Highway's Defects Cause Wrongful Death: Part 1 of 3
Over the holidays South Carolina Auto Accident Lawyers came across an article in the Post and Courier that outlines an unfortunate incident that resulted in a beloved wife and mother's death. Due to the length of the article and seriousness of the incident, involving highly unsafe highway defects, this entry will be divided into three parts.
Last March while returning to their home in Goose Creek, a family of four, traveling in a green Ford pickup suffered a fatal blow, but not from another vehicle traveling on the interstate, but from a piece of the interstate itself. The couple was sitting in the front of the truck, husband driving and wife riding, with their two young children in safety seats behind them when an Alabama fragment of Interstate 20 came through the windshield striking the wife, causing serious head injuries, narrowly missing the pre-schoolers, and flying out the truck’s cab.
The fatal fragment came from a recently repaired pothole; a pocket of jagged bits of concrete covering half of the slow lane, and was flung into the air by a 1995 Toyota Camry. The driver of the Camry was a single mother who was simply giving a friend a ride to the other side of the Georgia line. Although the 23 year-old driver knows she was not at fault in the accident, it is reported she is still haunted by the incident, especially since her only form of transportation remains her blue 1995 Camry.
The accident occurred at milepost 210 on I-20 in a construction zone that has slowed drivers and traffic for years, only a few short miles before the interstate smooths out in Georgia. This particular section of interstate, which is traveled by more than 33,000 drivers daily, is notorious for being riddled with pits and patches that drivers regularly turn up the volume on their radios to drown out the aggravating noise of tires rolling over rutted roadway.
