Articles Posted in Car Accidents

Maryland was one of 32 states that decreased their number of drunk driving fatalities, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report issued yesterday. Drunk driving deaths in Maryland declined by 10, a 5.3% decrease. The national average was a 3.7% decrease.

This is good news. The bad news is that almost 13,000 people were killed in car, truck, and motorcycle accidents where the driver was shown to have a BAC of .08 or higher. If we took the money spent on the Bay Bridge and put it into more drunk driving checkpoints, we only save about 20 times the number of lives.

More troubling news was that the number of motorcycle drivers killed in alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents increased by 7.5 percent. The government has been doing a good job pushing the motorcycle accident issue head-on, featuring motorcycle accidents in their $13 million advertising campaign to attack the drug driving accident problem that comes on Labor Day weekend.

Hit and run and phantom vehicle cases can be a challenge for Maryland accident lawyers. But good lawyers can obtain compensation for their clients in the vast majority of cases.

In Maryland, if you are injured in an accident as the result of the negligence of a hit-and-run driver, you can still recover for your medical bills, lost income from work, and pain and suffering damages as if the driver had been identified by bringing an uninsured motorist claim or lawsuit pursuant to your own car insurance policy. Maryland law treats an unknown negligent driver as it would for a known uninsured driver for purposes of the injury victim’s uninsured motorist policy.

With respect to phantom vehicles – those vehicles that cause an accident but then drive away before then can be identified – some states require physical contact with the phantom vehicle for the injury victim to make an uninsured motorist claim. Maryland law, however, does not require physical contact. If the insurance company has policy language to the contrary, Maryland courts will ignore the language.