According to a recent news article from the WWLP, a serious car accident in Springfield, Massachusetts resulted in car that was nearly torn completely in half down its centerline.
One witness says the driver was trapped in his car, which had nearly been split in two and wrapped around the utility pole. Firefighters used their equipment to pull the doors off the car, so they could get the driver out of his mangled car. When they finally got the driver out, he was provided with immediate medical attention and then taken to a local level-one trauma hospital, where he is listed as being in serious but stable condition.
The police are still in the beginning stages of conducting a full investigation into the cause of this serious single car accident and have not yet released any information at to why the car ran into the utility pole.
While it is always possible that a single car accident was due to driver error, there is also a possibility that the accident was due to defective maintenance or a design defect.
First, with respect to maintenance errors, a car accident victim may have a valid claim against the garage that did the repairs, but this will not be the easiest thing to prove. The best thing you can do is to speak with an experienced Boston car accident lawyer as soon after the accident as possible. This will allow your attorney to have his or her accident reconstruction specialist and private investigator get working as soon as possible. Is often necessary to work quickly to preserve any evidence that may disappear over time.
While some evidence will always be there, certain types of evidence will disappear over time. Tire tracks, for example, will fade over time, and pools of grease or oil on the road will get washed away. This type of evidence that tends to disappear over time is known in the law as evanescent evidence. In the context of car accident cases, one of the biggest examples of evanescent evidence is evidence that a driver was under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the accident. When a person is drunk and causes an accident, a breath alcohol test taken shortly after the accident will be relevant or “probative” in determining the driver’s blood alcohol content (BAC). However, if the test isn’t administered until several hours later, there would be either no record the driver was under the influence of alcohol or the BAC level would be very low.
Another thing that is important to the investigation that must be taken care of as soon as possible is collecting the names and addresses of key witnesses and getting a statement. The longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to find these people, and the more of a chance they will forget many of the details of what they saw.
If you are injured in an accident in Massachusetts, call Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers for a free and confidential appointment: (617) 777-7777.
Additional Resources:
Car ripped apart in serious accident overnight, November 7, 2015, 22 WWLP, By David Blewett and Mary Marcil
More Blog Entries:
Floyd-Tunnell v. Shelter Mut. Ins. Co. Uninsured Motorist Coverage and Stacking, July 3, 2014, Boston Car Accident Lawyer Blog