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Archive for the ‘Wrongful Death’ Category

As Weather Improves and Kids Come Out, Motorists Need to Slow Down

Monday, April 30th, 2012

The video above is a public service announcement put out by the village of Romeoville, Illinois, in regards to “Keep Kids Alive Drive 25,” a nationwide campaign “put an end to deaths and injuries caused by speeding and distracted driving on our nation’s roads.” We are posting this video today because tomorrow is the sixth annual “Keep Kids Alive Drive 25” (KKAD25) Day. Here in Florida, the campaign has affiliates in Ormond Beach, Sarasota, South Daytona and Tampa.

The KKAD25 website notes that 75 percent of motor vehicle crashes occur within 25 miles of home, and 60 percent of crashes occur on roads with posted speed limits of 40 miles per hour or less. Furthermore, the death rate per million miles driven on residential streets is almost twice the death rate on highways, according to the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (NHSTA).

KKAD25 is a Nebraska-based nonprofit organization that seeks to change the way we drive on neighborhood streets and also supports families who experience the death of a loved one because of a auto accident. Tomorrow’s awareness day is a fine opportunity to remind all motorists young and old of the dangers of speeding through residential neighborhoods.

While school is not yet out for the summer, drivers all over Florida should use tomorrow as an opportunity to get a head start on improving their driving habits in local neighborhoods. According to KKAD25, one study found that nearly a third of motorists violated stop signs when only child pedestrians were crossing.

On April 22, 2012, WTEV-TV reported that a 9-year-old boy was in fair condition after being struck by a car in Macclenny, Florida. The Florida Highway Patrol said the child ran out from between cars on the side of the road. While the 42-year-old driver is not facing any charges in the accident, the incident should serve as a reminder to all of us how we must maintain vigilant awareness at all times when driving through residential neighborhoods.

Wooten, Kimbrough & Normand, P.A. – Orlando personal injury lawyers

Why Ban Texting and Driving Just on Beaches?

Friday, April 20th, 2012

The woman in the segment of NBC’s “Today” show above is now on her way to state court after being run over by a Volusia County Beach Patrol truck while she was sunbathing on the beach last year. As Matt Lauer says at the beginning of the video, “The beach is one of the last places that you would ever worry about being hit by a car,” but in fact, a 4-year-old was struck and killed in New Smyrna Beach and another 4-year-old was hit and killed in Daytona Beach in 2010.

WJXT-TV reported on April 6, 2012, that Volusia County is now hoping to implement a ban on texting while driving on the beach. The story noted that several beaches along the coast of northeast Florida allow people to drive on them and another man had accidentally run over a 1-year-old girl at Huguenot Park.

While WJXT noted that Jacksonville did not have any plans to implement the same rules, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Undersheriff Dwain Senterfitt told the network that he also agrees with a texting ban for beach drivers. “The Legislature makes the laws, we just enforce them,” Senterfitt told WJXT. “People probably shouldn’t text and drive anywhere. People should drive with their attention to driving. In fact, if somebody’s texting while driving, if their driving’s not good we could stop them for careless driving. We have a statute for that already.”

With April being National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, lawmakers all over Florida should be implementing bans on texting while driving for all locations, not just beaches. The careless driving charge at least allows officers throughout the state some way to ticket distracted drivers, but we must put forth a more comprehensive law to ban distracted driving if we hope to ever reduce the number of otherwise preventable auto accidents caused by inattentive drivers.

Wooten, Kimbrough & Normand, P.A. – Orlando personal injury attorneys

Florida Enforcing Careless Driving During National Distracted Driving Month

Monday, April 16th, 2012

The video above is another in the “Faces of Distracted Driving” series from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Distraction.gov website. It features the mother of a 13-year-old Citra, Florida girl who was killed when a semi truck slammed into the back of a school bus that the teenager was riding in. The truck driver was talking on his cell phone at the time and never saw the bus.

This video is relevant right now for a couple reasons. First, April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and on April 10, 2012, the Bradenton Herald reported that a 25-year-old driver rear-ended a Manatee school bus, totaling his Ford Mustang. None of the 11 students on board were injured, but the Herald noted that this is the fifth rear-ending of a Manatee school bus to occur since January. Don Ross, the district’s director of transportation and maintenance, added that there was no evidence of brake marks in any of those bus accidents.

“I’m not saying I know what’s been happening,” Ross told the Herald. “But when somebody says they didn’t see a school bus, with all of the mandated signs and lighting, there’s got to be something else going on.”

We have frequently discussed distracted driving and wrote about school bus safety a couple of weeks ago. While there is still no specific law banning texting while driving in Florida, that does not mean local police will not be pulling over distracted drivers. In fact, using this Manatee bus accident as an example, the Mustang driver was charged not only with failure to exhibit a driver’s license, but careless driving as well. During this month dedicated to awareness about and prevention of distracted driving, officers throughout the Sunshine State should be issuing more tickets for careless driving to make it clear that distracted driving is unacceptable.

Wooten, Kimbrough & Normand, P.A. – Orlando personal injury lawyers