Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Accidents

At Michaels & Smolak, we all wear our seatbelts, everywhere, every time we are in a car, whether we ride in the back or the front. Hey, as Syracuse car accident lawyers, what would you expect?  We’ve handled many cases where we believe even backseat belts have saved lives or reduced injuries.   We’ve also represented families of several unrestrained backseat passengers who were killed or seriously injury and who we believe would have survived or suffered less serious injuries had they been restrained.  According to AAA statistics, unrestrained rear-seat passengers involved in crashes are eight times more likely to be seriously injured and three times more likely to be killed.

So that’s why we support the new bill, likely to become law in New York, requiring backseat passengers to buckle up.  The current law requires only front seat occupants to wear seatbelts, and those in the back seat who are under 16 years old.

New Yorkers will not be alone in being required to buckle up in back.  Twenty-nine other States already have a buckle-up-in-back law.

This is an update on the crazy serial hit-and-run dude I talked about in two past blog posts.  Anyone interested in following the story (and believe me, it’s worth it!) who has not read those two prior posts should read them now by clicking here and here.

Long story short, a NASCAR-loving nut job had a nasty habit of plowing into other vehicles, always from behind, and always as the victim was moving forward.  He appears to have been using innocent motorists in Ontario, Wayne and Seneca Counties to enact fantasy NASCAR races. Here’s his homepage on Facebook:

Click and blowup the image above and you can see a few of his favorite things (mentally insert the song “these are a few of my favorite things” here):  NASCAR and death.

My last blog post described how I got whacked by a hit-and-run driver and then chased him down.  You can read that blog post here.  Some of my readers commented that I was a stubborn fool for pursuing him at fairly high speeds on a snowy day.  I agree.  As it turns out, though, my stubbornness may have paid off and made the roads safer for my fellow motorists in Wayne, Seneca and Ontario Counties.  Read on to find out how!

As I explained in my prior post, I kept up my hot pursuit until the 911 operator asked me to cease it.  But by then I had at least gotten his license plate number and several pictures of his tan-colored Chevy pickup truck.  Seneca County law enforcement now knew who owned the vehicle, a Lyons NY resident.  Here’s one of the pictures I snapped of the offending vehicle while on the chase:

After I posted my blog, several of my readers from the Geneva area tipped me off about Facebook postings they had seen describing a similar tan-colored pickup truck deliberately rear-ending folks. Could this be the same guy?

This Central New York car accident lawyer was involved in a hit-and-run and a wild chase.  So buckle up and follow my story!

Last Tuesday morning, I was heading east on Route 318 through the Town of Tyre, Seneca County, NY, my usual route to get from my home in Geneva to my office in Auburn.  I had been following a slow-moving tractor trailer on the slippery, snow-covered road.  The tractor trailer was going 55 miles per hour.  A rust-colored pickup truck trailed me.  The tractor trailer then moved into the left-turn lane at the intersection with Route 414 to turn left toward the Thruway.   I slowed down to about 30 mph behind the tractor trailer as it moved into the left-turn lane.  I kept going straight through the green light.  Just after I passed through the intersection, I glanced up  and noticed the rust-colored pickup truck growing large – quickly — in my rear-view mirror.  I knew I was going to get wacked, and hard, so I braced for it.

Here’s a google map showing the approximate location of where I got rear-ended:

A woman is walking her bicycle across a street at night. She is wearing light colored clothing. A car approaches.  Its headlights shine upon her.  The car does not slow down. It is traveling at 40 miles per hour. The car does not brake. Inside the car, another woman sits behind the wheel. She does not steer. She does not brake. She just sits there.  At the last second, just before the collision, the woman behind the wheel shrieks.  But it is too late to react.  The pedestrian is down.  She is dead.

In the 20^th Century traditional car accident case, no question about who’s responsible:  the driver.  But this case is different.  There is no driver.  The car was driving itself.  The car is owned by Uber.  Uber’s engineers designed the car to be driverless.  The woman sitting behind the wheel was not driving.  She is an Uber employee and was supposed to be “monitoring” the vehicle, just in case the vehicle made a mistake.

This collision, which occurred Sunday night in Tempe, Arizona, was a major setback for Uber.  But also for the entire self-driving car industry. It is believed to be the first pedestrian death caused by a self-driving car.

We all know that Venus Williams is deadly on the tennis court.  But is she deadly off court, too?  Specifically, did she recently kill someone with her car?  Or will she win in court like she does on the court?  Read and find out.

According to early news reports, just before Venus Williams was going to head off to Wimbledon (where she is now “killing it” on the court) from Florida (where she lives), Venus drove through an intersection where she was t-boned by another car, whose driver died from the impact.  The other driver’s Estate promptly brought a claim against the acclaimed tennis goddess for wrongful death.

Things looked bad for Venus.  Witnesses confirmed that, at the time of the crash, the traffic light was red for Venus and green for the other driver.