Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Accidents

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A 19 year old Sunriver man is in jail following a weekend Oregon car crash in which he is alleged to have intentionally rammed a police car, according to the Bend Bulletin. The newspaper reports that the final crash came after the alleged perpetrator skipped out on a restaurant check in one establishment, stole beer from another and finally led police on a three-mile high-speed car chase.

The paper reports the suspect intentionally rammed a police car that was trying to get him to stop. The suspect is now in the Klamath County jail following the Oregon car crash. The Bulletin reports that he is being held pending $45,000 bond. The crash occurred on Highway 97 near Bend, according to The Oregonian.

It goes without saying that most of the legal problems this suspect will now face are criminal in nature. The incident, however, is a reminder that Oregon robberies and Oregon car chases that result in car crashes can also create civil liability – issues of fairness and justice which the criminal courts are not necessarily able to address.

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An Oregon car crash this weekend involving a motorist from Washington and a tractor-trailer left the out-of-state driver dead, according to both the Associated Press and The Oregonian. The crash occurred in St. Helens, west of Columbia City and northwest of Portland.

Investigators told The Oregonian they believe the victim, a 44 year old woman from the Seattle area, crossed the center line of US 30 as she was heading north around midday Friday. She collided with an oncoming commercial truck hauling two empty trailers and headed south on the same road. Though airlifted to a Portland area hospital following the Oregon car-truck accident the woman later died.

Oregon truck crashes can be among the most serious of Portland auto accidents. The relative sizes of ordinary cars and large trucks leaves drivers especially vulnerable in the event of an Oregon car and truck accident. In the St. Helens crash, for example, the driver of the truck was uninjured, according to The Oregonian.

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As I have noted in a number of previous posts, the new Oregon distracted driving law which came into effect this year allows for “primary enforcement”. That means Oregon police officers can pull drivers over for talking on a handheld cellphone. In some other states, where primary enforcement is not the rule, police must first have noted another offense (speeding, for example, or reckless driving) and may then ticket cellphone use or texting as a secondary, or additional, charge after making the initial traffic stop.

While there is relatively little Oregon distracted driving data available so far (the law has not yet been in force for six months), anecdotal evidence suggests that few of the state’s police departments have made a strong primary enforcement push regarding the distracted driving law.

That, however, may be beginning to change. As the Siuslaw News reports, Florence officials have come to believe that the cellphone ban is not being taken sufficiently seriously. City police issued more than 55 warnings for violations of the Oregon distracted driving law last month alone. The paper quotes the police chief: “That’s way too many for a town our size,” and indicates that officers intend to begin cracking down.

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Preliminary statistics covering Memorial Day weekend indicate that the highway death toll from Oregon car crashes dropped slightly this year. They also, however, still serve as a reminder of the importance of safe driving and the need for experienced representation if you are unfortunate enough to be involved in a Portland auto accident.

According to KPTV, 2010’s preliminary total of four Oregon fatal crashes over the holiday weekend is down one from last year, though it is still double the 2008 figure of two. Oregon State Police also made 73 drunk driving arrests over Memorial Day weekend, the TV station reports. According to The Oregonian that represents a drop from both 2008 and 2009.

Holiday weekends are almost invariably marked by an increase in the number of traffic fatalities nationwide, with Memorial Day weekend often being the worst holiday weekend of the year where Oregon car crashes and other Oregon holiday traffic deaths are concerned.

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Alcohol-related Oregon fatal car accidents and holiday weekends seem to have a grim connection. As the Daily Astorian notes, Memorial Day has long been the holiday weekend in Oregon most closely associated with alcohol-related fatalities. This year is no exception. According to the newspaper an Oregon drunk driver strayed over the center line of Highway 30 just east of Astoria Sunday night, striking a motorcyclist nearly head-on.

The motorcycle rider, who was wearing a helmet, was thrown from his bike and killed. Both the alleged drunk driver and his 13-year old daughter who was riding in the truck with him were uninjured. The Oregonian, quoting Oregon State Police, reported that the truck driver was arrested and charged with drunk driving, reckless driving, manslaughter and recklessly endangering another person (this is presumably a reference to the child in the truck).

Unmentioned by the media, but also worth considering as we think through the legal implications of this tragic Oregon fatal motorcycle accident, is where the alleged driver obtained his alcohol. If a bartender continued to serve the suspect or a store clerk sold him alcohol after he was obviously drunk that person too could be subject to legal action.

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One of the stranger stories of the week comes from Minnesota where a fatal crash involving two cars and two semi-trucks Monday not only killed two people, but also released a swarm of millions of bees.

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, rescuers responding to the fatal car-truck crash had to fight their way through dark clouds of bees released from one of the trucks, both of which were hauling bees that had spent the winter in Mississippi to North Dakota for the summer. The cars were reportedly crushed between the two trucks. Police are still investigating the cause of the fatal car-truck crash, according to the Star-Tribune.

The bee-laden semi-trailers collided with two cars on Interstate 35 closing what the Star-Tribune described as a five-mile stretch of the interstate for several hours. The paper quoted a fireman who was one of the first rescuers on the scene saying; “I saw this big black cloud… I opened up my door and got stung in the face by a couple of bees.”

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A Portland driver accused of intentionally running over a cyclist last year was found guilty of assault by a Multnomah County judge Monday, according to media reports. Sentencing is scheduled for June 8, according to The Oregonian.

The Multnomah County judge cleared Wayne Thompson of first and second degree assault charges but found him guilty of the lesser crime of Third Degree Assault. The Portland auto and bike collision took place last August. According to The Oregonian Thompson and cyclist Michael Luther argued in a parking lot near the intersection of Northeast 122nd Avenue and Glisan Street before “Thompson put his car into reverse and backed into Luther at an estimated 40 mph, police said.” Witnesses said that at the time of the accident Thompson “was looking over his left shoulder, in the direction of travel, and appeared agitated when he struck Luther.”

Though he was wearing a helmet at the time of the incident, Luther suffered an Oregon traumatic brain injury and has been unable to return to work.

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From Maine this weekend comes a strange and tragic story that should be a reminder for all Oregonians of the importance of safe driving. Police in Wells, a town in southern Maine, say a man died Saturday as a result of an unusual multi-car auto accident. What makes this tragedy stand out is the fact that the victim of this multi-car fatal accident was not in either of the vehicles involved in the crash: he died while standing on his lawn presiding over a yard sale – and the yard sale itself was what touched off the events leading to his death.

For Oregonians this tragic story offers several reminders: the importance of safe driving, of course; but also the fact that a Portland fatal car crash can happen anytime, anywhere and that those most severely impacted by an Oregon car crash need not be drivers or passengers in cars and trucks involved in a Portland, Medford, Eugene or Salem auto accident.

According to television station WCSH, the tragedy began early Saturday morning when a driver traveling along a road in Maine spotted a yard sale and decided to make a U-turn so that he could get a closer look. As he did so, “another truck hauling a 30-foot camper-trailer” struck his vehicle. The Truck-camper combo jackknifed onto the lawn where the yard sale was going on, killing the home’s owner and injuring his mother-in-law. The driver of the pick-up that caused the accident was also hospitalized with serious injuries, while the four people in the truck-camper suffered only minor injuries, the station reports.

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Late last month I summarized the key findings of a New York Times article on the latest gadgets available to Oregon drivers and designed to combat distracted driving. Products like this have become increasingly important since the Oregon distracted driving law went into effect in January. As a Portland distracted driving attorney I’ve worked hard to keep on top of both the technological and legal sides of this fast-developing area of the law.

As I noted last month, one barrier to effective high-tech solutions combating Portland distracted driving is what has become known as the “passenger problem”: if your anti-distracted driving app works mainly by disabling all or part of your phone while the car is in motion (as determined by the phone’s GPS), how does that effect someone who is riding in the car but is not behind the wheel? Cutting down on Portland injury car crashes linked to distracted driving is a priority for everyone – but it is also a reality of modern life that not everyone making calls or texting from a moving car is behind the wheel.

My earlier post noted that different products deal with this issue in different ways. I mentioned that one product, Zoomsafer, allowed users to bypass its call blocking functions by completing a timed puzzle – presumably one too difficult to attempt while driving. Shortly after publishing that blog, however, I received an email from ZoomSafer’s Marketing Manager, Eleanor Jones, which reads, in part:

“Users cannot bypass ZoomSafer’s software by successfully completing a timed puzzle. We believe that such a mechanism is incredibly dangerous as it encourages drivers determined to flout the block to completely disregard the road in order to regain access to their phones’ texting functions.”
The system, she writes, does have a “passenger mode” which, in effect, puts “the automatic speed detection on ‘snooze’.” This, frankly, is good news, if only because lack of some route around the passenger problem threatens to emerge as a major barrier to adoption of anti-distracted driving devices in Oregon and elsewhere around the country. We are probably still a year or so away from having good statistical data on the new Oregon distracted driving ban and its effectiveness, but high tech solutions designed to address user’s concerns while keeping them safe seem like a very good start.

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As recently as last week officials at TriMet, metro Portland’s transit company, dismissed as impractical suggestions that the city should stop allowing busses to make left-hand turns. Criticism of the practice emerged in the wake of an April Portland fatal bus accident that left two people dead and three others injured after they were struck by a bus turning left through a crosswalk. The bus had a green light at the time, but the pedestrians also had a ‘walk’ signal, according to local media reports.

Since the accident it has emerged that federal safety data indicate that eliminating left turns from bus routes can have a significant effect on safety, as can other measures such as requiring drivers to honk their horns. An article in The Oregonian last week listed several cities in different parts of the country that have taken the study’s recommendations to heart, but noted that Portland is not among them. As recently as a few days ago Portland transit officials dismissed the idea of instituting similar changes here, claiming our city’s street grid makes such measures impractical.

Late last week, however, TriMet reversed itself. On Friday the authority announced that following last month’s Oregon bus injury crash changes are being made to routes 12, 17 and 44. According to an article in The Oregonian, “more operation, training and route changes are expected as part of a sweeping safety review.” The announcement follows the paper’s revelation that TriMet recently settled a Portland personal injury lawsuit with a woman who lost her leg in 2008 when she was struck by a bus making a left turn.

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