey this lesson, the parents must teach by example.

The survey was conducted by insurance company State Farm.According to the survey, 53% of parents admitted that they had been distracted by a cell phone or other device at least once while they were teaching their children how to drive.However, when the surveyors asked teen motorists, they found slightly higher numbers.According to the teen drivers, at least 61% of them had seen their parents being distracted while teaching them how to drive.

The survey also found that parents may not be so aware of the fact that they are displaying undesirable driving practices to their children.The survey found that parents used their electronic devices while driving with their children much more often than they think.About 52% of the teenagers in the survey said that they had seen their parent using a cell phone while driving.However, only 43% of the parents admitted that they used the cell phone when their teenage driver was in the vehicle with them.

MSN Money has a few tips for persons involved in car accidents in Georgia.None of these tips are a surprise to Atlanta car accident lawyers, but many motorists fail to understand how doing the wrong things soon after an accident can damage their claim. Insurance companies have extremely experienced insurance adjusters who handle claims for personal injury and wrongful death. Unfortunately, a great deal of what impacts a claim for personal injury often occurs before the victim has counsel. It is during this timeframe that insurance adjusters have their greatest impact on the outcome of injury claims.

One of the first people that you will meet after an auto accident is the claims adjuster from the other driver’s insurance company or from your insurer.A claims adjuster’s job is to identify fraud in an auto accident claim.As Atlanta car accident lawyers, we often find claims adjusters trying to confuse an accident victim, by trying to get accident victims to settle as quickly as possible.Unfortunately, when a driver says or does the wrong thing after an accident, it can negatively impact the claim. In one recent case, an insurance adjuster was able to get a person with a serious spine injury to settle for an extremely small amount of money thereby eliminating his claim for future damages.

A claims adjuster may also try to fool you into comprising your claim by encouraging you to visit a “preferred repair shop. “ Often, these repair shops will underestimate the damage to your car or fail to have the vehicle properly repaired because they are endeavoring to lower the cost to the insurer. Each person who has been in an accident has a right to go to the repair shop of his or her choice.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has a new weapon in the fight against unsafe bus carriers that place passenger lives at risk of personal injury and wrongful death.The agency is planning to unveil a smartphone application that will allow passengers to determine the safety of a bus carrier before they buy a ticket for a trip. This type of transparency is essential for eliminating the “bad” bus carriers who cause most of the bus accidents. However, passengers should be warned that the information about their past records may be limited to due the limited nature of the enforcement personnel available to police the industry.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will likely unveil the new application in the month of November.The announcement of the app was made on September 23 at a bus safety Summit in Washington DC.The summit, the Motor Coach Safety Summit looked at ways that the federal agency can help reduce the operation of unsafe carriers on our highways. The Motor Coach Safety Summit also considered new hours of service requirements for drivers of passenger buses. All of these changes are welcomed by bus accident lawyers, although they have been a long time in coming.

The app will allow a passenger to check the safety record of a particular bus carrier, before buying a ticket.This allows the passenger to access valuable information about the safety of the carrier.The app won’t just give passengers information about the safety of a bus carrier, but will also allow them to submit safety violations to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s National Consumer Compliant Database.

Car Accident victims in Georgia, who have suffered limb amputations, may soon be able to enjoy greater freedom of movement through a prosthetic limb that will soon be commercially available.The bionic leg is manufactured by a Massachusetts-based company called iWalk.Until now, the device was only available to members of the military, but will soon be available to civilians through providers across the country. Given the serious consequences of this type of personal injury, the use of this new technology is very welcome.

This prosthetic device boasts of an advanced design that uses robotics to imitate the muscles and tendons of the human foot, including the Achilles’ tendon and heel.Veterans of the US military, who have been injured during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, have had access to these bionic legs for a while now.The US military has invested in developing more advanced and scientifically-proven prosthetic devices that can mimic the natural movement of the human limb.Amputations of limbs are some of the most frequent injuries among veterans, and in fact, according to recent reports, the number of such amputations involving veterans has actually increased.

Earlier prosthetic limbs were cumbersome and provided limited mobility. This prosthetic device is advanced enough to allow wearers to climb stairs, and walk up and down slopes with ease.With earlier devices, such movements were not possible.Veterans who have been fitted with this bionic leg have found that it is close to the actual working of the human foot.

Even as automakers try to add their voice to the anti-distracted driving chorus, Atlanta car accident lawyers find that they continue to outfit their automobiles with increasingly distracting gadgets.These type of gadgets greatly increase the likelihood of auto accidents involving serious personal injuries and wrongful death.

A case in point is Ford Motor Company.The company has been conducting a lot of anti-distracted driving workshops at high schools across the country, including in Georgia. Ford has been sponsoring clinics at several high schools urging students to switch off cell phones and texting devices while driving, and focus on the road.These efforts come as part of the Driving Skills for Life Program which the company promotes.

All these are wonderful initiatives, but it would help if Ford Motor Company actually walked the walk by removing such distractions from its automobiles.Just one look at Ford’s Sync voice-activated system on several of the company’s automobiles should make it clear that the automaker doesn’t necessarily have its money where its mouth is.

Most personal injury attorneys know that sometimes, an accident is all about a chain of events. That’s exactly what a jury found this year when they determined that the father of a 12-year-old driver who died as the result of a car accident he caused was negligent in teaching his son to drive illegally on public roads. The Daily News reports it appeared to be a case of oversimplified causation. In other words, but for Loren Fry teaching Jake Fry to drive illegally, the circumstances that led up to his wrongful death might not have occurred. The situation itself, however, is a slightly more complicated one.

Jake Fry died on February 27, 2007, and his father was actually nowhere near the car when the accident occurred. In fact, his son was driving a 1993 Ford Taurus belonging to his father’s girlfriend, Kelley Hill. She was in the passenger seat at the time of the crash, and her 12-year-old daughter was also along for the ride.

No one, except for those in the car at the time, knows exactly what happened. But this jury didn’t think it mattered, since they concluded Loren Fry was actually more at fault than Hill. More than likely, the jury rationalized that by teaching his son to drive illegally, Loren Fry created a foreseeable risk that his girlfriend might do the same. Perhaps she had been in the car during one of their driving lessons. Maybe allowing Jake to drive without his father in the car was something she had done before. It’s even possible that Loren Fry had given her permission to do so.