Atlanta Injury Attorneys Blog

The Atlanta Injury Attorneys Blog has often posted on the serious dangers of bus and truck accidents and the major injuries that can result from crashes involving these vehicles. My Atlanta personal injury law practice is dedicated to helping people who have suffered injuries in serious motor vehicle accidents, including those involving large trucks and buses.

Last week in Nebraska, 41 people were taken to the hospital for injuries when a bus crashed into an overturned semitrailer that had drifted and overcorrected, causing it to become imbalanced and overturn. Thankfully, many of these injuries were minor, but others were not. Serious injuries often result from accidents involving trucks and buses, not to mention a collision of two of these large vehicles.

The cause of the accident is under investigation. The accident occurred near Omaha at about 2 a.m. in the morning. The bus was traveling to Denver. A semitrailer had overturned and was in a lane of traffic when a second truck came along and clipped it.
Then the bus collided with the overturned tractor-trailer.

The passenger accounts are chilling -- the aftermath was chaotic and the impact frightening. Some passengers report that the driver was talking on the phone at times during the trip and perhaps prior to the accident. Investigators are looking into this, but this has not been confirmed.

According to the report in the Associated Press, the bus company does not allow personal cell phone calls. However, drivers are permitted to speak with dispatchers and other drivers and terminals while they are in transit.

Sadly, the bus driver was in critical condition after the accident and the driver of the overturned semitrailer was in fair condition. One passenger was in serious condition and two others were in fair condition.

The bus company involved apparently has had no record of safety violations in the past two years. The driver was very experienced, had ten years of bus driving and nearly one million miles driven. Unlike many buses, the bus that was involved in this crash was new and had seat belts.

Mandatory seat belts in buses have long been recommended by the US Department of Transportation, but the recommendation has not yet been fully implemented. A proposed rule in accordance with NHTSA's 2007 Motorcoach Safety Plan and DOT's 2009 Departmental Motorcoach Safety Action Plan, has been issued by NHTSA which would amend the Federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) on occupant crash protection.

This proposed rule would require lap/shoulder seat belts for each passenger seating position in new motorcoaches. The proposal also requires a lap/shoulder belt for the motorcoach and large school bus driver's seating positions, which currently are required to have either a lap or a lap/shoulder belt. It is not clear whether the driver in this crash had a seat belt on or if it would have made a difference given the severity of the collision.

If you have been seriously injured in a truck, bus or other highway accident, please contact the Law Offices of P. Charles Scholle, PC. Our law firm helps clients secure the financial and medical recovery they need after a traumatic event in their lives.

We provide a free consultation to evaluate your matter in one of our convenient Atlanta area offices, and if we represent you, we provide supportive legal representation to you and your family.

As a Gwinnett County Georgia personal injury lawyer with many years of trial experience representing families and individuals that have been the victims of serious injury, I was particularly saddened by a Carroll County teen's death in a school bus crash last fall.

And now, the parents of the deceased teen have filed a lawsuit due to the tragic and deadly crash, after the Georgia State Patrol's report on the accident revealed a problem with the driver, a trainee.

The Atlanta Constitution-Journal reports that the legal action names as defendants the driver, the school system, its former superintendant and the school transportation coordinator. The driver has had problems in the past with his driving and in this accident was recently sentenced at the Carroll County court to probation and received a fine.

Apparently, the driver had consumed cough medicine and was less alert due to the medication. This medication allegedly impacted his ability to drive properly at the time he drove the bus over a culvert. The bus flipped over after this and the victim was thrown from the bus and crushed by it. Other students were injured.

Buses are particularly known to be dangerous vehicles for passengers in a serious accident. Federal authorities have been aware of this issue for decades and is trying to implement recommendations that were made many years ago to improve bus safety. The lack of seat belts and windows that open are often blamed when passengers are thrown from a bus in an accident. Sadly, in this accident the victim was thrown out of the bus.

There are likely several theories of recovery pled in the parents complaint. Although I have not yet reviewed the complaint filed by the student's parents, Georgia wrongful death laws provide for situations such as this that occur when a person dies in an accident and someone else is at fault.

The legal action for wrongful death is brought by the relatives of the victim who are permitted to seek damages for such things as the physical pain the victim had to suffer prior to death, the expected income the victim would have earned during his or her lifetime had the accident not occurred, and the emotional suffering the family has endured, among other damages.

Another area of damages that can be sought in a wrongful death action are called punitive damages. These are intended to punish the defendants if they are shown to have engaged in such things as reckless or intentionally negligent conduct.

We will keep our readers informed as this case progresses.

About Charles Scholle, Personal Injury Lawyer

Charles Scholle is a Gwinnett County wrongful death and accident lawyer, serving the surrounding area, including Dekalb, Duluth, Buford and all other cities and counties. He provides free consultations to evaluate your legal issues and situation.

Please contact our law firm at any time, we focus entirely on helping clients recover from personal injuries and represent families when a tragedy, such as a fatality, occurs.

The Atlanta Injury Attorneys Blog has recently posted on an Atlanta area MARTA bus accident in which a car played a major factor in the crash. We have also posted on the push to implement federal bus safety standards that have been in place for a decade, but are not yet fully implemented.

Last week, a Harmon Brothers Tour bus chartered to carry 52 passengers from the Mill Creek High School in Buford, was traveling on 1-75 in a construction zone when it had to swerve off the highway to avoid a car stopped in its lane. The bus traveled up an embankment and struck an overpass, all to avoid the car.

The car was in the lane in which the bus had been traveling due to a rear-end collision that occurred before the bus came along. The car had been pushed into the lane in which the bus was traveling, after it had been involved in the rear-end collision.

There were 47 Gwinnett County high school students on board the chartered bus when the accident occurred. One bus passenger was airlifted to a hospital in Macon and 19 others were taken to nearby hospitals. The airlifted passenger was said to be in stable condition. The other passengers were taken to the local hospital as a precaution and were not expected to have any serious injuries.

As with so many Atlanta area highway accidents, this colliison occurred in a construction zone at a merge point where three lanes merged into two. Accident and injury can be avoided if drivers slow down in construction areas and allow the merge to occur without trying to rush through the situation.

For many years now, the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendations for bus safety have been ignored with very little action taken by the Department of Transportation or Congress. And just when the federal government is about to start hearings on bus safety, we have a local reminder of the dangers inherent in Atlanta bus accidents.

Earlier this week, 13 passengers were injured when a MARTA bus was hit head on by a vehicle that veered into the wrong lane. The bus was turning into the Indian Creek MARTA station and had been traveling on route 119. As the bus prepared to turn into the station, it was hit. The driver of the car has been charged and the bus driver is said to have no fault in this incident.

The larger concern about bus safety is demonstrated by this MARTA accident. All the passengers that were injured were in the bus, including a three-year old girl who was taken to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston. Other injured passengers were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

The national bus safety issues are looming after so many passengers have been killed or injured across the country. We regularly read about Georgia bus accident deaths and injuries. Just last fall, the Atlanta Injury Attorneys Blog posted on a tragic accident in which one student was killed and ten other were injured after a bus overturned between on Highway 113. As is often the case in bus accident deaths, the passenger who died had been ejected from the bus.

This spring the NTSB will hold hearings on the safety recommendations that have been in place for over a decade. These include seat belts in buses, safer windows, stronger roofs, recorders to track the time a driver has been driving to avoid fatigue, as well as better driver instruction and licensing controls.

The United States Department of Transportation has taken some small steps for bus safety and drivers are prohibited from texting while driving. As the economy struggles and many are trading in their cars for public transportation the Atlanta Injury Attorneys Blog urges that bus safety be taken seriously and that governmental entities responsible for passenger safety standards, implement more safety for all bus riders.

It should have been just another bus ride home to his mom, but it ended in tragedy. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that earlier this week an 8-year old Cartersville boy was struck by a school bus and died on the scene at the Cartersville bus barn. This tragic school bus accident has the local community in shock.

The Atlanta Injury Attorneys Blog posted recently about two teens that were struck and killed while walking on a rural Hephzibah road. When tragedy strikes, we question why. How could a young boy be taken in such a tragic accident? A tragedy like this causes all Georgians to think about keeping our loved ones, and especially our children, safe. What seems like a normal day can turn into devastation in the blink of an eye.

In the Cartersville tragedy, the boy rode in a school bus and was dropped off at the bus barn only to be killed after exiting the bus. That bus was driven by a relative. The boy had probably done this many times before, because his mother worked at the bus barn. Tragically, on this day the young boy got off his bus at the barn and then apparently walked around the bus in which he had been riding. The boy was killed by a school bus that was in the area of the bus barn.

Sadly, the school bus driver who was driving the bus that struck and killed the young boy was apparently also a long-term employee with an excellent record. Authorities are investigating the incident, but say charges are unlikely to be filed. Certainly, that driver's sorrow must also be terribly difficult.

The Cartersville school system is understandably in shock over this tragedy. The assistant superintendant of schools spoke to the AJC about the closely-knit community and their care for one another: " 'Words do not fully capture the pain our hearts feel at this time; and we join with [the family] as we grieve together.' "

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.

Big news in the prevention of Georgia car and truck crashes: a new initiative, the Georgia Targeting Aggressive Cars & Trucks Program, began on Monday. The program specifically focuses on reducing the number of crashes, injuries and deaths related to accidents involving collisions of lightweight vehicles with large commercial trucks.

Tractor-trailers can weigh 50 times more than ordinary consumer vehicles--sometimes up to 40 tons--and this obviously puts the average Joe's car at a distinct disadvantage in a collision. Large commercial trucks have many safety concerns that ordinary vehicles don't have, and this means many different safety checks a driver must perform each and every time he or she hits the road.

But what happens while they're actually on the road? Driving behavior accounts for as much if not more risk for accidents, and commercial truck drivers bear extra responsibility to be careful while driving. To help enforce this, Georgia is having law enforcement officers on I-85 and I-585 specifically look out for aggressive driving behavior such as tailgating, improper lane changes, speeding and failure to signal.

The goal is to significantly cut back on the number of crashes between commercial and lightweight vehicles in Gwinnett and Hall Counties. Between 2007 and 2009, approximately 1,160 crashes were reported, with almost 800 injuries and 25 deaths resulting.

Studies show that texting while driving increases your chances of crashing by 20 times. Even using your phone in a hands-free mode is dangerous since it's a "cognitive distraction" which may decrease driving performance. In fact, texting and other distracted driving account for nearly 80% of all automobile accidents.
The effects of car accidents can be devastating. Crashes may results in death and catastrophic injuries, including brain injuries, paralysis and severe burns.

According to the Department of Transportation cell phones are involved in 1.6 million accidents a year, causing half a million injuries and 6,000 deaths.

Teens are especially hard hit. Just this past December a Georgia teenager died while texting his girlfriend. Statistics show the motor vehicle death rate of teens caused by cell phones is 21 percent and rising by 4 percent a year.

A bill aimed at Georgia teens passed the Georgia House last March, but has since stalled. Two more texting bills desgined to ban texting while driving have been introduced. Because of the extreme risks involved, It's crucial we pass these laws to ensure the safety of our Georgia roadways and drivers.

Texting accidents are not limited to automobile accidents. Driver texting has been found as a culprit in trucking accidents, bus accidents and train accidents. In order to address this growing problem, in late January the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it would ban drivers of commercial vehicles from using their cell phone to send text message, effective immediately. Truck and bus drivers who text while driving commercial vehicles may be subject to civil or criminal penalties of up to $2750.

As a Metro Atlanta bus accident attorney, I was saddened to hear of a Sept. 15 accident in which a school bus fatally hit a five-year-old child. Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA reported Oct. 5 on a bond hearing in the case for bus driver Sharon Dale. Dale is charged with second-degree homicide, failure to use due regard and violating procedures for school bus drivers in the incident that killed kindergartener Everett Johnson in northwest Atlanta. The hearing, which was attended by a group of Dale's colleagues, ended with Dale's release on a signature bond. She is suspended from her job with pay until the outcome of the trial.

According to the article, the accident happened shortly after Johnson and six other students got off the bus. Johnson reportedly fell behind the pack because he had dropped his book bag. When he bent over to retrieve it, Dale allegedly couldn't see him and tried to pull the bus away from the curb. Dale was reportedly so distraught that police waited a day to interview her. At the hearing, police officer Kim Jones testified that she climbed into the driver's seat and found that it would have been impossible to see a bent-over child in the position Johnson had occupied. However, Fulton County prosecutor Richard Elliott argued that Dale had a responsibility to adjust the mirrors for full visibility. Jones testified that she observed nothing wrong with the mirrors.

My heart goes out to Johnson's family. As his grandmother observed in the article, no amount of legal maneuvers can reverse this terrible accident. But as a Gwinnett County bus accident lawyer, I am very interested in what bus manufacturers and bus drivers can learn from the tragedy. Dale may be guilty of extreme carelessness if, as Elliott suggested, adjusting the mirrors correctly would have helped her see Johnson. If that's the case, Dale, and perhaps also her employer, would be liable for her negligence in any lawsuit the Johnson family chooses to file. However, if it's not possible to adjust the mirrors to remove every blind spot from the driver's view, the negligence may more properly lie with the manufacturer of the bus. In that case, it would be the manufacturer who would be liable for the wrongful death.