The world of personal injury law never rests

Today we’re going to cover a little bit of this and that. We’ll start out with a ditch accident in Iowa and end with what’s popular. Of course what may be going on in your world may not be all that popular but it’s still important to you.

On October 7th 2009 Austin Shontz was driving a Buick Rendezvous north on U.S. 218 when he lost control left the road and entered the east ditch at which point the vehicle vaulted and struck a tree head on. After the impact the vehicle came to rest on the passenger side in a creek knee deep in water. Henry County Deputies and Fire and Rescue workers overturned the vehicle in an attempt to rescue the passengers. Victoria Shontz died as a result of the injuries and the driver, Austin Shontz, was airlifted to the hospital and his condition is not known.

What the witnesses have to say will go a long way to explaining what caused this accident. Was it alcohol related, distraction in the passenger compartment, a problem with the roadway, weather related, the driver and passengers arguing or fooling around, a deer crossing the roadway, speed related, bad tires, a passenger distraction or a malfunction of the car itself?

Sometimes I wish we could access the investigative file online to see where the evidence is leading us towards a conclusion. Wherever it may lead the Henry County Prosecutor is surely to be looking at the facts and applying it to the law.

And on I-35 eight cars collided near the junction of I-435, a place I’ve driven and know to need some sort of redesign.  It must have been rush hour traffic because the time of this one was 7:35 a.m.

In another collision where the car ended up in the ditch the driver was charged with driving while intoxicated and providing alcohol to a minor. The 17-year-old, Amanda Nicole Early broke her neck. The car ended up in the ditch, some allege he did it on purpose and that’s when the younger passenger was injured. In ditches there are culverts which are heavy, embedded and immovable concrete objects is the only way to describe them. Drive into one and you’re not likely to get very far. Everything in the car will continue ahead at the driving speed. Don’t have on a seat belt and your head is likely to strike the windshield or frame. Like Early you may fracture your neck aka a vertebrae. The driver was from Cummings.

It’s interesting to see several truckers blogging. I wonder if they write and post while on the road or wait till they get home. Now that would be a serious distraction if done while driving. There’s “The Truckers Report” and TruckieD or TD as I refer to him. He’s on the IB and has his own blog, as I just discovered. Truckie-D’s Blog. I don’t think he’s really happy with us right now. He’s taken issue with the attorneys writing about I-35.

Once in a ditch your car or truck is more likely to roll because after skidding sideways it will encounter a lot of friction rather than continue to slide sideways. I found an interesting statistic on the InjuryBoard Auto Accidents Help Center. The stat is rollovers account for only 2% of all accidents but 33% of all deaths. The 10 deadliest cities for total traffic fatalities in a single year are NY, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Phoenix, Dallas, Jacksonville, San Antonio, Detroit and San Diego.

Today’s popular posts are about a Ford suit that settled for $17.7 million, Netflix looking into your personal information, the Tylenol-Motrin recall for the strange odor and body scans at the airport. We’ve got strollers nipping finger tips off and the CPSC acting to force a recall with Simplicity strollers.  This follows a recall just short while ago for Maclaren strollers. Watch out for those little fingers.  Mittleman comes at us again about Internet privacy and this time takes on Facebook with its privacy issues. This time the story take’s on a bit or intrigue with the whistleblower aspect. Of course H1N1 is still in the news along with loan modification scams written by Paul Kiesel from Los Angeles. There is so much to read about, so many injuries occurring in so many different ways; just hope your number isn’t called today to be the injured one.  It’s a busy world out there, fast paced, industrialized and highly mechanized. Pinch points and fast whizzing cars and trucks. We’ve got ice covering every outside surface and enough ice melt and sand to thaw a glacier.

As the late Michael Conrad used to say on Hill Street Blues, “Let’s be careful out there.”

We wish all the families well.

See also, Truckers, ditches, Netflix and witches ... hodgepodge news review, on the InjuryBoard.