Houston Personal Injury Attorneys – Smith & Hassler

At 2:00am this morning a two vehicle crash has left a person dead and another seriously injured according to Harris County Sheriff’s Office.  The driver of a grey Nissan Altima was involved in a minor fender bender at Aldine Mail Route and Henry, then afterward fled the scene on Aldine Mail. Later the Nissan collided with a Ford Explorer making a left turn. After the collision the Nissan left the roadway, entered a ditch and after colliding with a concrete culvert flipped over. The two passengers in the Nissan were thrown through the windshield: one of them died, the other was life-flighted. The driver of the Explorer was taken to hospital by ambulance and the driver of the Nissan fled on foot and has not yet been found.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has identified its 2010 Top Safety Picks. The Institute rates vehicles for crashworthiness, which is a measure of how well a vehicle protects the occupants in the event of a car crash.  Vehicles are rated good, acceptable, marginal or poor, based on performance in high speed front and side crash tests, a rollover test and also evaluations of seat and head restraints for protection against neck injuries in rear-end crashes. For a vehicle to be a 2010 Top Safety Pick it must earn a rating of good in all four of the Institute tests and must also have electronic stability control. You can view the institute’s list and check to see if your vehicle is a Top Pick by clicking here.

Wednesday October 13: a big rig has overturned near the Houston Galleria causing all manner of traffic problems. The 18-wheeler, hauling a long piece of concrete, overturned on the ramp from I-10 to the 610 West Loop around midday. The 18-wheeler cab and at least one of the trailers it was hauling flipped over, spilling the load onto the roadway. The ramp is not expected to reopen until 8:00pm while officials clean up the accident scene. Fortunately no injuries were reported.

Two people, one of whom was a two-year old child, were taken to hospital today after a crash involving a preschool bus.  The two-year old student was the only passenger on the bus. The accident occurred at approximately 8:00am in North Houston.  The two-year old was seated in a child restraint at the time. According to initial reports the bus rolled over onto its side in the collision. The Chronicle’s story is here.

The American Association of Justice has released a top ten list of the worst insurance companies in America. Admittedly trial lawyer who represent injured plaintiffs, either in third party claims or in first party claims against insurance companies, have an interest in turning the public against insurers.  By the same token, trial lawyer deal with insurance companies daily and have first hand experience of how different insurers handle claims. The ten worst insurance companies from the AAJ’s 2010 list are as follows:

1. Allstate click here for CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s report on Allstate’s claims practices
2. UNUM
3. AIG
4. State Farm
5. Conseco
6. WellPoint
7. Farmers
8. UnitedHealth
9. Torchmark
10. Liberty Mutual

The AAJ’s full report on the 10 worst companies is available here.

A motorcyclist died in a collision on the North Freeway near FM 1960 at around 6:00am Thursday October 7, 2010.  Witnesses told law enforcement officials that the motorcyclist Joell Herrera had been traveling at high speed and changing lanes prior to colliding with a Ford Explorer. After the collision Herrera was thrown from the motorcycle and the bike exploded. Herrera was wearing a motorcycle helmet but died at the scene from his injuries.

A 2-year old girl in Santa Fe, Texas is lucky to be healthy after being rescued by her mother when she became stuck in a car’s electric window. A spokesperson for Galveston County rescue services said the girl had been playing in the back seat of a parked vehicle and had leaned out of the window. The little girl was apparently distracted by a dog outside the car. Her mother walked to the rear of the vehicle to retrieve something from the trunk and got distracted speaking with a neighbor when the little girl got stuck. It is believed the mother revived her child possibly by performing CPR. When rescue crews arrived the girl was conscious and crying. The girl was transported by ambulance to Clear Lake Regional Hospital. The Galveston Daily News story is here. A 2004 Washington Post article reported that power windows were thought to be responsible for 2 to 4 child deaths per year, a relatively small portion of the 43,220 people killed annually in car accidents in the U.S.  Some safety advocates argue any such deaths are unnecessary and avoidable: U.S. made cars typically use a rocker style switch that can cause a window to close if someone accidentally leans on the switch.  Most Asian and European manufactured vehicles use a switch that must be pulled up, rather than pushed down, to cause the window to raise, reducing the risk of accidental closure.

Many people wonder if they have to or should get a police report made when they are involved in an accident.  The answer to the question “Should I get a police report if I am in an accident?” is usually yes.  The purpose of a police accident report (sometimes referred to as a crash report) is to document who was involve, record important information and to document the officer’s investigation and conclusions as to who (if anyone) was at fault. In no particular order, a police accident report will include the following information:

* names of the drivers involved, driver’s addresses, driver’s license numbers, date of birth, driver’s license status (valid, invalid, etcetera), any restrictions (e.g. corrective lenses)
* year, make, model, color, license plate, VIN of the vehicles involved
* street(s) where the accident happened and applicable speed limits
* insurance company for each driver
* the road conditions, weather conditions, lighting
* witness information (if any)
* location and severity of the damage to the vehicles, where the vehicle were towed and the towing company
* who was injured and the apparent severity of their injuries
* statements of the drivers and witnesses
* not-to-scale diagram of the scene of the collision
* the officer’s opinion on who was at fault
* who was issued a citation, and what they were cited for
* the officer’s patrol area, badge number and name

The list above is not exhaustive, there is other information within a police report that is not included here.  Police officers are trained to investigate accidents and gather information that is important, so having a police officer make a report for your accident saves you the worry of trying to get all the necessary information yourself. Police officers should also investigate the accident in a neutral way, not favoring one side over the other, and witnesses may feel more comfortable telling the neutral police officer what they saw rather than telling their story to the drivers involved.

Police officers in Texas now have the ability to verify at an accident scene whether a particular vehicle has valid liability insurance. Having a police report can also speed up the claims process and give the other driver’s insurance company information they need to make a liability decision and decide whether they will pay a claim.

While people often want to be nice to the other driver and feel hesitant to get the police involved, particularly when the other driver is at the scene saying they are at fault, unfortunately sometime people who have caused an accident get home, have a chance to cool off and start rethinking whether they were really at fault. If there are no witnesses and no police report, you may be faced with a swearing match situation (your word against the other driver) which can get messy.

Some clients have told us in the past then when they called the police to request a report be made, they were told that if the vehicles can be moved from the roadway the drivers should swap information and go on their way.  You may need to politely push to have an officer sent to make a report, and it may mean you have to wait. Section 550.062 of the Texas Transportation Code says that an officer who investigates an accident resulting in injury to or death of a person or damage to property to the apparent extent of $1,000 or more must make a report and file that report with their department within 10-days of the date of the accident.

Mayra Castillo Torres (37) and her teenage son Christopher Nuno (14) were killed when a 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe struck their Nissan minivan along North Gessner Driver near Brookriver Drive at about 4:15pm Monday. Harris County Sheriff’s spokesperson Sgt. Susan Cotter has issued a statement that, according to witnesses, the 17-year old driver of the Tahoe was racing another vehicle driving alongside him. When Ms. Torres pulled away from a stop sign, the Tahoe hit her vehicle. Torres and Nuno were killed on impact. Nuno was a student at Jersey Village High School and was just leaving band practice when the accident happened. 6-year old Katia Nuno, Christopher’s sister, died at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital on Tuesday.  The teenage driver of the Tahoe involved in the fatal collision gave a statement to a Houston area television station on Tuesday denying that he was engaged in a race at the time, and stated he was driving alongside a friend who had a “loud truck” which is probably why witnesses thought he was racing. The driver claimed he was speeding perhaps a little bit above the 50MPH speed limit. The Sheriff’s Department will conduct a full reconstruction of the fatal collision to determine exactly what happened, which will probably include downloading crash data from the “black boxes” of the vehicles involved. Christopher and his mother were in the front seats and were buckled at the time of the collision, however Katia may not have been.

In the second accident this week in Houston involving a motor vehicle falling from height, a man was killed when he lost control of his Yamaha RS motorbike and fell at least 40 feet from an elevated entrance ramp leading from I-10 to US-59. The accident occurred at around 12:30am this morning and the man was transported to Ben Taub general hospital where he was pronounced dead. Apparently the man lost control and hit the retaining wall before being thrown from the motorbike and over the guard rail to the traffic lanes below. A driver of an 18-wheeler who saw the motorcycle and rider fall was able to stop his truck in time before hitting the motorcyclist. Police think the 31-year old man, who had no motorcycle license, was driving too fast when he entered the ramp.