Howell and Christmas, LLC Follow Up On Highway Defects Post
Back in January, Charleston workers' compensation lawyers posted a three part series of posts that reported on an unfortunate accident that resulted in the death of Goose Creek woman. The original entries can be found at the end of this post.
As a quick refresher, the basic facts of the incident are as follows. In March 2010, 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 behind the wheel and wife sitting in the front passenger seat. 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.
This freak auto 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.
In early March of 2011, the Post and Courier reported that the state of Alabama paid $1 million dollars to the family of the mother who was killed by the chunk of flying concrete. Alabama state officials said the money was awarded to compensate for the mother's wrongful death.
While no monetary sum can truly compensate for a loved ones death, the state attorney general can approve such settlements when it is obvious a lawsuit is forthcoming and the state has a "serious risk" of losing. It may have been inevitable that a lawsuit could be filed against the state of Alabama for their extremely unsafe highway defects, there was never a wrongful death lawsuit filed, nor was did the family file an administrative claim. But, after reviewing the freak incident, which concluded that the defective highway conditions were a contributor to the accident that killed a wife and mother, the Alabama Division of Risk Management made the $1 million payment for the Alabama Department of Transportation.
The federal government does not keep statistics on how many auto accidents and wrongful deaths are caused by poor road maintenance. So it is difficult to determine the frequency of such sad incidents. However, it is known that of the 123,470 wrecks involving motor vehicles last year in Alabama, 33 of those were on roads with ruts, potholes, bumps, and crumbles, according to state trooper reports and study done for the Associated Press by the Center for Advanced Public Safety at the University of Alabama. The study concluded that none of the injuries incurred in those 33 wrecks were directly blamed for the condition of the road, nor were there any deaths.
More Blog Posts: Original Entry Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
