Philadelphia Car Accident Lawyer Blog

An epidemic of car accidents occurring while driving a vehicle and operating a cell phone either by talking or texting has resulted in a multitude of catastrophic accidents and fatalities. According to a recent study by the National Safety Council, 28% of all traffic accidents occur when people talk on cell phones or send text messages while driving. The study indicates that a vast majority of those crashes, 1.4 million annually, are caused by cell phone conversations and 200,000 more are blamed on text messaging. Because of the extent of the problem, federal transportation officials unveiled an organization on Tuesday patterned after Mothers Against Drunk Driving that will combat driver’s cell phone use. The group is named Focus Driven which grew out of a meeting of distracted driving sponsored by the United States Department of Transportation.

As an experienced Philadelphia car accident attorney who has handled many catastrophic car accidents resulting from cell phone usage and resulting inattention to the roadway, I salute the efforts of the Focus Driven organization and the attention being thrust upon this epidemic problem. Unfortunately, it is not until you look into the faces of those who have lost a loved one as a result of driver inattention is the gravity of this situation is recognized.

Law enforcement needs stronger laws and better tools to enforce these violations.

Another church van rollover has left 10 people injured. According to the Toledo Blade, an Ohio-based church van rolled over on U.S. Route 23 injuring 10 occupants on Sunday, January 10, 2010. Not so dissimilar from other church outings, this church van was coming back from a church retreat in southwest Michigan when the van allegedly veered left off of the road onto a snow covered shoulder causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle. The van rolled over twice before landing on its wheels in a ditch on the side of the highway and many of the young group members were thrown or ejected from the vehicle during the incident. Although the Michigan State Police report indicates that it appears as though the driver of the van fell asleep at the wheel of the vehicle, I have seen the same claim made in cases where that was not actually the situation.

As a strong advocate against the use of these large vans by church groups and educational groups, I feel compelled to warn once again that these vehicles are simply not safe and often an accident avoidance maneuver and over-correction results in accidents such as this with catastrophic injuries and fatalities.

To this experienced rollover and 15-passenger van attorney, the 15-passenger van is perhaps the most unsafe vehicle on the roadways today and it often claims unknowing victims from church and school groups.

According to an article published in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review on Tuesday, January 12, 2010, Pennsylvania was noted to be the sixth worst state in the country when it comes to driver safety legislation which ultimately leads to more Pennsylvania car accidents. According to the article, Washington-based Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety graded states on whether they enacted laws regulating 15 safety-related items such as requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets, restricting teenagers from driving unsupervised after 10:00 p.m. or with multiple teenage passengers, and banning texting while driving. Pennsylvania was among nine states ranked as “red” for lacking many of the groups recommended restrictions and furthermore, Pennsylvania dinged for not making violations of its seat belt and booster seat laws “primary” offenses, meaning that police cannot cite drivers who don’t wear seat belts or put children 4 to 7 years of age in booster seats unless another violation such as speeding is observed.

As an experienced Philadelphia car accident attorney who handles catastrophic car accident and traffic accident cases throughout the state of Pennsylvania, we strongly urge the following recommendations set forth by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety as follows:

1. Teenagers must be supervised by an adult driver for at least six months and remain citation free before getting a license.

2. Teens must have 30 to 50 hours of supervised practice behind the wheel.

3. Only issue learner’s permits to youth 16 or older.

4. Charge drivers with child endangerment if driving drunk with a child in the vehicle.

5. Ban open containers of alcohol in the vehicle’s passenger area.

6. Mandate blood alcohol testing for any driver killed in a crash or involved in a fatal crash.

7. Require ignition interlock devices for all drunk driving offenders. (Pennsylvania only does this for repeat offenders.)

8. Prohibit drivers younger than 18 from driving between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. (Pennsylvania’s limits start at 11:00 p.m.)

9. Ban teen drivers from using cell phones to call or text even with hands free devices.

10. Prohibit unsupervised teen drivers from having more than 1 non-related teenage passenger in the vehicle.

11. Allow police to ticket motorists for not wearing seat belts as a primary offense.

12. Require motorcycle riders to wear helmets.

13. Require all children ages 4 to 7 to ride in a booster seat as a primary offense.

14. Set the minimum age for unrestricted licenses at 18. (Pennsylvania drivers with no citations or crashes on record can get a full license at 17 years 6 months.)

15. Ban texting while driving for all drivers except for emergencies.

As no doubt many of our readers are aware, there have been several instances of runaway Toyota and Lexus vehicles due to unintended acceleration causing catastrophic injuries and death. Recently Toyota concluded that those cases were the result of floor mats becoming lodged under the accelerator panels. However, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as well as attorneys and experts/investigators familiar with those cases have stated that the floor mat issue is not necessarily the only cause.

Toyota has announced that a brake override software system will shift the engine to idle if it detects that the driver is attempting to apply the brakes without success. Toyota has indicated that it will install brake override systems on all Toyota, Lexus, and Scion vehicles by the end of this year in order to prevent unintended acceleration. The brake override systems will be installed on the Camry, Avalon, Lexus ES 350, IS 350, and IS 250 models. This brake override system will be made standard equipment throughout the Toyota and Lexus product line beginning January 2010 starting with the production of the ES 350 and Camry and scheduled to be incorporated in production of most new models by the end of 2010.

The Philadelphia car accident and vehicle product defect firm of Reiff and Bily has been intimately involved in unintended acceleration cases and if you or a loved one has suffered an injury or death as a result of an unintended acceleration case, please feel free to contact one of our experienced vehicle defect lawyers for a no obligation consultation.

It’s winter time in Pennsylvania and snow missiles and ice can fly off of motor vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed causing serious car accidents and resulting injuries. It is important to help reduce car accidents and protect your assets and prevent accidents from happening by clearing your vehicle of snow and ice. When debris falls or blows off of a vehicle, accidents often occur. Unsecured loads on vehicles and snow missiles account for in excess of 25,000 accidents each year in North America resulting in approximately 80 to 90 fatalities according to the AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety. Although your failure to clean your car or secure loose material may be unintentional, not properly securing or clearing your vehicle even when going a short distance can expose you to serious liability.

According to Pennsylvania law, it is against the law to operate a vehicle on the highway if it is improperly covered, constructed, or loaded so that any part of its content or load spills, drops, leaks, blows, shifts, or in any other way escapes or falls off the vehicle. Any vehicle transporting such matters must have the load secured or debris secured to prevent any part of the load or debris from spilling on the highway. Failure to secure materials in your car can result in strong fines going up into the thousands and even result in criminal liability if someone is catastrophically injured or killed. There is nothing more dangerous than a piece of ice flying at a high rate of speed into the windshield of another vehicle.

As an experienced Philadelphia personal injury and unfair insurance claims practice lawyer since 1979, it seems to me that the insurance companies will stop at nothing to intimidate plaintiffs even when the plaintiff is their own insured. I am currently involved in several unfair and bad faith insurance claims cases where the actions of the insurance companies have been unethical and seemingly criminal. In one of these cases, an insured who was catastrophically injured was repeatedly intimidated by insurance company claims investigators, insurance company attorneys and insurance company claims representatives to the point of requiring psychiatric intervention. Of course, what the insurance company adjuster failed to recognize is that all of these “boxing gloves strategy actions” against its own policyholder benefited the plaintiff’s bad faith action and made the plaintiff’s case stronger in the hands of a lawyer with experience in bad faith insurance litigation.

Unfortunately with many companies, unless you accept the initial or continuing low ball settlement offers, which is often not enough to pay medical bills or wages, the posture becomes more aggressive at every step as the insurance companies attempt to deny claims at any and all costs. While I make my living fighting insurance companies, it always amazes me that if insurance companies would attempt to fight fairly from the beginning, in the majority of cases an amicable resolution could be achieved. In most bad faith cases, the insurance company goes to extreme lengths to avoid paying claims and often they are not shy about using aggressive lawyers, unfair claims handling tactics, and the courts to their own advantage in attempting to stack the deck.

In one of our recent cases, intense discovery revealed obvious and intentional misrepresentation by the insurance adjuster representing the insurance company. Our client, a successful business person, was astounded when the company would not pay full benefits under the policy he purchased. He claimed to have many sleepless nights and in fact, went to see his cardiologist who told him that he had suffered an anxiety disorder and stress syndrome as a result of the insurance company’s activities.

Most people are not equipped to combat the insurance companies on their own and the first time you find yourself being low balled by an insurance adjuster, it would be wise to get an experienced unfair insurance claims and bad faith insurance attorney involved who has the experience and tools necessary to fight back aggressively.

As an experienced Philadelphia car accident lawyer who represents and has represented some of Philadelphia’s finest, I am not very happy with the state of affairs with the Philadelphia police on accident scenes in Philadelphia these days.

Just this morning on my way to work at approximately 11:00 a.m., I was walking down 11th Street when I saw a truck come by with a load of duct work non-secured and debris was being scattered on the road with a Philadelphia police officer near by when an accident occurred. The police officer drove right by and I was amazed (1) how the truck carrying the debris in a Beverly Hillbilly Jed Clampett style fashion could even be driving on the highways and (2) that the police never stopped to take any information or render assistance. Moreover, in recent weeks, I have had calls from a number of people who have been in car accidents, some of them being very serious, and there have been no police reports filed nor information taken or properly filed.

Now, either the police force is overtaxed and does not have enough police officers on the road, or our city is becoming more and more like the Wild West. Things are different now than they were years ago, and I am not sure what can be done about it but I plead for the Philadelphia police offices on the scene of accidents to try to do a better job and pay more attention to detail as people’s interests are at stake. Without the necessary information, which it is your duty to obtain as well as investigate, it makes everyone’s life more difficult.

In Pennsylvania, a new, young and inexperienced driver can load up a car with as many friends as there are seat belts. In New Jersey, a newly licensed driver can only take one passenger from outside his household for a ride, a provision soon to become even more stringent according to an article published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 21, 2009. Delaware imposes limits on teen driver passengers as do 42 other states and the District of Columbia.

Many car accidents involving irresponsible teenagers result in fatalities or catastrophic injuries. Recently this was highlighted in a death last month of six Chester and Montgomery County teens. There were sixteen passengers in one car and three in the other car. Obviously these deaths devastated the families of these victims and as anybody who was a teenage driver or parent knows, many times vehicles can become a party land in and or themselves and it is not often uncommon for teens to be smoking pot or driving while intoxicated. As Catherine Rossi, a spokeswoman for MidAtlantic AAA noted, “a vehicle becomes a virtual party barge when you start adding teenage passengers. Pennsylvania is lax when it comes to safety.” According to NTHSA studies, teenage drivers and passengers are also among the least likely to wear seat belts and failure to buckle up should be a primary offense.

In our Philadelphia car accident law practice, we have seen many instances of teenage driving resulting in catastrophic injuries when the teenager was texting while driving even though a ban has recently been enacted. State Rep. Catherine Watson has been pushing for tighter teen driving laws even though her colleagues have derided her as a hysterical mother. Her bill would restrict the junior licensed driver to only one non-household passenger under age 18 and household relatives under 18 would be permitted with parental approval. A study by Children’s Hospital and State Farm have noted that if parents use disciplined and set clear rules, teens are half as likely to crash.

Over twenty years ago, I moved from the city to what I considered to be a country village. At the time, there was less traffic and things just seemed a lot calmer. There were and still are signs indicating horse crossings. However, what I have noticed is that there is now much more traffic, people who don’t pay attention to traffic signals, kids driving fast, busy texting or on their cell phones even though it is against the law. Quite frankly, the roadways are not as sufficient as they were when they were originally designed 75 or more years ago.

It seems to me that traffic control signs and warnings are not adequate. There is a stop sign under a tunnel where seemingly no one seems to stop at. Since I have lived in the area, I have handled a good many car accidents involving friends of mine and their children including a few U-turns or cars hitting trees where the road was not properly illuminated. Over the years I have seen situations where contractors were performing construction and failed to adequately mark the construction site.

Many of our cases, not including those in my neighborhood, have involved fatalities or catastrophic injuries on hazardous stretches of roadways or highways. Quite simply, the road that was designed 50 or 75 years ago was not properly maintained or kept up with the times. Many car accident lawyers or injury lawyers never look beyond the simple car accident and fail to consider whether a highway defect was a contributing factor in a car accident case. These same lawyers may not even look to a product liability claim in what appears to be a simple car accident case. Many times we have seen cases where lawyers were looking for the “easy A” and on the verge of settling an auto case or have settled on an auto case for minimal policy limits without considering whether other entities are liable for the accident.

There is a complex interrelationship between the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Transportation, contractors, local governments, statutory caps and notice requirements, which requires specialized experience and investigation involving accident reconstructionists, investigators, engineers, human factor engineers, biomechanical engineers, as well as highway and safety design engineers.

If you or a loved one has been involved in a serious car accident, make sure that you don’t leave a stone unturned. Our track record of success for the last 30 years speaks for itself.

If you check your car operation maintenance manual, you will note that certain lubricants and fluids are to be used in cold weather and tires should be inflated with different pressures. Also freeze protection and antifreeze solutions should be equal to the system protection requirements. It is important when operating your car in the winter that batteries are fully charged and the fuel tank is kept as close to full as possible in case you encounter a situation where you are stranded or stalled on the road. Additionally, steering response in cold weather can be difficult and if you have hydraulic steering, it may be very slow at startup or low temperatures and can cause an accident if you do not use the correct oil or fluid. You can always run the engine when first starting until it reaches operating temperature. Otherwise you may cause severe engine damage and definitely take life and value off of your vehicle.

In December, I was driving my car when all of a sudden due to a faulty fuel pump and a hydraulic steering issue, my car went dead and I skidded down a hill on black ice and into a fence, blocking a highway and becoming a sitting target for other vehicles on the icy road. I was completely unprepared for this situation as I was not dressed appropriately and after 2 1/2 hours of waiting for a tow, I was chilled to the bone. Therefore, I might also add, it is important to dress appropriately by wearing layers of warm clothing with proper ventilation. In the cold weather, always be careful when entering and exiting a vehicle as slip and falls are common. Also, clean your vehicle of snow to avoid the snow missile that could cause harm or injury to other vehicles on the road. At times of bad weather, we have to depend on each other for safe travel and our goal is to be safe every day.

The Philadelphia car accident lawyers at Reiff and Bily are committed to motorist safety. If you or a loved one has been involved in car accident, please feel free to contact one of our experienced Philadelphia car accident attorneys for a free no obligation consultation.

The roadways of Philadelphia and the surrounding metropolitan areas have been hazardous and treacherous as ever with the recent 23 plus inch snowfall that fell upon Philadelphia in pre-Christmas 2009. The police indicate that at least seven people died as a result of the storm and others sustained catastrophic injuries. Although roads may look safe and dry, many times this is an illusion and black ice from melting snow will create extremely hazardous driving conditions so all motorists should utilize extreme caution.

On my way to work in the days following the snowfall, I skidded on black ice and hit a fence at the bottom of hill, although the road looked dry and I was proceeding very slowly. Although my car is equipped with ESC and a sophisticated braking system, the car went out of control and spun sideways, partially blocking the highway and making me a prime target for a car accident.

When car accidents occur, the police and emergency response teams are overtaxed. It is important if you are in an accident to take as thorough a history as possible noting the time, date, identification of the other person and make, model and license tag of the other vehicle(s) involved, as well as obtain the names and contact information of any and all witnesses. A good idea would be to contact experienced Philadelphia car accident attorneys and ask them to conduct an investigation at their cost to uncover the facts and determine whether a proper cause of action exists so that you are properly compensated for the extent of your injuries. In a second, one’s life can be changed from a catastrophic injury resulting from the negligence of an unpredictable car accident.

The experienced car accident attorneys at Reiff and Bily have represented individuals since 1979 who have suffered fatalities, catastrophic injuries, head and brain trauma, fractures and closed head injuries. Our success record speaks for itself. We never charge a fee unless there is a recovery.

Under Pennsylvania common law, any adult who serves alcohol or allows a party to get out of control with other intoxicating substances at their home or without adequate supervision may be considered a social host. If the social host serves alcohol or allows other intoxicating substances to be served at their house to a minor and the minor is injured or if the minor injures someone else because of the intoxication or service of any other intoxicating substance, the social host may be held liable to pay monetary damages to the injured person. Social host liability in Pennsylvania only applies to adults who serve alcohol to minors. Pennsylvania law holds that adults are responsible for the consequences of their drinking.

Also, under Pennsylvania law, any person who furnishes alcohol to a minor commits a third degree misdemeanor and this law has even been applied to parents who have allowed their children to drink at home. The Pennsylvania personal injury lawyers at Reiff and Bily have an excellent track record of success holding negligent social hosts liable when their actions or inactions led to car accidents or other serious accidents resulting in catastrophic injury or death.