1. Distracted Driving
The first cause of car accidents on South Carolina roads is distracted driving. That can go anywhere from fiddling with the radio to looking at your cell phone while you are driving and not paying attention to the road, reaching for a book, or turning and looking at somebody who’s immediately next to you. The point is, is that you have taken your eyes off the road and you are no longer keeping a proper lookout and as a result, you strike someone and they’re injured as a result of your negligence.
2. Defective Car Design
The second cause of car accidents has to do with defective design with regard to your car, and defective design is actually kind of a different animal entirely. What we are talking about is mass tort claims and something that all of you would be able to identify with that’s currently going on is the GM recall.
Right now, they have recalled approximately 11 million vehicles that were made between 2008 and the present. The reason being, there are defective components in those vehicles that are causing them to drive off the side of the road and currently 11 people have died as a result of those defective parts.
That is a different situation when it comes to making a claim because now you’re making a claim against the manufacturer of the car as opposed to another driver.
Again, that falls into a larger category of mass torts and you are going to end up in a situation where it is you and at least 100 other people who all have the same problem and you are all kind of put into one lawsuit as opposed to you bringing the lawsuit singly on your own. They compile all of them together and then they are ultimately all settled in a large grouping and in a large settlement and typically it’s under seal, which means that they don’t ever admit liability and they don’t necessarily admit how much they are paying the people that have been hurt as a result of those potential defects.
3. Poor Road Design
Some other things to consider and other causes of car accidents on South Carolina roads would include inadequate or poor road design on the part of the state. What I mean by that is there are certain requirements as far as the number of inches that you can have between the side of the road and where the road is and ultimately how much you can potentially come off. Maybe it’s three inches for instance.
If there’s a variance there of seven or eight inches because there was poor construction on the part of the people that the estate employed to build that road, then that is defective road design and then you go off. Your tire catches and you get pulled off the side of the road because there is a defective road design.The only way you’re going to be able to establish that is if you send engineering experts out there and they do the – they test the design and they measure it with what’s required by the state and then they see that there’s a discrepancy. In that case, you are going to have to bring a potential claim against the state because the road was poorly constructed and a person was injured as a result and so therefore the state potentially is negligent for that injury.
At the Hartman Law Firm in North Charleston, we have the ability to help with your worker’s compensation claim. Work injuries can have a devastating effect on your life but, fortunately, a South Carolina worker’s compensation attorney is here to help. To schedule a free consultation, please call 843-300-7600 today.
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