How Do Pedestrian Accidents Happen?
If a vehicle driver does not carefully watch the road, devastating results can appear. This is especially the case when talking about pedestrians. As all pedestrian accident injury lawyers know, pedestrian-car accidents tend to be really serious. Some of the common causes of such collisions are:
- The driver was not attentive.
- The driver was distracted because of using a smartphone.
- Crosswalk locations have design defects. This includes not considering downstream and upstream of traffic flows.
- Not respecting the posted speed limits.
- Bikes and motor vehicles do not yield when pedestrians use crosswalks.
- Turning at an intersection without being careful and looking in both directions.
- Driving while influenced by alcohol or drugs.
In an urban area, there is a much higher possibility of a pedestrian accident happening. However, some truly horrific accidents do happen even on country roads. For instance, there are several winding roads that have highly limited visibility. Due to high speeds involved, serious crashes can occur.
Crosswalk Problems
As you surely noticed from looking at the causes highlighted above, many pedestrian accidents with cars involved happen on crosswalks. Unfortunately, there are several situations in which there are other parties at fault, not just the car driver. Road design and crosswalk location can easily contribute to such accidents.
People that maintain crosswalks and design them need to take pedestrian safety into account. When this does not happen, it is possible that the crosswalk is not safe. This leads to extra responsibility due to unsafe crosswalks. The potential defendants can include governmental agencies and engineering firms.
The reason why crosswalk problems have to be mentioned when discussing pedestrian-car accidents is that personal injury claims with governmental agencies at fault lead to much higher financial compensation. This is simply because problems with crosswalks could lead to more people being injured so punitive damages are so often included in the claim results.
Serious Injuries
Lawyers fully understand how catastrophic injuries can be in pedestrian accidents. Our body is not capable of withstanding how much damage would appear when a collision happens with a vehicle. You are practically hit by thousands of tons and can easily end up with really serious injuries. Some examples of very common pedestrian-car accident injuries are:
- Head injuries – this includes severe traumatic injuries, coma, and concussions.
- Deep cuts (commonly known as lacerations) and bruises (also known as contusions) – this includes major organ damage.
- Facial and dental injuries – this includes loss of vision and eye injuries.
- Spinal cord injuries – this can easily include paralysis and several other conditions that lead to loss of function.
- Orthopedic injuries – this includes any damage to the musculoskeletal system and broken bones.
Conclusions
Pedestrian accidents can happen in so many different ways and it is very important to get the medical treatment you need if you were injured. At the same time, you have to hire car accident lawyers who are highly experienced in dealing with pedestrian collisions. This will help you much more than you imagine since you can focus on your recovery while the attorney will take care of the entire legal process for you.
