Orlando Car Accident Lawyer Blog

An Orlando car accident is a commonplace event. Fortunately, many car accidents do not result in any physical injury. When injury or death does happen individuals need to know what they are up against. Should they speak to the insurance company? Should they call the TV lawyer who advertises for everyone to call?

As Orlando car accident lawyers, we have been asked by individuals and families to assist them in making an informed decision about who should handle their car accident case and how it should be handled. Having achieved record results over the past twenty years, it is our privilege to help those injured in our community. So many decent, honest people need objective, valuable information that I have written a book just for them. Seeking Justice: An Insider’s Guide for the Injured, explains the most common mistakes car accident victims must avoid. My book also spells out the steps for people to find an exceptionally well-qualified lawyer.

We have helped many families learn a more reliable method to choose a car accident lawyer than relying on slick lawyer advertising. We provide a list of the 20 questions everyone should ask before hiring a lawyer. Our free book has helped folks understand that a lawyer’s results speak volumes. While no one can guarantee future outcomes, looking at a lawyer’s track record can be quite helpful. People deserve a lawyer who has successfully tried cases and who is recognized by The Florida Bar as a specialist.

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According to the National Safety Council, approximately one in eight drivers will be in an auto accident this year. Following are several suggestions to help prevent injury, save time and money and minimize the stress involved in a car crash.

You should stay calm. Avoid tendencies toward road rage and stay calm if you encounter another driver who is behaving irrationally. When these situations escalate, they can often lead to dangerous driving and crashes. In addition, you must always protect yourself. Be alert to traffic scams that seem like accidents, such as when Predatory criminals do this to get the driver to exit the car and then either rob the driver driving on a lightly traveled road, particularly at night, and being tapped from behind. or steal the car. If you are suspicious of the circumstances, stay in your vehicle and drive to a police station or heavily populated area for assistance.

Always Stop! If you are in an accident do not leave the scene until you have spoken with the other driver or the police. Take steps to prevent further accidents. If practical, move the car and all passengers safely to the side of the road, preferably to the right shoulder. If functioning, turn your emergency flashing lights on and, if available, set out a flare on the road for nighttime accidents.

Call the police from the scene or ask someone to call for you. It is usually best to have the police address any traffic infractions, assist with injuries and memorialize the occurrence for the record. Request medical assistance if needed. If you or others are bleeding, feel light-headed or are suffering any physical injury, always err on the side of calling for assistance. Unless trained in emergency medical assistance, do not attempt to move injured persons or perform medical procedures yourself.

Write down pertinent information such as the other driver's name, address, telephone number, licenses plate and driver's license number and the time of the accident. Note the names, addresses and phone numbers of any witnesses, the badge number of any police officers and where to obtain a copy of a police report and any other pertinent information about the scene, such as exact location, the issuance of any tickets by the police, and recollections about your vehicle's handling or mechanical functioning just prior to the accident.

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In our car accident and injury cases, we have greatly benefited from the services of our staff, legal nurse consultants. Even though my partner, Walter Ward, is a medical doctor and a Florida lawyer, our staff legal nurse consultants have always added an important dimension to our accident and injury cases.
A certified legal nurse consultant is a registered nurse who is specially trained in the field of medical and legal consultation. They are experts on healthcare systems and how they work. They know when medical charts are incomplete; they understand how to interpret medical records, terminology and the subtleties of healthcare and rehabilitation issues many of our car accident and injury clients face.

Having been fortunate to work with excellent legal nurse consultants over the years, I would strongly recommend that any car accident lawyer who handles serious injury cases should consider employing their services. Despite one’s legal education and specializing in car accident and injury cases, a legal nurse consultant brings a unique perspective. In addition, our clients appreciate the personal attention they receive from our staff nurses.

In depositions, having a legal nurse consultant can be a significant advantage. Having worked together in advance of health car deponents, there is a combined focus on the critical issues. Obviously, not every law firm can economically afford to have a legal nurse consultant on staff. While car accident and injury lawyers can hire independent ones, I have never found that to provide as significant benefits to our clients.

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We feel blessed that many Floridians have been helped by the Florida car accident book, Seeking Justice: An Insider's Guide for the Injured. When I wrote this book, I hoped it would help people involved in a car accident protect themselves from insurance company adjusters. I also wanted to provide a solid method for injured people to find the right lawyer. From the reviews we have received, it has done just that. For anyone injured in a Florida car accident, a Free copy of this book can be a great place to start.

After reading my book, people have shared that they had no idea that out of the 80,000 Florida lawyers- only 2 percent are certified as specialists in civil trial law, which includes car and truck accidents. Everyone should understand that car and truck accident cases have many complex issues that lawyers who do not specialize may not be aware of. Unfortunately, if a lawyer does not know the important issues involved in car and truck accident cases, it is the client who will suffer.

Many people have asked why we are giving away such a valuable book. Well, we believe that people deserve to be treated fairly. Over the past 20 years, we have seen too many decent, honest people taken advantage of after a car accident. This book gives injured people a fighting chance right from the start-Before it is too late.

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Teenage drivers hit the road with little practical experience, often ill-prepared for situations they're likely to encounter behind the wheel. That's why a former Florida police officer created the Street Safe Teen Driving Program. The program includes classroom and hands-on components that allow participants to drive with an instructor. The course is patterned after the law enforcement Emergency Vehicle Operations Course and is intended to supplement standard driver's education classes offered in schools.

The Street Safe program will use five demonstration cars enhanced with decals to make them look like NASCAR racers. The cars will display the names of sponsors, the program and its Web site. Instruction will cover the dangers of alcohol consumption and driving, following too closely, sudden lane changes, safely stopping a vehicle and adjusting driving speed to conditions. Teen participants will be able to experience what it feels like to lose control of a car and will get to operate golf carts wearing "fatal vision" goggles, which simulate the vision of a person who has a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent, the state standard for drunken driving.

Between 1995 and 2004, drivers between 15 and 17 years old were involved in 26,453 fatal crashes that killed 30,917 people nationwide, according to AAA.
Local law enforcement and judicial officials are vocal backers of the Street Safe program. Instructors will include police officers and firefighters. This program sure sounds great to a dad with three new drivers.

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Volvo is leading the way to eliminate injury from car accidents by the year 2020. If all goes according to plan, its driver and passengers will escape even the most serious car crash without injury. And Volvo is far from the only player in what experts call the biggest revolution in the auto industry since the seatbelt.

With 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes each year, car makers, safety experts and designers want to make injury-proof cars. The Swedish carmaker, now owned by Ford, is the first to set a target date to eliminate car accident death and injury in its cars.

As recently as January, some 77 percent of U.S. consumers polled by Consumer Reports ranked Volvo as the safest car brand. According to Consumer Reports no other brand dominates a category the way safety is owned by Volvo. But other carmakers have learned safety sells and are putting out their own safe credentials. As Orlando car accident lawyers we think this can only improve car safety more quickly. That is a very good thing.

Prevention of needless injury and death from car accidents is an issue that deserves everyone’s attention. Taking the injury out of car accidents is one solid method to address occupant safety. The other is building car crash avoidance into new vehicles. We applaud these approaches by auto makers.

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I recently wrote a post for injury lawyers on the dangers of assuming the correctness of Florida accident reports. That post suggested that all injury lawyers consider the circumstances of the accident independent of who received the ticket. As mentioned, all too often innocent and seriously injured accident victims receive a ticket without having the opportunity to speak with the officer at the scene.

The reaction to that post and a recent incident involving one of our clients led me to expand on the injustice caused by erroneous citations and inaccurate Florida accident crash reports. While I do not handle criminal law cases, I can imagine the burden that a criminal defense lawyer feels when he or she knows that there has been a “rush to judgment” and their client would never have been charged had law enforcement properly performed their duties.

Similarly, when law enforcement erroneously cites an innocent accident victim it can have dramatic consequences. While the question of “who gets the ticket” is never presented at the personal injury trial, the ticket does often result in an unnecessary burden on the innocent accident victim. Take the case of our new client, for example, a long-time school bus driver with an impeccable driving record and adored by her children riders. According to multiple witnesses, her bus was struck by a driver running a red light. While injured she focused on keeping the many children on-board calm and reassuring them. She did absolutely nothing wrong. Yet, one month after this accident she receives a citation in the mail from an officer who never spoke to her, who did not see any vehicle before being moved off the roadway and who describes nothing to support his “speculation” that our client ran the red light.

Now, our client has to contest the citation and struggles to maintain her reputation as a safe and responsible school bus driver. How terrible to suffer injury and fear for the children entrusted to you and then be wrongfully charged with causing the accident. If law enforcement does not witness an accident, does not speak to all the drivers involved and can not demonstrate who is at fault from the physical evidence should anyone be cited? Hopefully, the answer will be as obvious to you as it is to me.

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Vehicle backover accidents occur when someone, without a driver’s knowledge or awareness, is positioned behind a vehicle as the driver is backing out of a driveway or other parking spot. Most victims of backovers are the elderly and children. To add to the tragedy of backover injuries and deaths, the driver is often a neighbor or relative. When a child is the victim, the driver may even be the child’s mother or father.

As Orlando car accident lawyers, we believe awareness and understanding of the problem are the first steps toward reducing the risk of backover deaths. Sadly, many drivers fail to realize that there is a large “blindspot” behind one’s car. The blind spot is the place behind your vehicle that you cannot see in the rear or side view mirrors — or even by craning your neck out the driver’s side window. The larger the vehicle, like an SUV or truck, the larger the blind spot.

Blind spots for shorter drivers tend to be significantly larger as well. In addition, the elevation of the driver’s seat, the shape of a vehicle’s windows and mirrors, and the slope of a driveway can affect the size of the blind spot behind a vehicle. Of course, the smaller stature of children can make them particularly difficult for a driver to see when backing up. So how do you protect a child from becoming a victim of backover?

Keeping your children out of harm’s way requires ongoing education, supervision, and vigilance. There simply is no single fail-safe solution. However, safety experts advise teaching children not to play around vehicles that parents should always assume children are present and carefully check the street, driveway, and area around your vehicle before backing out. Finally, look behind you as you back out S-L-O-W-L-Y with your windows rolled down to listen for children who may have dashed behind your vehicle suddenly — and be prepared to stop!

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A parent’s nightmare- you allow your children to go to a school party thinking there will be proper adult supervision. Instead, alcohol was served and two teenagers are permitted to leave the party impaired. On their way home, the teen driver loses control and strikes a tree, splitting the car in two. The car accident kills one teen and leaves the other brain-damaged.

This tragedy led to both a civil trial and criminal charges against some of the participants. At the civil trial, which resulted in a verdict against the school and affiliated church, there were allegations that the school principal knew about the party beforehand and visited the home while it was going on. The evidence also included a party flier depicting a whiskey bottle which was distributed at school.

As Orlando car accident lawyers, it was even more disturbing that school provided all of its families with a written statement that it would notify police if it became aware of illegal activities by students. Certainly, parents had an expectation that this school would not knowingly allow alcohol to be served to minors at a school function. Yet investigators of this needless alcohol-related car accident found the remains of a car driven at perhaps 100 mph- with halves of the car coming to rest on opposite sides of the median. Indeed, the car accident was so bad that the medical examiner never determined who was driving.

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Driver Fatigue is a major cause of car accidents. As Orlando car accident lawyers, we find that people fail to appreciate the very real danger of driving when exhausted. While everyone knows the dangers of drinking and driving, few individuals question the wisdom of driving when tired. Yet, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates up to 100,000 car accidents each year from driver fatigue, with an estimated 1,550 deaths and 71,000 people injured. Certainly, the difficulty in identifying fatigue as the source of car accidents, as opposed to alcohol-related car accidents, means these figures are underestimated.

According to researchers, any individual who has experienced certain types of sleep disorders or previously experience erratic driving due to fatigue should take special precautions. A west coast sleep research center, reported on surveys of more than 10,000 drivers and found that individuals who had visited with a physician because of sleepiness or fatigue were at an increased risk for being involved in a car accident. Also, individuals who were once stopped by police for erratic driving while sleepy were also more likely to have a car accident.

Of course, most people will not have any additional risk factors. For most drivers, there must simply be a better overall awareness that driving tired may impair your faculties in ways that are similar to alcohol usage. We have seen too many car accidents that could have been prevented, if the drivers had not been on the road so late at night or for so many hours.

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We have been taking a look at the causes of car accidents here in Orlando and elsewhere. Today we focus on the last and by far the overwhelming cause of car accidents. From our experience as Orlando car accident lawyers, the vast majority of car accidents are caused by driver behavior. Or, perhaps we should say “driver misbehavior.”

Over 40,000 Americans die in car crashes every year. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, someone is involved in an automobile accident every ten seconds. It is estimated that a person will die in a car crash every 12 minutes. Car accidents are the leading cause of death for Americans 35 years old and younger. These car accidents can occur when a driver becomes distracted. How do drivers become distracted? The list includes rubbernecking, cell phones, driver fatigue, passenger distractions, looking at scenery and adjusting the radio.

These car accidents can also involve deliberate, excessive speed. The saying that “speed kills” certainly applies to car accidents. The faster a car is traveling, the greater the risk of an accident. More speed means less time to react and stop. Of course, as the speed increases so do the forces experienced by the human body in a collision.

In our cases involving excessive speed and serious injury, we focus the jury on the defendant’s deliberate and calculated behavior. Speeding is no accident. When the defendant driver knows the risk of speeding, but ignores the danger, that is reckless and unacceptable behavior. As car accident lawyers we have seen that any speeding can be reckless and offensive.

Take for example a child crossing the street. If the speed limit is 30mph and the car is complying the driver can begin to brake at a distance of just 45 feet away from the child and safely stop. However, increase the car speed by just 5 mph above the speed limit and a terrifying result occurs. At 35 mph, with the child 45 feet away and the driver braking at the same point, the car will strike the child at 18 mph-an impact that will seriously injure or kill the child.

Finally, driver misbehavior also includes aggressive driving. Those drivers who tailgate, Frequent change lanes, fail to signal, fail to yield the right of way and who disregard traffic controls are a constant danger to others on our roadways. Sadly, many car accident cases are caused by these “road bullies.”

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Another alcohol related death in Orlando emphasizes the need to drive defensively. According to Orlando police department officials, in the early morning hours a BMW was racing another vehicle on I-4 when the BMW tried to avoid hitting a motorcyclist, lost control, and rolled over several times. The driver not only hit the motorcycle, but also caused 2 passengers to be ejected from the car-killing one of them.

As Orlando car accident lawyers, we have written before, that these tragedies will continue as long as motorists continue to drink and drive. In addition, the reports of car accidents caused by racing and other reckless driving appear to be on the increase. This points out the need to expect reckless behavior on the part of other drivers and to protect yourself and your family. This is especially true, as in this car accident, when you are driving late at night or in the early morning hours.

Finally, this tragedy also involved the failure to wear seat belts. Had the passengers simply taken a moment to buckle up, they may not have been ejected. Sadly, once a driver or passenger is thrown from a vehicle the risks of serious or fatal injury increase. With all the new and improved safety features we see on vehicles, it is so sad to read another report of passengers failing to buckle up.

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