personal injury attorney

Car Runs Up Tow Truck Ramp, Flies Through Air, Injuring One Person

April 28, 2023 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

Investigators believe that distracted driving may have caused a horrific crash that sent one person to a local hospital.

After the vehicle crashed through a barrier, sped up the tow truck’s ramp, crashed through the cab, and went airborne, it landed on its passenger side and flipped over, hitting another car in the other lane. The first car eventually came to a stop right side up as smoke rose from the wreck.

The driver, a 21-year-old woman from Tallahassee, Florida, survived the crash but suffered serious injuries.

Alleged Drunk Driver Kills Teenage Girl

December 9, 2022 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

A 21-year-old man, who was allegedly intoxicated, lost control of his pickup, killing a 16-year-old high school cheerleader.

The girl, a junior at Mill Creek High School, was the front-seat passenger in a pickup truck heading north on Sugarloaf Parkway toward State Route 316, authorities said. The driver, a 21-year-old male, failed to navigate onto the ramp and struck a concrete barrier. “Gone from our sight, but never our hearts,” a tribute posted on the school’s Facebook page reads. “… Our deepest condolences go out to her family and we hope the many happy memories she has left behind will offer some peace in this difficult time.”

The driver now faces several criminal charges, including driving under the influence, failure to maintain a single lane, and first-degree vehicular homicide.

Electronic Evidence in Truck Wreck Claims

February 4, 2022 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

Since 2009, the number of large truck accidents in Georgia has increased by 47%. These wrecks often cause catastrophic injuries, like serious burns and head injuries. Diesel fuel burns at a different temperature from ordinary gasoline, and a fully loaded large truck weighs more than 80,000 pounds. So, these wrecks often involve fires and almost always involve an unbelievable amount of force.

Electronic evidence is often very compelling in these cases. This kind of proof resonates well with tech-savvy Cobb County jurors. Additionally, most courtrooms have large, HD monitors. When jurors see these screens, they expect to see pictures on these screens. So, a Marietta personal injury attorney usually tries to present as much electronic evidence as possible. This proof increases the chances jurors will award maximum compensation for your serious injuries.

Event Data Recorder

What is the Graves Amendment and Why Does it Matter?

December 24, 2021 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

This federal law often affects U-Haul and other rental vehicle collision claims. A fully-loaded, 26-foot U-Haul truck weighs about 36,000 pounds. When these trucks are involved in high-speed collisions, the resulting injuries are often catastrophic.

Frequently, U-Haul drivers have little or no insurance. This lack of insurance is normally not a problem. Under the negligent entrustment rule, vehicle owners are financially responsible for damages if they knowingly allow incompetent operators to drive their motor vehicles.

Given the size of U-Haul trucks and the fact that the drivers normally do not have commercial licenses, many U-Haul drivers are incompetent. However, an obscure provision of federal law, the Graves Amendment, protects some U-Haul owners in some cases.

Should I Hire a Car Accident Attorney?

September 10, 2021 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

If you were recently injured in a car accident and plan to sue the other driver, you may consider hiring a personal injury attorney who has experience litigating these kinds of accidents. This article will provide some information regarding the role of car accident attorneys.

What Does a Car Accident Attorney Do?

A car accident attorney is a personal injury attorney who typically engages in some of the following duties:

What to Do Immediately After a Car Accident

April 30, 2021 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

Unfortunately, car accidents are an inevitable part of life. In Georgia, car accidents are the leading cause of injury deaths and the second-leading cause of hospitalizations and emergency room visits. Even if you are a cautious driver, you may be involved in an accident with another driver. Being in a car accident can be a traumatic experience, and if you have never been in a car accident before, you may not know what steps you are supposed to take afterwards. The following tips will provide you with the necessary steps to take if you are ever involved in an accident.

Move your vehicle

If your accident is minor and there is no major structural damage to the vehicle, move the vehicle out of traffic, preferably to a well-lit area. This will help minimize the risk of other vehicles colliding with your car while it is sitting in traffic and will ensure that you and your vehicle are safe from oncoming vehicles.

Truck Driver Fatigue is a Major Highway Hazard

April 2, 2021 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

While federal regulations limit the amount of time a truck driver can spend behind the wheel in any given day, as well as weekly totals, those regulations still allow truckers to spend far more time per day driving than most people ever do, certainly on a daily basis. Truckers can spend up to 11 hours driving in a day, but that can be extended if there is adverse weather. Truckers are allowed to spend more time per week driving – up to 60 hours in 7 days — than most other people spend at work. Napping briefly at your desk might not win you points with your boss, but the consequences for napping behind the wheel, even briefly, are much more serious.

Driver Fatigue Negatively Affects Performance, Safety

Studies of the effects of fatigue on truck drivers indicate that driving while tired has a number of negative impacts on driving performance, including:

Distracted Driving is a Constant Problem on the Roads

January 15, 2021 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

No one who has ever driven a car is a stranger to distracted driving. Pretty much every single driver out there has driven while distracted at some point. Making adjustments to you climate controls, fiddling with your sound system, even eating some fast-food take-out – it is all distracted driving. Because everyone does it, and almost everyone does so without any serious consequences, many people tend to downplay the risks associated with distracted driving. Just because you have not been harmed by distracted driving, though, just means it has not happened yet. You have probably never been hit by lightning, either, but deaths and injuries from distracted driving are far more common than being hit by lightning. If you are on the road, you are at risk.

Distracted Driving is Deadly

More than 2,800 people died in the United States in 2018 in traffic accidents involving distracted drivers, and that number only reflects the number that we know about. Countless other accidents may have been caused by distracted driving but not reported as such. Another 400,000 people were injured in such accidents. Roughly 20% of those deaths were among people who were not even in a vehicle on the road – they were pedestrians, bicycle riders, or just close enough to a roadway to be killed in a traffic accident.

Not All Truck Accidents Happen on Highways

January 8, 2021 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

Say the words “truck accident” and most people immediately get a mental picture of an 18-wheeled tractor-trailer rig barreling down an interstate highway and somehow being involved in an accident worthy of a Michael Bay movie. If that is your mental image of a truck accident, you might be overlooking a common type of truck accident that is likely to strike much closer to home — accidents involving delivery vehicles, garbage trucks, and recycling trucks. COVID-19 has resulted in a lot more people ordering items online, and pretty much every neighborhood in the country has residential garbage and recycling pickup. This has led to residential streets swarming with delivery and refuse collection trucks that are in a hurry to accomplish their rounds and that are a lot larger than most passenger vehicles. The drivers of these vehicles are not just driving – they are focused on staying on schedule while they are delivering packages or picking up trash or recycling. That does not mean every driver of these trucks is distracted and dangerous, but it does not make them safer drivers, either.

Delivery Trucks are a Lot Bigger Than Your Car

Size almost always comes out on top in a traffic accident. Bigger vehicles weigh more and pack more force in a collision. It is just physics. Larger vehicles almost always emerge from accidents with smaller vehicles with less damage, fewer injuries, and fewer fatalities. Delivery vans, such as those used by Amazon and other companies, often weigh 11,000 pounds or more. A garbage truck can range from 40,000 to 64,000 pounds. Either of those vehicles has a substantial size and weight advantage over your passenger vehicle, which weighs an average of 4,000 pounds and can weigh as little as 2,400 pounds.

Spinal Cord Injuries Often Severe and Costly

December 18, 2020 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

Spinal cord injuries have many causes, but at its most basic, a spinal cord injury is an injury to the spinal cord as a result of trauma leading to some level of loss of function of the spinal cord. This usually translates into a loss of body functions, as the nerves that control the body all pass through the spinal cord. Such loss of function can include anything from loss of feeling in the extremities – anything from temporary numbness in a finger or two all the way to permanent loss of feeling in an arm or a leg – all the way to paralysis, where you lose the ability to move parts of your body. Further, nerves do not heal, particularly in the case of a break in the spinal cord, meaning that spinal cord injuries are considerably more likely than other types of injuries to lead to long-term or permanent disability. These kinds of injuries can be both debilitating and expensive. The legal and health care legal costs related to spinal cord injuries are more than $29 billion each year and rising.

Traffic Accidents are the Main Cause of Spinal Cord Injuries

Traffic accidents, including passenger vehicle and motorcycle accidents, are the leading cause of spinal cord injuries each year in the United States. Traffic accidents account for almost half of all spinal cord injuries in the U.S. annually. This unwelcome distinction falls disproportionately upon motorcycle riders, who are easily the least well-protected users of the nation’s roads and highways. Even with a helmet on, a motorcycle rider is more exposed than anyone in the smallest, lightest passenger vehicle. In a collision with another vehicle, or even a single-vehicle accident, the motorcyclist almost always incurs worse injuries than the occupant of a passenger vehicle. Motorcycle riders have no steel cocoon surrounding them, nor anything to keep them from flying from their vehicles – rather, they are practically certain of being thrown from their bikes in an accident. This leaves motorcycle riders especially vulnerable to spinal cord injuries. In addition to colliding with another vehicle, they all too frequently are thrown from their bike and hit some other object, whether it be a tree, sign, telephone pole, another vehicle, or even “just” the pavement.