Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

The regulations on the number of hours a commercial truck driver can drive have been changed twice over the last 5 years but unfortunately Georgia drivers are continuing to die and suffer catastrophic injuries as a result of tired tractor trailer drivers in Atlanta. The most recent study from 2005 shows that nationally 5,212 died as a result of tractor trailer collisions. When the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration revised the rules drastically in December 2003, they sold it to the public as a safety improvement but in reality it allows truckers to driver for 11 hours straight before having to take 10 hours off! I don’t know about you but I cannot maintain my focus driving for even 7 hours before I have to take an entire day off and here the government is authorizing 11 hours.

To make matters worse, the government continues to play with their numbers and in December 2007, the FMCSA released a statement saying that despite the increase in hours since 2003, deaths per mile were down. The problem with that claim is the fact that they started counting the miles driven by passenger buses, which don’t make long hauls like truckers do. This had the effect of diluting the fatality numbers and making them look better.

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A five year old boy was mauled by a stray dog in Dalton Georgia and it could have been prevented. Unfortunately more and more people are buying Pit Bulls, Dobermans and cross-bred Chau dogs. These dogs can be fine when well trained and restrained but they can be very aggressive with small children.

The problems arise when dog owners either don’t take the time to train their dogs or, even worse, ignore and abuse their own dogs. Those dogs become aggressive and pose a serious threat to the public. Most counties and cities require that a dog be kept on leash, on a chain or confined by a fence at all times. In Georgia, if a dog attacks a human and a Plaintiff comes before the Court to hold the owner liable, the Court will inquire as to whether 1) there were prior indications that the dog was aggressive towards humans and if not; 2) whether the owner was in violation of the leash and restraint laws at the time of the attack. Either avenue can support a potential liability claim against a homeowner.

According to the article “Boy mauled by dog” written by reporter Kim Sloan with the Dalton Daily Citizen, Murray County Animal Control had been called several times and failed to take any action at all. This is a serious injury that could have been averted and now will leave the child scarred for life.

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It is stunning how often Georgia tractor trailer drivers fall asleep or pass out due to medical conditions while driving heavy commercial vehicles on Georgia roads. In a shocking AP story out this past week, the service revealed that hundreds of thousands of drivers with commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) also are qualified as medically disabled. As an Athens injury lawyer and a former trucking defense lawyer, one of the things that I am acutely aware of is the fact that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations include a requirement that the employer require a strict annual checkup that is supposed to screen out drivers that have dangerous health conditions like severe high blood pressure, diabetes and epilepsy.

The problem is that enforcement is lax. According the article the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has not completed any of the Congressional recommendations made in 2001 to enhance enforcement. Unfortunately Georgia was listed as one of 12 states that are responsible for more than half of the violations.

The end result of this is that there are unhealthy truckers and bus drivers operating 80,000 pound vehicles on our roads. When dealing with an injury or death case, be sure to consult with an Atlanta trucking injury lawyer before discussing the situation with the insurance company for the trucking company.

A DOT worker was killed in Augusta Georgia this week when a 200 pound tire flew off of a tractor trailer and struck the man. What concerns me is that the news service calls this a “freak accident” and yet it clearly is not. The only way wheels come off is if the lug nuts are not secured or the axle is horribly out of balance. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations require detailed pre-trip inspections and there are also regular maintenance requirements that should have spotted this. The sections of the Regulations pertaining to the duty to maintain and inspect the vehicle are very strict and this problem would have been spotted in a thorough pre-trip inspection. In short, this did not have to happen. DOT workers have a very dangerous job and it saddens me to see that the investigating officers appear to have shrugged this death off as a pure accident.

In the article “Flying tire kills man in freak accident in Augusta” by reporter Navideh Forghani, he desribes poignantly how the man was spray painting a line up until the second he was struck, leaving behind a timeline leading up to his death.

I am incensed at some of the blog posts after the article that focus solely on the immigration status of the decesed. Ask yourself this question…If the wheel came off and struck a four year old little girl in her family car, how would you feel about it? Is there a difference and why?

When a person is injured through no fault of their own, Georgia State Law and Federal Law provide that there should be a remedy against the at-fault party. One of the more confusing things for clients to understand is that in the eyes of the law, determining who is responsible is not always a slam dunk.

In order to recover money damages to compensate you for your medical bills, lost wages and suffering, there are three hurdles that must be cleared.

Duty

For those of you that never read this article by CNN exposing State Farm and Allstate for adopting a combative strategy of deny, delay defend with regard to handling their claims, I strongly recommend it. You can draw your own conclusions from the research, but I can tell you that from my experience litigating both as an insurance defense attorney and as a plaintiff’s attorney, they are spot on.The article highlights evidence that came to light in a series of lawsuits against Allstate and State Farm by plaintiffs that had been low-balled and the juries saw the truth. The portion of the article dealing with the consulting firm’s recommendations is stunning. The strategy of deny, delay and defend is put into practice across the board by these carriers and others and I am finding that I am taking more and more of my cases all the way to jury trial in order to obtain fair compensation.

The problems in this industry lie at both ends of the spectrum. Insurance companies are turning a blind eye on legitimate injury cases and some plaintiffs lawyers are ignoring common sense and turning a blind eye when they know that they are putting up a less than legitimate case. The fact is that this industry would be better for the public as a whole if both sides would step back and take a realistic approach to handling injury cases.

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In an amazing show of unity, the Senate passed the bill unanimously and the House only had one Nay. President Bush signed it into Law on May 22, 2008. The bill has been a long time coming and bars health insurers from asking for or using genetic information to make a decision about whether to cover a person or how high to set the premiums.

Although there were already some protections for insureds with group health insurance under existing federal law, those who are self-employed and buy their own coverage previously had no guarantees that their genetic information would not be used against them.

One component in particular is a big benefit because it keeps an insurer from raising premiums for a group insured as a small business just because one member has a genetic predisposition to a particular illness or malady.

One simple tip can help you save hundreds of dollars. Increase your deductible from $200.00 to $500.00 on the collision and comprehensive coverage and you can save up to 30% on those premiums. I personally have mine set at $1000.00 due to the savings. You protect yourself against the massive risk and you dont have to turn it in to the carrier on smaller issues.

These insurance coverages are frequently misunderstood in Georgia insurance policies. Collision coverage protects you against yourself when you cause a crash either with another vehicle or with an object. It will pay to repair damage to your own vehicle. It is required on cars that you finance or lease. You have a good deal of control over the rates as you can set a deductible. The idea is that if you crash your car and the repairs cost $5,000.00 then you pay the deductible and the company pays the rest.

Comprehensive insurance is a catch all coverage that protects you against a variety of dangers. If you have it, you are insured if the car is stolen, or keyed, flooded out, struck by hail, or a tree falls on it. If your car is more than 10 years old or not worth much for some other reason, I would not worry about getting it.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist coverage in Georgia. In 11 years of practicing as an injury lawyer, I have found that the people that cause the most devastating injuries in automobile collisions tend to be uninsured and underinsured drivers. Bad drivers tend to have a lot of speeding tickets and prior collisions and cannot afford decent coverage. As a result, the at fault driver did not have enough liability insurance to repay my clients for the medical bills they incurred and the injuries they sustained.

Most drivers in Georgia operate with the minimum mandatory limits of $25,000.00. That may seem like a lot of money but that’s only if you have not been to the hospital recently. For example, in Metro Atlanta, the typical ambulance ride costs $600.00, the Emergency room visit is at least $800, X-Rays cost around $250, an MRI is $1100, a CT scan can cost $2000 and so on. Even a modest trip to the emergency room usually costs around $2,000.00. Then there can be mountains of bills from physical therapy and medications. In short, even a simple auto accident case with sprained muscles that requires an ER visit and physical therapy can leave a person with over $5,000.00 in bills. If there are any broken bones, the value of the case in front of a jury quickly grows to over $25,000.00.

Now imagine you have been in an accident in Roswell, Georgia and a driver has totaled your car by negligently failed to leave enough following distance. You have gone to the hospital and learned that you have a herniated disc in your neck that is going to need surgery. The total cost for your medical expenses will be well over $45,000.00 which does not even include the amount of income you will lose for missing work during surgery and recovery. You make contact with the at-fault driver’s insurance company and learn that the driver only had $25,000.00 in coverage and is not a wealthy person. Reality is that there may be no recovery for you beyond the $25,000.00. As your grandmother told you, you cannot get blood from a stone.