Automobile Accidents | InjuryBoard Austin

It is no secret that trucking traffic and trucking accidents are a major problem in Austin and Central Texas. Interstate 35 is routinely one of the most heavily traveled stretches of highway in the country. A large part of that has to do with NAFTA and international trade with Mexico. The Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M has provided quite a bit of information on Texas trucking...

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California personal injury attorney John Bisnar has an interesting post about the importance of hiring an accident reconstruction expert when the accident reports are not filled out properly. Like John, and probably most personal injury lawyers, I've found accident reconstruction experts helpful in combatting report errors. But accident reconstruction experts are also helpful in other...

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Last night, Capital Metro began testing the cars for our new passenger rail system. While the system has the potential to take drivers off the road, new systems always carry a concern that they may lead to many more car wrecks. Houston is a case in point. The most recent major Texas city to add light rail, Houston made national news with the number of auto accidents involving the system. ...

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The Dallas Morning News posted a story yesterday describing Texas's new efforts to reduce the number of uninsured drivers. Under the plan, the state has created and will maintain a database of drivers and their insurance status. Whenever a person is pulled over, is involved in a wreck, gets a car inspection or registers for new license tags, the appropriate authority will check the database to...

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Yesterday's Tyler Morning Telegraph from Tyler, Texas had an interesting story about how DPS Troopers conduct investigations so that they can do accident reconstruction work following a car wreck or trucking accident. Accident reconstruction work used to be done by hand --- from the measuring with tape measures to the calculations. Now, technology is making it easier to collect the data and...

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A new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety describes how new, flimsy bumper designs can lead to excessive damages following auto accidents. The article almost exclusively focuses on the property damage that results from the new style of bumpers, but one has to wonder what, if any, these new designs have on the actual safety of the vehicles.For more information on this subject,...

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Recently, Austin's KVUE news ran a story about ghostbikes in Austin. The white bikes are chained to telephone poles and street signs to mark a spot where a bicyclist was killed in a car wreck. I found this particularly interesting since the most visible bike is only a few blocks from our office, and I had never known what the bike signified.Car wrecks involving bicyclists has long been a...

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Last month, Carlos Aleman and his seeing eye dog were walking home from an Austin library when a teenager, who has admitted that he was driving too fast to impress someone, veered off the road and hit them both. The dog, despite sustaining serious injuries himself, ran back to the library to fetch Diane Bomar, Mr. Aleman's fiance, to help him. Mr. Aleman and Ms. Bomar each learned a lesson...

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We posted last month on a rash of hit-and-run auto accidents here in Austin, and now the problem continues. This weekend, we had another hit-and-run car wreck that left two motorcyclists dead. Fortunately, police arrested a suspect yesterday. According to one witness, the suspect driver, who has a previous DWI on his record, appeared intoxicated shortly after the wreck.

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Last week, the Austin City Council voted to install cameras at various intersections around town to try and reduce the number of people running red lights. The vote comes following a pilot program where the city installed two cameras to determine what type of results they would obtain. And the results were amazing. A light installed at the intersection of Martin Luther King Blvd and I35...

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The Austin Police Department has announced a restructuring intended to reduce the number of fatalities from car and truck accidents. The reorganization will put more motorcycle officers on the street.According to APD, 175 people died in Austin auto accidents between the beginning of 2005 and the end of October. The main culprits are speeding, inattentive driving and aggressive driving.For more...

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Under the Progressive Gainsharing program, Progressive Insurance provides bonuses to its employees based on how well the company performs. While this system may work in many industries, it provides an improper financial incentive for adjusters to deny or underpay car wreck and other claims. I'm surprised Progressive has made this information public. This type of information, once disclosed,...

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Yesterday, the Texas Transportation Institute released the results of a study of teen drivers that concluded that teen drivers are not aware of the dangers that lead to most car wrecks. According to TTI, car crashes kill about 6,000 teens nationwide each year making car wrecks the number one cause of death for U.S. teenagers. The car accidents are primarily caused by driver inexperience...

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Police today identified a 16 year old victim of a weekend hit and run car wreck. It doesn't appear that they have many leads, but with any luck, someone with information will step forward.This latest incident follows two motorcycle hit and run wrecks in June, an August hit and run wrongful death, and an unusual stabbing hit and run earlier this month. For more information on this subject,...

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In August, the Atlanta Journal Constitution broke a story about Progressive Insurance Company's use of private investigators in a shocking manner. The story, which is unfortunately no longer available online, stated as follows:When a new couple arrived at Southside Christian Fellowship in August 2005, members welcomed them with open arms. Soon, the new couple talked their way into private group...

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