Articles Posted in Car Accidents

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The news is both good and bad when it comes to road safety in Southwest Florida.

Lee County ended 2018 with fewer than 100 traffic fatalities (84) for the first time in three years. However, Florida continues to be among the deadliest states in the nation for all types of traffic collisions, including car accidents, drunk driving collisions, motorcycle accidents, trucking accidents, bicycle accidents and pedestrian accidents.car accident

Our injury lawyers in Fort Myers and Naples continue to see far too many clients injured or killed by reckless, careless, or negligent drivers. Yes the risks are significant in Southwest Florida, but so too is the impact safe driving habits can have on our roads.

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Uber is in the news again this week, as CNN reports investigators inside the ride-sharing company’s special investigations unit are overworked, underpaid and at times emotionally traumatized by the 1,200 cases a week pouring into the company’s Phoenix headquarters.

A memo by an outside risk-management consultant depicts a 75-employee department tasked with investigating nearly 1,200 cases a week, including allegations of sexual and physical assault, as well as serious and fatal traffic collisions.uninsured accidents

Our Uber accident attorneys in Southwest Florida have written before about the meteoric rise of these ride-sharing services, and some of the unique aspects of establishing liability and making an Uber claim after injury.

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The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is reminding motorists that January is Move Over month.

We recently reported on our Florida Injury Lawyer Blog about the risks of highway driving, including the need to understand what to do after a vehicle breakdown or a traffic collision, both of which put you at risk of a secondary collision. It’s always a good idea to move away from vehicles stopped along the roadside. But Florida law requires drivers to slow down and/or move over when approaching roadside vehicles with activated emergency lights.

Last year, the Florida Highway Patrol reported 231 crashes and nearly 17,000 citations issued to motorists who failed to obey the law. car-breakdown-1444959-200x300

 The Move Over Law was added to section 316.126, Florida Statutes, in 2002 and requires drivers to move out of the lane adjacent to stopped safety traffic whenever it is possible and safe to do so, and to otherwise reduce speed to 20 mph below the limit in areas where the speed limit is greater than 25 mph. Utility and sanitation workers were added to the law in 2014.

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Five children on their way to Disney World were among seven victims who were killed in a deadly South Florida highway collision.highway-300x184

The News-Press reported eight others were hospitalized after what authorities say was one of the deadliest traffic collisions in state history. The crash on Interstate 75 south of Alachua spilled diesel fuel across the highway. The Florida Highway Patrol reports the children were in a Pentecostal church van headed to the theme park when the collision occurred outside Gainesville. The van was an hour north of the park when a tractor-trailer collided with a car and burst into flames before running through the median divider and into oncoming traffic, where it struck the van and another semi, according to The Washington Post. 

The tragedy is being compared to a January 2012 crash south of Gainesville that killed 11 motorists and sent 18 others to the hospital after a chain-reaction collision caused by low visibility. Our Fort Myers injury lawyers remind drivers there are steps they can take to improve travel safety as we enter the height of tourism season in Southwest Florida.

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Using a hand-held device while driving could soon be illegal in Florida.

The Tampa Bay Times reports lawmakers are considering a measure that would turn Florida’s texting ban into a law that would prohibit all drivers from using a hand-held device behind the wheel. The newspaper urged drivers to make it a 2019 resolution, noting it was not hyperbole to call distracted driving an epidemic.car accident

Our car accident attorneys in Fort Myers and Cape Coral agree. We have marked the New Year with a number of driving-safety blogs aimed at reducing car accident deaths and identifying vulnerable road users.

No driving behavior creates more accident risks than driving distracted. Cell phone use is blamed for more than 1.5 million traffic collisions each year, according to the National Safety Council.

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From all of us at Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner, Attorneys for the Injured, we wish you a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend with friends and family.

However, we remind you that will mean putting particular emphasis on safe driving as Labor Day weekend is typically the second most-dangerous weekend of the year on Florida roads, according to the Sun-Sentinel. car accident

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A 45-car pileup in Tallahassee is being blamed on slow traffic and bad weather.

According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the incident on I-10 injured eight people and led to hours of gridlock for motorists in the state’s capital. As many as five semis were involved in the incident and a motorcyclist was critically injured. Authorities identified 18 separate collisions in the pileup, which occurred during afternoon rush hour. truck accident lawyer

FHP Maj. Chris Blackmon attributed cause to a motorist driving slowly in front of a tractor trailer during a torrential downpour. “There was extremely heavy rain in the area,” he said. “Then it became total chaos.”

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The lives of three Florida teens were ended or dramatically altered by drivers who were born during WWI. old man

The Miami Herald reports on two separate crashes – one in Fort Pierce and another in Davie – with drivers who were 99 and 100, respectively. In the Davie case, the 100-year-old motorist reportedly struck a 16-year-old student pedestrian as she walked to her bus stop. The teen has needed to undergo two emergency brain surgeries – so far. In the second crash, the 99-year-old driver killed two teens – 17 and 18 – when driving his recreational vehicle on the wrong side of State Road 70 (traveling west in the eastbound lanes) with no working headlights. The 99-year-old later died of injuries sustained in that crash.

It was later revealed that while both motorists had clean driving records. The 99-year-old driver had recently undergone a vision, paper and road test – all of which he passed – after someone reported to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office that medical issues made him a potentially unsafe driver.  Continue reading →

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Lee Health Trauma Center and the Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization have launched “Driving Down,” an effort aimed at reducing the number of serious and fatal traffic collisions on Southwest Florida roads.

The risk of Fort Myers injury accidents continues to increase. As our accident attorneys reported earlier this month, Southwest Florida roads are growing deadlier. Last year Lee County reported more than 100 traffic deaths for the second year in a row.hit-and-run

The increasing risk has the local trauma center and county planners working together to do something about it, according to a recent article in the Fort Myers News-Press. 

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A hidden danger that is seldom talked about is the risk of traffic accidents caused by a health condition or medical emergency.

Florida has the nation’s largest population of older drivers, whose chronic conditions can put them at increased risk. Just recently, the Florida Highway Patrol reported a fatal crash on Interstate 75 near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard that is being blamed on a medical episode. Medical condition car accidents

Authorities say the 70 year-old Punta Gorda man was pronounced dead at Gulf Coast Medical Center. The truck he was driving veered right and struck another car before driving into the median, where it struck a guardrail several times before coming to rest in the grass.

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