Boston Car Accident Lawyer Blog

A Boston dump truck accident left motorists plenty frustrated this morning as a landscaper’s truck flipped on the highway south of downtown, causing long delays, the Globe reported.

The accident scattered dirt across the road at about 6:30 a.m. on the southbound side of I-93 near the Dorchester Yacht Club. The crash slowed traffic clear through the city and north to Montvale Avenue.

Fortunately, there were no reports of serious injuries as a result of the crash. However, dump trucks pose the threat of serious or fatal injuries in the event of an accident with other motorists. While smaller than a semi, a dump truck may be just as heavy. And the shifting weight of earth or debris in a dump truck can make steering difficult. Additionally, a truck may make numerous trips to and from a dump site each day and may react differently depending on the weight of its current load. A loaded dump truck may also require a significant length of time to come to a stop.

Twenty people were killed Massachusetts trucking accidents in 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Nationwide, one in every nine traffic fatalities involves a collision with a large truck. In 2008, an astounding 380,000 semis and large trucks were involved in accidents. A total of 4,229 people were killed and more than 90,000 were injured.

A Boston injury lawyer should always be consulted when a motorist is injured or killed in an accident with a large commercial truck. Out-of-state trucking companies and insurance companies can complicate trucking accident cases. And whether or not a truck and its driver were in compliance with numerous state and federal trucking regulations can have a major impact on a trucking accident case.
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The state has passed a law banning text messaging while behind the wheel in an effort to reduce the risk of serious or fatal Massachusetts car accidents. But it is just part of a national patchwork of distracted driving laws motorists will have to navigate while on summer vacation.

As our Boston Car Accident Lawyer Blog reported earlier this month, state leaders have reached agreement on a new law that will ban texting while driving. After six-years of debate, the law will also ban drivers under the age of 18 from using a cell phone while driving and will require drivers over the age of 75 to have their vision tested in person when renewing their driver’s license.

The Governor’s Highway Safety Association reports that eight states prohibit all drivers from using hand-held cell phones — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Thirty states ban text messaging while driving.

And a number of cities, including Chicago, ban the use of hand-held cell phones in a state where they are otherwise legal for use by drivers outside the city limits. As MSNBC reported motorists are responsible for knowing and obeying the laws, wherever they are traveling.

What’s a traveling motorist to do this summer? Fines range from $20 to $150 and can put a real ding in your vacation budget. In some states, a motorist may only be cited if they are texting or using a phone while committing a separate traffic infraction. In other states, merely using a phone is enough to be pulled over and cited.

While AAA discourages the use of cell phones while driving, the organization offers a list of the laws in each state on its website.

“Drivers are still responsible for knowing the cell phone laws that apply to each state,” said AAA spokesperson Nancy White.

Our Boston injury lawyers urge you to leave the map searching, texting, talking and GPS devices and other distractions to a passenger. The best way to ensure safe travel this summer is for the driver to do nothing but concentrate on the road.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that more than 6,000 motorists are killed each year in distracted driving accidents, primarily as a result of using cell phones while driving. Another 600,000 are injured.
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Our Boston injury lawyers read with interest an item published recently in the Hartford Courant, which detailed results of a study that found the effectiveness of airbags and seat belts can depend on the sex and weight of the motorist.

Wearing your seat belt is required by law in Massachusetts. What authorities downplay in the quest to get motorists to buckle up (Click it or Ticket, et al.) is that there are accident scenes in which a motorist would have been better off had he or she not been wearing a seat belt. And there are circumstances where an accident impacts two motorists differently — one survives while the other is seriously injured or killed.

The University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, which conducted the study, found that additional technology is needed to protect the largest and smallest of occupants. Of course, we already know and understand that on a most basic level; it’s why we require small children to utilize booster seats and other devices to augment their safety.

But we largely ignore the difference in a crash’s impact on a 100 pound woman or a 300 pound man.

“Based on these results, we know the current system is not optimal,” said Michael Sivak, a research professor who worked on the study.

The study looked at 297,000 crashes from 1998 to 2008, in which at least one occupant was killed. The driver was killed in about half of the crashes and survived in the other half. Researchers then used information about the size of the driver to determine body Mass Index (BMI), which is based on relationship of a driver’s weight to his or her height.

Men with a BMI of 35 to 50 are considered to be seriously obese; a 6-foot man with a BMI of 35 would weigh 258 pounds. With a BMI of 50, he would weigh 369 pounds. Researchers found that obese men wearing seat belts were about 14 percent less likely to die than men of average weight.

However, obese men who were not wearing their belts were about 5 percent more likely to die, apparently because the extra weight forced its way through the airbag, which made airbags less effective.

Researchers found no reliable trends for unbelted women, but found overweight women were more likely to be killed in a crash, as were women who were underweight.

Women lighter than 110 pounds were about 8 percent more likely to be killed in a crash.

Air bags continue to evolve, and beginning in 2007 front airbags are required to take into account the size and weight of the seat occupant under new requirements by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

So far, studies of those devices have not found them to be any safer.
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Vibrating car seats could soon warn drivers of an impending Massachusetts car accident.

MSNBC reports the seats are the latest safety feature that could begin appearing in new cars. Recent years have seen a host of new safety features, including curtain airbags, backup warning sensors and rearview cameras. While our Boston accident lawyers applaud the focus on safety, we have concerns about the extent to which such systems take the focus on safety out of the hands of drivers. For instance, drivers in cars with backup sensors are at higher risk for an accident when driving a car not equipped with the sensors. Their reliance upon a vehicle’s safety features has reduced their own awareness.

The new seats will alert drivers to cars in a vehicle’s blind spot or other hard-to-see spots around the rear of a vehicle. After wearing a seat belt, situational awareness remains the second most important safe driving virtue. However, as motorists zone out on the road, checking a car’s blind spot becomes the first safe-driving habit to go, MSNBC reports.

The vibrating, or “touch” system, has advantages over video or audio warning systems, according to the seat’s inventor, John Morrell of Yale University. Existing audio and visual warning systems just add to driver distraction while a touch cue can transmit location of the danger without requiring a driver to turn their head.

The seat’s vibration corresponds to the area of the car where the danger arises, so that a car pulling along the rear-right side will trigger sensors in the lower right seat back.

No question the increased safety of modern vehicles has helped reduce the number of serious and fatal car accidents. Fatal accidents have declined nationwide, from 41,501 in 1998 to 37,261 in 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

To the extent that motorists use such safety systems to augment their awareness, we think they are welcome improvements. It’s when they become a crutch for inattention that a motorist could face the increased risk of being involved in a serious or fatal car accident.
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