Boston Car Accident Lawyer Blog

According to a recent news feature from the Post Independent, actor James Woods was just involved in a serious car accident, and then took to Twitter to describe the entire ordeal. Woods says he was driving through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado when an ice storm started. According to his tweets, there was a driver traveling faster than 75 mph on the slick road, causing him to lose control of his car and spin out.

At this point, Woods had to swerve to avoid the spinning car, and, when took evasive action, his car hit the retaining wall on the right side of the roadway. This caused his own car to spin, and then he was traveling backwards at around 69 mph. At this point, both cars collided with five other cars on the roadway, turning this into a seven-car accident. The area in which the accident occurred is known for being particularly dangerous, and people often call it a treacherous stretch of road. Continue reading

Stensland v. Harding County, a personal injury case from the Supreme Court of South Dakota, involved a plaintiff who was injured when he drove over a washed out portion of the road. Prior to his accident, a local resident, whose driveway was along a county road, was traveling east with his family on the county road after it had been snowing and raining during the prior week. He ran over a ditch and then stopped to further investigate the condition of the road.

Wrong way sign post

Upon further investigation, he noticed a hole in the road and water in another ditch. He stomped down on that section of road with his foot, and it collapsed. His wife called county officials to tell them of the collapse and the condition of the road in general. During the trial, the county official who received the warning call said he placed signs on that section of road, and he put what he referred to as a type I barricade near that section with a road closed sign prominently displayed. Continue reading

Every year we hear about new safety features available on new cars. There was a time when people wanted nothing to do with safety features. For example, when the first seatbelt was invented, as adapted from airplane technology, drivers wanted nothing to do with it. This was also at a time when dashboards were made out of wood and other hard materials not designed to absorb impact.

These days, people generally want safety features on their cars, especially if they have a family car. Today, we generally see new safety features first available on luxury cars, and then eventually become standard equipment. Since car buyers pay a lot of attention to safety ratings and look for that 5-Star rating, manufacturers will try to get their cars highly rated. The criteria of that rating system is constantly changing, and, according to a recent news release from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), NHTSA is adding automatic emergency braking to the five-star criteria. Automatic braking will be required to get a five-star safety rating beginning with 2018 model year vehicles. Continue reading