Maryland Injury and Disability Law : Washington DC Metro Injury & Disability Lawyer & Attorney : Greenberg & Bederman : Accidents, Falls, Medical Malpractice : Maryland, DC, Virginia

WMATA seems to be gambling with the safety of its passengers. That might seem like a  heavy handed statement, but right now it is one that we feel comfortable making.

The first and most obvious problem is its antiquated and outdated sensor equipment on the subway tracks. This is supposed to act as a failsafe that prevents collisions between trains. As we all learned last year, it isn’t working properly. Last June there was a terrible accident on the Red Line where one train slammed directly into the back of another. 9 people died and 76 were injured.

Since the accident has occurred, the National Transportation Safety Board has made several recommendations to fix some of the more glaring errors, but according to an article in The Washington Post, not much has been done:

"There are significant deficiencies in their safety culture," said Deborah A.P. Hersman, chairman of the NTSB. "We do not see the frequency of accidents on other properties that we are seeing on Metro.

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12/17/2009 - CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry has died, one day after falling out of the back of a pickup truck in what authorities described as a domestic dispute with his fiancée.

There wasn’t much about the death of Chris Henry that made sense. According to reports, Henry wasn’t a mere passenger in the back of that truck. Apparently he ran alongside it and jumped in the bed of the truck while it was still moving. He then fell out and landed almost squarely on his head, which caused blunt force trauma to the brain, which killed him.

Henry had a reputation in the National Football League as somewhat of a wild child, with multiple arrests involving marijuana possession, driving under the influence, assault and criminal damage. Throughout his career, Mr. Henry displayed what can kindly be described as a serious lack of impulse control. He displayed a bad temper and poor judgment on multiple occasions.

So when he died in that accident, many people just wrote it off as the behavioral norm. He had been a little crazy his entire life, so why should his death have been any different? But a recent article in the Los Angeles Timesoffers what may be a reason for not only his actions at the time of his death, but also his actions during his very turbulent life:

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This story comes from WAVY down in Virginia Beach:

A 24-year-old woman who seriously injured two people in a drunk driving head-on collision in March 2009 was sentenced Wednesday to serve four years and six months in prison.

Lisa Marie Schettler, a Virginia Beach native, had a blood alcohol level of .44 that night in March. With that much alcohol in your system, you shouldn’t even be allowed to leave the house, much less get behind the wheel of a car. Yet that’s exactly what Ms. Schettler did. Her car drifted across the double yellow line on Bird Neck Road and slammed directly into the front of another car, which was occupied by Donald and Elaine Gay. According to the news report, all three of them were seriously injured.

Ms. Schettler is lucky that there were only injuries involved, and it’s hard to imagine that the Gay’s feel lucky at all, although they should count themselves lucky to be alive. What you had here was just about the purest form of vehicular negligence that exists. It’s dangerous enough to drink even a minor amount of alcohol and then get behind the wheel of a car; Ms. Schettler drank enough to the point where she shouldn’t have been able to see straight.

The news report doesn’t say anything about Ms. Schettler’s weight, but with a BAC of .44, we could make a fair guess that she had at least nine drinks, which is more than enough to impair someone’s ability to drive a car.

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