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If you drove to a New Year’s Party in Utah on Monday and had a few drinks, the risk of getting arrested for drug driving increased dramatically.  On Saturday (December 30th) Utah lowered its legal blood-alcohol content (BAC) limit from 0.08 to 0.05.  This gives Utah the strictest DUI laws in the country. This follows a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommendation that all states should lower their legal BAC limits to 0.05.

lowering bac limitBefore we go further, you are saying you know you are fine at .05, right?  But define “fine”.  Do I feel like I can drive a car at .05?  I do.  Do I ever drive at .05 with my kids in the car?  I don’t.  Setting aside the stunning hypocrisy for a second, I do this because I’ve been competing with my friends and family at goofy things my whole life.  So I know that a bit of alcohol slows me down just a bit because I can’t play video games, golf, or anything else quite as well after two drinks than zero.

H.B. 155

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The recent technological advances in car safety are nothing short of dramatic.  The result is lives are being saved on our highways.  The pros of these technologies far outweigh the cons.  But that does not mean there will not be bumps in the road.

One bump is people do not understand the technologies they now have access to in the vehicles. According to a September 2018 report conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, most drivers do not realize the limitations of using advanced driver safety systems in their car. It also shows that people are becoming dependent on technology to drive safely.

What was the study?

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According to a study from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), teenagers have the highest car accident rate of any age group in the country. After years on the decline, teen driving fatalities have been on the increase. The rate of teen driver fatalities went up nine percent from 2014 to 2015.

The study listed several risks that may result in teen driver death rates. They are the following.

Inexperience

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ankle injury car accidentsIn car accident cases, there are typically relatively “good” settlements on ankle injury cases. For our purposes here, “good” is defined as the probability of getting a reasonable settlement offer before suing.

Why are ankle injury cases easier to settle than other accident claims? But the most obvious explanation is the nature of ankle injuries. With neck and back injuries, which are common car accident injuries, people with the exact same radiological findings can have very different manifestations of pain. Given this, insurance companies tend to assume the lowest level of pain in these types of cases.

In contrast, ankle injuries are far less often the result of degenerative changes and are usually caused by trauma, rarely leading to concerns about preexisting injuries or arthritic changes. Just as importantly, they are typically objective injuries we can see in a radiology report. It also helps in reaching a value of an ankle injury for settlement purposes that the treatment of ankle injuries is generally not as involved as other car accident injuries which decreases the extent of the “you should not have gotten so much treatment” arguments from the insurance company.

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Car accidents generate a lot of harmful force.  When a car suddenly collides with something or gets hit by another vehicle, the occupants inside get forcefully propelled in the direction of the impact.  Inside the confines of a car, this physical propulsion is usually stopped by another impact with a door, window, seat belt or airbag.  Both the sudden forward movement and the sudden stop put acute stress on the spine and neck.  These critically important areas of the body are most vulnerable in an auto accident.

The violent forward and stopping the movement of occupants in a car accident is commonly called “whiplash” and is one of the leading causes of back injuries in an auto accident. Injuries to the lower back can be extremely painful and notoriously difficult to treat and recover from. This article will focus on the possible causes of lower back pain that occurs after a car accident.

Mechanics of Pain in Lower Back After Car Accident

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Motor vehicle crashes involving flatbed, semi-trucks, or tractor-trailers can lead to serious injury or death. According to statistics compiled by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, in 2015 4,311 large trucks and buses were involved in fatal crashes, an eight percent increase from 2014.

The Federal Highway Administration reports there were over 260 million registered vehicles in the United States in 2014. Over eight million of these vehicles were single-unit or straight trucks, 2.5 million were tractor-trailers or semi-trucks and there were 800,000 buses on the road. That year registered vehicles traveled over three trillion miles. Trucks were responsible for 279 billion of those miles or 9.2 percent of the total, and buses traveled 16 billion miles accounting for 0.5 percent of the total.

Why are crashes involving trucks so dangerous?

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If you have a herniated disc injury, the results of your MRI will be crucial to the settlement value or trial value of your case. The insurance adjusters and lawyers will probably spend more time debating the significance of your MRI than any other part of your case.

Why is there so much debate about radiological films we can all see? The reality is that you can look at two identical MRIs.  One patient will be in extreme pain. The other will not even know that she has a herniated disc. This is the backdrop for the battle over the value of these claims.

Our law firm has had a lot of success in these cases. Let’s talk about herniated disc injury cases and the significance of the MRI results to your claim.

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recorded statements accidents

Recorded Statements Rarely Help

I’m getting another case ready for trial where I have to explain honest and consistent statements given in good faith to the insurance company that their lawyer is not trying to take completely out of context to make them stand for something very different from what I originally contemplated.

The answer, as always, is don’t give a recorded statement to the at-fault carrier. This rule should be followed in 98% of the cases I have prepared where a statement was given.

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In Carr v. Cinnamon, a California appellate court applied the same rule we have here in Maryland: the finder of fact can award whatever they want for noneconomic damages, including zero even when it seems preposterous that a person could suffer medical bills and have no pain and suffering.

Plaintiff’s premises liability lawsuit alleged that her leg fell through the floor of a patio on the defendant’s property. The jury found the defendant partially responsible and awarded a whopping $6,207.08 with no damages for pain and suffering. Improbably, the Plaintiff’s attorney appealed, arguing that the damages award was inadequate as a matter of law and the trial court should have awarded damages (additur) or awarded a new trial.

The appellate court disagreed, finding juries can essentially do whatever they want. One thing is for sure: this jury was not a big fan of this plaintiff.

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I read an interesting article in the European Spine Journal titled “The association between a lifetime history of a neck injury in a motor vehicle collision and future neck pain: a population-based cohort study.”

Yes, that’s a big title. But the study looked at an incredibly simple issue: are neck injuries in car accidents a harbinger of neck pain later in life after the injury has resolved. So the study looked at the association between a lifetime history of neck injury from a motor vehicle collision and the development of troublesome neck pain.

The answer was what plaintiffs’ car accident lawyers were sure to tell you would be the case: patients with a history of neck injury in a traffic collision are more likely to experience future neck pain.

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