Atlanta Injury Attorneys Blog

A truly devastating accident happened in Gwinnett County Friday night after four students left band practice at Southwest DeKalb High School. The accident left one student dead and two others in critical condition.

Seventeen-year-old Miles McBride was driving his 14-year-old sister, Carmen McBride, and two other students home after band practice. According to authorities, Miles swerved to avoid a dog in the road, but instead collided with another car, then flipped over into the roadside woods. Shortly thereafter, Carmen was pronounced dead.

The car's other occupants were also injured, two of them critically, and Miles McBride sustained serious injuries himself. The other car's driver and 3-year-old passenger were also injured, though thankfully not seriously.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of this accident is its irony. The driver was trying to avoid an accident, not cause one. He didn't want to hurt the dog or his passengers, who could have been injured if he had hit the dog. But in trying to avoid one accident, he caused another, much more serious one--and as a result, his sister died. One can only imagine what he must be going through.

Last September, Sgt. Ray Gunter of the Snellville Police Department and his wife Renee were seriously injured in a Snellville motorcycle accident. After multiple surgeries, Gunter's left leg had to be amputated. His wife's injuries were also very serious, and at this point neither of them is able to work. Having lost the ability to bring in regular income and having gained sky-high medical bills, things looked bleak for Gunter and his family.

Enter Heroes-Helping-Heroes, an organization founded in 2006 to help a Walton County police officer with expenses as he battled a brain tumor. This year, the organization expanded to Gwinnett County to help Gunter . The idea of Heroes-Helping-Heroes is to help police officers and other emergency responders who incur injuries in the line of duty.

As a result of Heroes-Helping-Heroes' efforts, more than 100 motorcyclists turned out this past weekend for a benefit ride to help Gunter. The bikers, led by Gwinnett County police, took a one-and-a-half hour ride that looped through Lawrenceville, Monroe, Loganville and Grayson. About $4,700 was raised for the cause.

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Alpharetta's AP Specialty Metals for safety violations, including failure to install machine guards to prevent employees from being caught up in machinery. The reason, as you may have guessed, was that an employee was caught up in machinery earlier this year and crushed to death.

In response to this tragedy, OSHA investigated the company for safety violations and found 13 in all. The failure to install machine guards mentioned above was deemed "willful" (with intentional knowing and/or voluntary disregard for the law's requirements), the most egregious level of safety violation that can be found by OSHA. Of the remaining 12 violations, 10 were deemed "serious" (with substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result), and two others were deemed "other-than-serious" (directlyk related to job safety and health, but unlikely to cause death or serious physical harm).

Violations included: failure to implement an energy control program to protect workers from unexpected release of energy or start-up of machinery; presence of fall hazards; lack of training on use of industrial trucks; exposing workers to flying debris; exposing workers to unguarded chains and sprockets; misuse of compressed air for cleaning; use of damaged parts on electrical equipment; use of flexible cords as a substitute for fixed wiring; dispensing flammable liquid from an ungrounded drum; failure to post an annual summary of injuries and illnesses at the facility; and failure to keep OSHA logs for 2006 and 2007.

On the 15th, a Gwinnett County judge passed sentence on two drivers jointly responsible for a Lawrenceville DUI car wreck that killed three passengers early one morning in January 2008. The drivers, Sia Johnson and Darcy Hicks, both of Lawrenceville, had left the same party and were both driving intoxicated when the pileup occurred.

The first one to crash was Hicks, who passed Johnson's car, lost control and hit an oncoming minivan (whose driver was fortunately unharmed), then tried to leave the scene of the accident. Directly after this, Johnson crashed her car, killing all three of her passengers.

According to Assistant District Attorney Jon Setzer, Hicks was acquitted of vehicular homicide charges but convicted for DUI, reckless driving and failure to stop at the scene of the accident. He was sentenced to six months in prison. Johnson, meanwhile, having pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide earlier this month, was sentenced to 12 years for the deaths of her passengers.

You may have heard about the Georgia school bus crash last week that killed one student when the bus ran off Highway 113 and rolled over. The student, James Rashawn Walker, was ejected through a window and died shortly thereafter.

Since the accident, many interesting discussions have surfaced--one of the most interesting being about how, according to the Georgia State Patrol, the driver involved in the crash lacked proper certification to drive a school bus. Could this lack of certification have been the factor that led to the student, affectionately called Ray-Ray by his classmates, being killed?

Not necessarily, according to Carroll County school officials. They say the bus driver had been through more than the necessary amount of training to be officially certified as a bus driver for the district. In other words, even though it appears he had yet to actually receive certification, school spokespersons insist that the driver was perfectly legal to drive, since he had completed all necessary prerequisites and was at the time driving under a trainer's supervision.

Of course, the school district absolutely has an interest in protecting itself against a Georgia school bus death lawsuit, so we must take their words with a heavy grain of salt.

And it's difficult to verify how much training the driver actually did receive--that's why an official certification is so important. Actually, technically, the driver is supposed to have two certifications: a "P" signifying passenger endorsement, which he did have, and an "S" for school bus endorsement, which he did not.

Meanwhile, as some Georgia parents, school officials and community members call for stricter qualifications for future bus driver trainees, others are calling for something more than 200 school districts across the nation already have: safety belts on school buses.

You don't have to be drunk, or on drugs, or distracted by your cell phone, or even driving in low visibility on slick roads, to kill someone in a car crash. All it takes sometimes is one red light unheeded.

This past Saturday morning, a young man named Andrius Nikolaychuk, only 18, was driving through the intersection of Cruse and Old Norcross Road on a green light when his car was hit by Wykelia Robinson, 28, of Norcross, who did not stop for her red light. Nikolaychuk died at the scene, and his 7-year-old passenger was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

Robinson and her two children, who were in the car with her, were also taken to medical centers for minor injuries. Charges against Robinson are still pending, but police say that drugs and alcohol were not factors in the accident. So far all we know is that she broke an elementary traffic law: always stop at a red light.

Anyone who underestimates the importance of making sure kids are adequately monitored by adults will think again after reading this heart-wrenching article about a Gwinnett County burn victim. In it, we learn about a little boy named Alfred Real who nearly died when he and his friend were playing with a grill lighter and a gas can. Now eight-year-old Alfred's body is covered with third-degree burns, he wears a protective nylon suit while his skin regenerates, and he endures hours of physical therapy each and every day. Everything he used to know how to do, basically, he has had to relearn from scratch.

Alfred's parents say their son was trying to extinguish the fire another child had caused, and my heart truly goes out to them, and their brave little boy. However, it is worth considering that with adequate supervision, this
Gwinnett County child injury may not have happened at all. The details of the accident are not clearly by the press--which makes sense, as at this point everyone is probably just giving thanks that Alfred is still alive. Still, it seems clear that if Alfred was supposed to have been watched by a babysitter, a neighbor or family friend, it wasn't enough to keep him away from a clearly hazardous situation. If such a person was supposed to have been watching him, Alfred's parents would have a compelling case for legal action on the grounds of the their negligence.

Georgia burn injuries, though common, run a wide gamut from mild to severe. On the extreme end, burn victims can suffer from extreme shock, infection, respiratory problems, nerve damage, and thick scarring that can limit their mobility for a lifetime. Emergency medical attention, skin grafts and other surgery, special wound dressings and garments, and round after round of physical and psychological therapy are just some of the expenses that can be incurred. And that's just on the time and money end. A disfiguring burn can permanently affect a person's quality of life, so prevention is critical.

In a somber reminder of the heightened danger of driving in the rain, an entire Gwinnett County family was killed in a South Carolina wreck last Thursday. The accident happened with the Alvarez family's SUV hydroplaned and flipped over into a canal by the side of the highway 145 miles east of Raleigh.

It is known that SUVs are particularly prone to flipping or rolling over when they lose equilibrium. And it is difficult to say whether the accident could have been avoided if they had been driving in a different type of vehicle, or driving a bit more slowly. However, it is critical to remember that this family should absolutely not be held to blame for their choice of an SUV as the family vehicle. Car and truck companies have an unspoken covenant with consumers to only put products on the market that are safe and stable. When this covenant is breached--and sadly, it is far too often--the company responsible must be challenged.

I believe SUV manufacturers have a duty to construct their vehicles in a way that puts the safety of drivers and passengers above all else. It is possible that there was a defect in the SUV that contributed to its propensity to flip over. It also is possible that due to the road conditions there was no other possible outcome than the death of this family, but when automobile makers are honest with consumers and do the utmost to construct their vehicles responsibly, we all benefit. Conversely, when they are dishonest or overlook safety measures, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, or death can be the result.