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

It’s actually a question we have for a lot of bars and restaurants these days. Drive down any major road, or take any exit off of the beltway, and you will see a place where you can buy and drink alcohol where practically the only way in or out is to drive a car. If the Washington, D.C. area is committed to ending drinking and driving, our zoning boards have a strange way of showing it.

We aren’t suggesting that everyone who goes to these places gets drunk and then drives home. But one of the reasons that we focused on Dogfish Head Alehouse is because of a particularly egregious drinking and driving accident that  happened there in 2008.

A man named Michael Eaton went to the Dogfish Head Alehouse in Gaithersburg, which is in the middle of a parking lot and surrounded by a series of major roads. Mr. Eaton went to the bar and started drinking, and he didn’t stop for hours. By the end of the night, he had consumed 17 beers and three shots of hard liquor. In other words, he was extremely drunk.

There was absolutely no way on earth that the bartenders who provided him with all of that alcohol can claim that they didn’t know that Mr. Eaton was drunk. They work in a bar. They know what even three drinks can do, much less 17 beers and three shots of liquor. They were also perfectly aware of the local geography. Mr. Eaton couldn’t have left the place and gotten on the subway. He couldn’t have stepped out onto the street corner to hail a cab. His only options were to call a cab himself (which he didn’t do,) call a friend for a ride (which he didn’t do,) or to walk home.

He didn’t do any of those things. He walked out to his car, which was in the middle of the parking lot, and drove home. And the bartenders who served him 17 beers and 3 shots over the course of an evening simply let him.

The consequences of this inaction by Dogfish Head Alehouse were tragic. Mr. Eaton slammed into a minivan carrying Jazemin Waar and her family while they were both traveling down I-270. Ms. Waar did not survive, and Mr. Eaton is currently serving 8 years in prison.

So what punishment did the establishment receive? The bar that provided Mr. Eaton with enough alcohol to put him well over the legal limit for alcohol consumption and then sent him out to the parking lot? Well, nothing much really happened to them.

There are no laws establishing liability for bars and restaurants that over-serve their customers in Maryland, even if the bar is located in the middle of a parking lot with no public transportation in sight. This means that whatever happens after their customers leave the premises is of no importance to them whatsoever. This is why you have happy hours that last four hours, or “dollar shooter” nights, or any of the other countless promotions that are designed to get people to drink more. There are no consequences for the owners.

We believe that this is wrong, and it is why we are currently representing the family of Jazemin Waar in Maryland’s courts. We believe that her case is the clearest example of why Maryland needs so-called “dram shop laws.” It is our hope that this case will begin the process of establishing dram shop laws in Maryland, as it is in place in other states.

As car accident injury lawyers in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia, we have seen more than our share of people getting hurt in easily preventable car accidents, and unfortunately, alcohol was a factor in some of them. While dram shop laws won’t stop drinking and driving, they would certainly make it harder to accomplish. If bars realize that there could be financial consequences for the reckless behavior of their customers, they might take a few minutes and call that patron a cab, or not serve him that fourth drink. And as a result, we might see fewer cases like Jazemin Waar’s death in Maryland. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would certainly be better than this.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. who has been hurt due to the recklessness of another driver. If you or a loved one has been in a car accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident case evaluation.

You might be asking yourself if this is the accumulation of years of drivecam video footage, considering how many incidents there are. In fact, these are just the noteworthy clips from July to August of 2011. That’s two months with over 150 “incidents.”

We have talked about the various problems with the public transportation available in the D.C. area. Chiefly, we talk about Metro. There are all sorts of smaller public transportation systems available in Maryland and Virginia, but none of them even proportionately come close to having the appalling safety record that exists with the bus system in Metro. It isn’t exactly a secret that there are many bus accidents in D.C. WMATA apparently aren’t very good at getting them off the road and out of the system. For instance, here is a list of the offenses and “punishments” of a particularly bad Metro bus driver: (Bear in mind, the following list falls under “alleged,” but the sources at this website are usually quite reliable.)

• Hired as a bus driver and is involved in an accident
• Gets "fired"
• Gets reinstated as a bus driver
• Gets "fired" again for another accident
• Gets transferred to become a TRAIN OPERATOR! (Safety first)
• Accumulates enough infractions (wrong side doors, platform overshoots, running signals) to be disqualified from ever being a train operator again
• Becomes the face of Metro as a station manager and as such:
• Gets a 5-day suspension for disrespecting a Metro Police Officer
• Gets a 5-day suspension for using a cell phone while on duty
• Gets a 5-day suspension for regularly taking 2-3 hour lunch breaks
• Gets a 10-day suspension for locking someone in the station after closing (This was overturned because Metro lost, or couldn't find, the film from the video cameras at the station.)
• Gets a 12-day suspension for falling asleep on the job after his picture was posted on this blog. (He apparently successfully fought that punishment off after going to the doctor and afterward claiming he had sleep apnea. The other station manager pictured claimed the same thing and got off as well, the source said.)
• But none of that mattered because he took several months of disability leave after "spraining" his ankle.

Again, this is an alleged list. But if it is true, it is absolutely appalling.

Getting hit by a car is bad. Getting hit by a bus is infinitely worse. A city bus is an enormous, and it carries a lot more weight and momentum than even the largest of SUV’s. A bus that is only traveling at a few miles an hour is capable of doing enormous damage to a human being. We know that, so it goes without saying that WMATA officials know that as well. Why it is they continue to allow unsafe operators to arrive in the system is beyond us. We can only hope they get their act together before more people get hurt or worse.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident law firm. We offer legal counsel to those who have been injured by being hit by a car, truck or city bus. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. has been hurt by public transportation due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today. 

The anti-safety argument always seems to drift into that area. They turn it into a matter of “freedom” and “liberty” when in fact it is simply a matter of economics. Perhaps what really was happening is that Ford didn’t want to implement airbag technology because General Motors held the patents on most of the airbag technology. Ford and Chrysler would have had to pay General Motors for every airbag that they put in its cars. And after all the delays generated by Ford and Chrysler, GM projected that the money they would have made from patent royalties would not have been as extensive as they thought, so they decided that airbags would be a bad idea. So one of the major reasons that airbags didn’t become standard until 1989 was because that was when most of the patents on airbags had either already expired or were about to expire.

Again, it seems as though there was no “freedom,” “liberty” or “personal choice” at play here. It appears that it was all about money. It usually is. And recently, we have seen another example of the bottom line being more important than safety. We find this one particularly interesting, mainly because this is the first time we have ever seen the manufacturers being completely honest about its motives.

Everybody knows what a table saw is, right? They are fast and sharp and effective and completely and utterly dangerous. Every year they cause hundreds of serious injuries on construction sites. These injuries include deep lacerations, finger amputations, the entire ghastly lot. And this is one of the few circumstances that we can think of where the reason for the vast majority of these injuries is inattention on the part of the people who use them. All the training in the world will not keep them safe if they take their mind off what they are doing, even for an instant.

So if the entire table saw industry was presented with a device that would make it impossible for people to cut themselves on the blade, they would jump at the chance to install it, right?

Of course not. That would cost them money.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has extended the public comment period for developing a table saw safety rule by 60 days.

CPSC commissioners voted 4-0 to accept comments through Feb. 10, 2012. The original comment deadline was Dec. 12.

One of the reasons that the CPSC has extended comments is due to intense lobbying by the Power Tool Institute, which is the lobbying group of Black and Decker, Snap On, and all the other companies who make power tools. What they are against is that the CPSC has voted in favor of making a new piece of safety technology mandatory. And as far as safety technology for table saws go, this one is the Holy Grail.

The SawStop is a brand of saw that has something called “flesh-detecting technology.” It is based on the fact that while wood does not conduct electricity, flesh does. The blade is given a very small electrical charge and is fitted with a sensor. If it detects that it is cutting into anything that conducts electricity, it stops instantaneously. You could put your hand against the moving blade of the SawStop and get nothing more than a scratch.

The inventor of the SawStop has made it so that the ten table saw amputations that happen every day will not happen anymore. He has saved countless fingers and countless trips to the emergency room. He should be given parades, but predictably he is being given nothing but scorn.

The problem is money, as it always is. None of the other table saw makers have that patent, and just like airbags, they will have to pay a royalty to the inventor of the SawStop if that technology becomes standard in table saws. This will eat into its bottom line. If these manufacturers are able, they will most likely drag the fight out until the patent expires, at which point they may accept the new standards.

To the credit of the PTI, they are at least being honest about their reasons for opposing the SawStop mandate:

"Now is the time for table saw users to make their voices heard on a proposed government-mandated rule that could impose a specific patented technology on consumers and industry, creating a monopoly and raising prices for consumers. PTI is urging CPSC not to advance the rule and instead work with the industry to offer a suite of solutions that make sense for the entire range of products."

Translation: This will cost us money. They definitely get credit for that, and also for not putting the words “freedom” or “liberty” in the press release.

The point of all of this is that manufacturers don’t fight safety improvements because of “liberty and freedom,” or because of a desire for “small government.” They do it because they like money and want more of it, even if the end result is many mangled hands a year.

Greenberg and Bederman is an accident law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We have been providing legal assistance to injury victims all over the Washington, D.C. area for 30 years, and that includes people who have been injured in car accidents and construction accidents. If you or a loved one has been hurt on the highway or on the job site in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

The Fortuna Police Department, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office and the California Highway Patrol have been working together between Dec. 16 and Jan. 2 to arrest anyone caught driving while drunk. DUI/driver's license checkpoints, multi-agency DUI task force deployments and roving DUI patrols are scheduled statewide during the Winter Holiday Anti-DUI Campaign. Checkpoints are placed in locations that have the greatest opportunity for deterring drunk or drugged driving.

It is difficult to fathom why it is that so many people continue to think that they can drink and drive. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite all the terrible and real examples of what can happen to someone when he gets behind the wheel of a car after he has been drinking.

Drinking and driving accidents already happen with alarming frequency in this country, with one drunken driving accident happening every three minutes on average, and with one drunken driving fatality happening every 40 minutes.

Our area isn’t exactly the worst in the country when it comes to this sort of thing. D.C. is actually listed as the place with the 2^nd best environment in terms of a lack of drunken driving fatalities and multiple offenders, but considering that size of Washington, D.C, that might not be a fair comparison. Virginia and Maryland are pretty firmly in the center of the pack, listed at 23^rd best environment and 26^th best environment, respectively.

For instance, Virginia had 211 DUI traffic fatalities last year, which is 29% of all the traffic fatalities in the state. But this number represents a 13% decline in the number of traffic fatalities. Maryland had 154 DUI fatalities, which is 31% of all traffic fatalities. Maryland also has a pretty large number of repeat offenders on the roads, with over 25,000 drivers with three DUI’s, and just under 4,000 drivers with five DUI’s. (Clearly, some Maryland drivers have not learned any sort of lesson from their experiences with the Maryland legal system. Virginia keeps information about repeat offenders confidential, but if the overall rank is better than Maryland’s, you can make the assumption that there are less repeat offenders on the roads. However, since the overall rankings aren’t that different, you have to imagine that there are at least comparable levels going on between the states.

Nobody can use the excuse that they weren’t aware of the fact that drinking and driving is both dangerous and illegal. There has been no shortage of studies and evidence of the dangers, and there has been no shortage of publicity on the fact that it is illegal. We can only conclude that your average drunk driver has an entirely misguided sense of optimism. “This won’t happen to me.”

It’s the wrong mindset to have, particularly because it isn’t just the drunk driver who is put in danger. Quite often, people get struck and injured or killed by drunk drivers, and these people had the common sense to not drink and drive. People who drink and drive not only seem to deny that there will be any consequences for themselves, but also not any for anyone else. This theory never seems to bear out.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we have offered legal assistance to the victims of drunken driver accidents since 1985, and our attorneys have been helping victims of Maryland, Virginia and D.C. If you or a loved one has been hit and injured due to the actions of a drunken driver over the holidays or at any other time, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free DUI accident consultation.

There are multiple questions that need to be answered. The first to ask is what is wrong with the friction discs? Is this a problem on that particular car only? Is it a system wide problem?

Next we need to ask about the standards of communication. While we know that the Metro trains move very fast, they certainly can’t move faster than a telephone call. Why wasn’t the dispatcher told about the obstruction on the track? Why wasn’t the driver of the Orange Line train told about the obstruction in front of him and his train full of passengers? The driver of the Blue Line train must have known that leaving something on the track was a possibility. There were apparently sparks flying from the side of the train. The only two options that can be considered here are that there was a communication breakdown between the Blue Line train, the dispatcher and the Orange Line train, or that there simply is no communication possible between the three parties. And if there is no communication possible, then why isn’t there?

If you want to know how Metro has performed over the years, the list of incidents is not pretty. There was a terrible crash that killed 9 people and injured countless more; there have been fires on the tracks, there have been random beatings where no police or security made an effort to help the victim, there have been escalator collapses, and now the brakes are falling off the trains.

Public transit is not supposed to be a risky proposition. You shouldn’t be putting your safety at risk when you get on the Metro, or even when you enter the facility and get on the escalator. Yet this is what Washingtonians do in the hundreds of thousands on a daily basis. We ride the Metro. It’s a risky proposition.

We’ve gone into this countless times, and yet will continue to keep bringing it up, as long as there continues to be dangerous failures with Metro.

Greenberg and Bederman is an accident law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to the carelessness or negligence of someone else, and that includes those who have been injured on the Metro. If you or a loved one in Northern Virgina, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been hurt in an accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

This means that if you ride a Metro bus to and from work every day, you have a two out of seven chance of being involved in an “incident.” Those odds are terrible for any sort of transportation, much less a public bus service. To be fair, most of these “incidents” are either fender benders or situations where the bus hits a curb or other object that isn’t a person or a car. About 3% of these accidents end up causing injuries, while the rest mainly cause inconvenience and damages to properties both public and private. But one thing that concerns us is that Metro itself says that their drivers could have prevented about 41% of these accidents. Is this a statement on a lack of training for bus drivers? Or is it perhaps a reflection on the relative inexperience of so many of Metro’s bus operators? About 28% of Metro’s bus drivers have been on the job for less than five years.

We aren’t laboring under the delusion that Metro should have a completely spotless record when it comes to car accidents or car crashes in the D.C. area. But 6.8 crashes a day seems like the sort of number you would get for transit in Guadalajara or rural China.

The main point of public transit is to allow those who don’t own their own cars to get from one point or another, but another point is for this to occur in as safe a manner as possible. You shouldn’t be putting your safety at risk when you get on the bus or the subway, yet it seems that is what everybody who rides the bus in D.C, Maryland or northern Virginia is doing.

If you consider that the infrastructure of our subway system is also in particularly dire straits, then we are having a hard time recommending the use of our transit system at all. Let’s consider the following scenario: Say you have to commute from Arlington, Virginia to Bethesda, Maryland every day. Every morning you take the 7A bus from North Fairlington to the Pentagon. That puts you at risk of what Metro calls “an incident.” If you manage to get to the Pentagon, then you would take the escalator that might be working or might not be working down to the platform, where you would wait for the Yellow Line train. The Yellow Line train will move along at a high rate of speed on a track where the sensors are in dire need of replacement and the tracks are prone to catch on fire. You will take the Yellow Line to Gallery Place, and then transfer to the Red Line, again using escalators that might be running or might not be, and are also prone to the occasional brake failure and collapse. You would follow the Red Line all the way to Bethesda, where you would exit the station via the longest escalator in the western hemisphere, which is presumably held to the same standards of maintenance and care as the rest of the escalators in the Metro subway system.

Now that you have that information, doesn’t the daily commute seem a lot less mundane? The problem is that the daily commute is supposed to be mundane. It isn’t supposed to be a scenario where you are white-knuckling it from one end to the other. It should be up to everyone who utilizes our public transportation system to remind the people who operate and maintain it of that fact. Please contact WMATA and urge them to tighten up the standards for the bus drivers, repair the escalators and upgrade the sensors on the tracks.

If you or a loved one has been hurt in a transit accident on the Metro, Metro buses or any other bus system in Northern Virginia, Maryland or D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today.

Doing a simple Google search with the words “Halloween” and “accident” will give you some examples of what happens every year. You will see stories of teenagers or adults getting into car accidents because they got drunk at a party or you will see stories about careless drivers hitting children while they are out trick-or-treating. This is a serious concern. The child pedestrian death rate doubles on Halloween night.

There is one obvious solution to the first problem, which can be summed up in four words: Don’t drink and drive. That’s a piece of advice that should be heeded all year ‘round, and not just on Halloween. The second problem is not as simple to solve, but here are a few general tips to help you avoid adding to the list of victims of pedestrian accidents on Halloween.

The first thing that you should do is be aware of what Halloween is. It’s the one night of the year where small children are allowed out of the house when it’s dark. On any other night of the year you could be forgiven for not expecting to see kids running around the neighborhood at night, but not on Halloween.

With that in mind, you should drive slowly and carefully around any neighborhoods, particularly suburban ones. There is a level of excitement that occurs naturally to children on Halloween, so they often do reckless things like darting across the street, or racing their friends to the next house. They might not be as aware of their surroundings as they normally would be, so you definitely have to be. Halloween costumes are not always brightly colored and easy to see. There was one boy in our neighborhood who dressed up like a ninja, which is a great costume during the day, but an extremely dangerous one at night, especially considering that most of these pedestrian accidents don’t occur at crosswalks. Suburban kids don’t particularly feel the need to go down to the end of the block to cross the street, so what you usually see on Halloween are kids running into the road wearing non-reflective, dark costumes. Or rather you don’t see them, and that’s the problem.

Staying alert and driving a few miles below the speed limit is an absolute necessity on Halloween. It would also be a good idea to avoid distractions. We constantly tell people to never text while driving, and to avoid fiddling with your iPod or iPhone while driving, and that goes double for Halloween. It might seem like you are only taking your eye off the road for an instant, but in that instant you could easily travel 20 yards.

On the other side of this is the responsibility of the parents. Parents should take a few moments to explain to their children how important it is to avoid running out into the street. They should also give their costumes the once-over to make sure that there is some manner of reflective tape somewhere, or at the very least they should have them carry flashlights or glowsticks. But the best preventive method is to accompany your kids as they make the rounds in the neighborhood.

Halloween can be the highlight of a kid’s year. But for an increasing number of them, it can turn out to be the worst. Do what you can to help avoid Halloween pedestrian accidents.

Greenberg and Bederman is an accident law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We have lawyers currently offering legal assistance to people in Washington, D.C, Maryland and Virginia who have been injured in car accidents. If you or a loved one has been hurt in an accident due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

What really happened to Stella Liebeck was that she suffered extremely severe burns to the inside of her legs, so much so to the point where there was speculation that she might not survive. Secondly, she didn’t try to sue for millions of dollars. She merely sued for her medical fees, which were around $20,000. (Skin grafts are quite expensive, as it turns out.) McDonald’s offered her $800.

There are a few more elements of the case that you never hear about when the case is discussed. You never hear that McDonald’s kept its coffee heated between 180-190 degrees as a matter of company policy. That temperature can cause third degree burns in seconds. You never hear that there were about 700 other people who had suffered severe burns from McDonald’s coffee. And you never hear that McDonald’s had settled in court cases over instances that were quite similar to Ms. Liebeck’s.

For some reason, the McDonald’s Corporation decided to toe the line with Ms. Liebeck, but since there was a history of settlements (which means that they had previous knowledge of the coffee being too hot for safe consumption) and since there was no effort to change the corporate policy of scalding hot coffee, that meant that McDonald’s both knew that the coffee was dangerous and flat out didn’t care.

It should also be mentioned that Ms. Liebeck didn’t demand $1 million. The jury came to the conclusion that it wasn’t that Ms. Liebeck necessarily deserved $1 million, but rather that a company that knowingly put out a dangerous product deserved to be penalized, and should be penalized in the only way that they would understand. And since Ms. Liebeck happened to be the one who was severely injured, and since she was the one who happened to be filing the suit, the money went to her.

However, it wasn’t $1 million that Ms. Liebeck eventually received. It was a little under $600,000. But that isn’t what everybody heard. That wasn’t what the news stories, speeches, bumper stickers and references on Seinfeld talked about. They all talked about the “McDonald’s Coffee Lady,” or “The Million Dollar Boo-Boo.” It even got to the point where a writer started “The Stella Awards,” which are given to people who file “ridiculous lawsuits.”

It goes without saying that there are some frivolous lawsuits out there, but Stella Liebeck should not be the person that is synonymous with them. She was seriously injured by a dangerous product. Naming a satirical award after her is practically the equivalent of naming it after someone who died of asbestos poisoning, or someone who died due to the chemical leak at Bhopal, India.

It is about time that someone brought the truth of Ms. Liebeck’s case to a wide audience. And while this film certainly does that, it also tells us about other ways in which our rights as Americans are slowly but surely getting chipped away by well funded corporate interests. “Damage Caps” that extend to compensation to corporations but not to the injured, mandatory arbitration and the railroading of an anti-tort reform judge all serve to paint a very accurate picture of what the less wealthy are facing if they ever decide to go court.

The main premise of this film is that the legal system is meant for all of us. It is not a perk for the rich. We urge you to see Hot Coffee as soon as possible.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in the Washington, D.C. area. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to the negligence of others. If you or a loved one in D.C, Virginia or Maryland has beeninjured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for afree consultation.

Many of you have probably become accustomed to the quicker morning commute, particularly when you are getting out of your neighborhoods and moving towards the highways. We would urge you drive with a little more caution on your way to work.

This means continuing to obey the standard rules of the road, but it also means a few other things that you don’t necessarily have to deal with during the summer months.

School Bus Rules: While you don’t necessarily have to stop when a commuter bus pulls over to pick up or drop off passengers, you absolutely have to when you are behind a school bus. That’s the reason that big stop sign comes out of the side of the bus when it stops. You also have to stop even if your car is on the other side of the street. Failure to do so will earn you a hefty fine. But the point is that kids are crossing the street to get on or off the bus, and the last thing they need is hurried and impatient commuters driving around the bus at thirty miles an hour.

Crosswalks: A lot of school districts have crossing guards to direct the flow of traffic at intersections near schools, but not all of them do. For those of you who are unaware of this rule, pedestrians always have the right of way at crosswalks. With school now in session, there are bound to be more pedestrians using crosswalks, so please exercise caution.

Speed Limits: You should always obey the speed limit wherever you happen to be, but the speed limit drops dramatically when you get near schools. Bear in mind, kids don’t always exercise the most amount of common sense, so children darting into the street without looking are not unheard of in front of schools. Make sure you drive slowly and carefully when you are in the vicinity of schools.

Common Sense: Washington, D.C. is a very busy town, with lots of people doing very important work. Many of us are juggling multiple projects, and many of us are in a rush to get to work, or to the next meeting. But no matter where you need to be, or what you need to get done, or who you need to talk to, none of that will matter if you get into an accident or hit a pedestrian. Being alert, turning off your cell phone, following the speed limit and never texting while driving should be the rules you follow the entire year around, but during the school year they take on a special sort of urgency. Out of every 100,000 traffic injuries, around 40 of them are school age pedestrians between the ages of 5 to 15. That might sound like a small percentage, but try telling that to the parents of one of those 40 kids who got hit by a car on the way to school. You should always drive carefully, but you should redouble your efforts at this time of year.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm in the Washington, D.C. area. We are offering legal assistance to pedestrians who have been hit by cars in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been hit by a car in the Washington, D.C. area, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

Here’s the law about crosswalks in Virginia:

§ 46.2-924. Drivers to stop for pedestrians; installation of certain signs; penalty.

A. The driver of any vehicle on a highway shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian crossing such highway:

1. At any clearly marked crosswalk, whether at mid-block or at the end of any block;

2. At any regular pedestrian crossing included in the prolongation of the lateral boundary lines of the adjacent sidewalk at the end of a block;

3. At any intersection when the driver is approaching on a highway or street where the legal maximum speed does not exceed 35 miles per hour.

Here’s the law about crosswalks in Maryland:

§ 21-502. Pedestrians' right-of-way in crosswalks.

(2) The driver of a vehicle shall come to a stop when a pedestrian crossing the roadway in a crosswalk is: 

(i) On the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling; or 

(ii) Approaching from an adjacent lane on the other half of the roadway. 

It’s a pretty simple premise. If you are driving down the road and you see a pedestrian or bicyclist in the crosswalk, you stop and let him continue. You don’t floor it in the hopes that you can make it past him before he gets to your lane. You don’t swerve into the oncoming lane to get past him. You stop and let him continue.

On July 25^th, there was a three car accident on the George Washington Parkway. A driver stopped at an intersection to allow a bicyclist to cross at the intersection, which is exactly what a driver is supposed to do. The bicyclist was about to cross when he saw a pickup truck approach without changing its rate of speed. The pickup truck then slammed into the back of the car of the driver who was obeying the law. Two people were injured, and fortunately the bicyclist was not one of them.

There are a great many crosswalks on the GW Parkway that don’t have any signals on them. A lot of people assume that they can just breeze past them without giving any consideration towards joggers, pedestrians or bicyclists. This misconception is not being helped by what the National Park Police have been doing lately.

A man named Andrew Beaujon, who is a reporter at TBD, was crossing the GW Parkway on August 2^nd. A driver slowed down to let him cross, and for his troubles this driver was pulled over by a NPP officer and reprimanded. The officer’s argument was that the driver might have caused an accident similar to the one that happened on July 25^th. This is probably the first time in our memories that we have ever heard of someone being reprimanded for obeying the law.

Is there something we have missed? Did pedestrians and bicyclists become second class citizens all of a sudden? Is preventing car accidents more important than preventing pedestrian and bicycle accidents? We were under the impression that all three are something that should be prevented.

One particular way that this could be handled would be to place either stoplights, stop signs, or at the very least a flashing orange light at the multiple unmarked pedestrian crossings on the GW Parkway. Surely something can be done to facilitate this, but in the meantime, National Park Police should not reprimand drivers for obeying the law, and drivers should continue to stop for crossing pedestrians and bicyclists.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington D.C. area personal injury law firm. Located in Silver Spring, Maryland, we are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured in car accidents, bicycle accidents and pedestrian accidents. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

“WARNING: The following show features stunts performed either by professionals or under the supervision of professionals. Accordingly, MTV and the producers attempt to recreate or re-enact any stunt or activity performed in this show.”

We can’t speak for anybody else, but we can’t imagine ever having the urge to try any of these stunts. But we are mindful that young people sometimes make poor decisions, so having that warning in place is the right thing to do.

It should be noted that the whole Jackass phenomenon is wildly successful. The three movies and multiple series of TV shows have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, DVD sales and ticket sales.

Sadly, Ryan Dunn died in a particularly bad car accident yesterday. Mr. Dunn, who was one of the featured players on Jackass, was driving at about 140 mph when his car tore through a guardrail and careened through a heavily wooded area. His car eventually hit a tree and burst into flames. Both Mr. Dunn and a man named Zachary Hartwell were killed instantly.

Mr. Dunn’s blood alcohol content was 0.196, which was 2½ times the legal limit in Pennsylvania. He also had a history of poor and reckless driving habits, racking up 23 total citations over the course of his driving career. Mr. Dunn’s cause of death might as well have been listed as “The Law of Averages.”

Nobody has their own personal highway or street. Any time you get in the car, you are sharing a public space with other drivers, motorcyclists, pedestrians and bicyclists. You aren’t just putting yourself at risk when you drink and drive or decide to speed. Zachary Hartwell serves as an unfortunate example of that fact. Please watch your speed, and please don’t drink and drive.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are offering legal help to those who have been hurt in an automobile accident due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured in a car accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

It’s hard to say for sure. But considering that about 2/3rds of the population uses a cell phone on a regular basis, and has done so for almost a generation now, surely we would have all noticed if these things were particularly toxic and dangerous to our health. In fact, there was a recent study from the University of Manchester which states that while there was in fact an increase in brain cancer as cell phone use has gone up, the increase over that particular period of time was about .6 cases per 100,000 people per year.

That’s notable, to be sure, but it doesn’t seem to be an epidemic. Too much of anything can be bad for you. Consider the case of the woman who died after drinking too much water. Or for that matter, consider the spokesperson for Heart Attack Grill, who did in fact die of a heart attack. Overindulgence in water, alcohol or a fatty food is, in all probability, a much faster way to harm yourself than cell phone use.

Don’t get us wrong. We will certainly keep an eye on the dangers of cell phone use as it develops. But, the radiation dangers of cell phones are pretty far down the list in terms of ways that they can hurt people. While radiation and cancer are certainly nothing to scoff at, the danger of getting hit by a half ton vehicle moving at thirty miles an hour is certainly more immediate. And considering how many people in America think nothing of sending a text message on their phone while driving, that particular danger is much more real than getting a tumor from cell phone use.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 5,474 people were killed in 2009 due to distracted driving. By the standards of DOT, distracted driving can occur in three ways. There is visual distraction, which is what happens when you take your eyes off the road. There is manual distraction, which is what happens when you take one or more hands off the wheel. And there is cognitive distraction, which is what happens when you let your attention wander. Texting while driving is one of the rare forms of distracted driving that manages to hit visual, manual and cognitive distraction all at the same time. And anyone who has a teenager or a child in his or her twenties knows perfectly well how much texting is going on. If the 5,474 people who got killed because of distracted driving doesn’t show the dangers of texting while driving, then maybe the half a million who got injured might make it a little more clear.

So while we aren’t completely discounting the idea that cell phones might cause cancer, we are thinking that the real threat to the health and safety of others is not necessarily the phones, but rather those who use them irresponsibly. Whatever message or piece of information that you need to send, we are sure that it can wait until you either get to your destination or at least can pull over to the side of the road. Please don’t text and drive.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. who have been injured due to the actions of other drivers. This includes people who have been hurt due to someone texting while driving. If you or a loved one in the Washington, D.C. area has been injured due to a distracted driver, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

It also would have gutted WMATA’s ability to make the changes and upgrades that the National Transportation Safety Board has been recommending for years, particularly so after the Red Line crash in 2009 that killed nine people and injured seventy six. It would have been fairly galling to have one element of the federal government recommend much needed improvements and then remove our ability to pay for them.

The DC Metro system needs new subway cars, and it absolutely needs to revamp the sensors that were the primary mechanical cause of the fatal train crash. It also needs to revamp the culture. The NTSB report also mentioned that there were multiple human factors involved in the crash, all of them stemming from an unfortunate institution-wide notion that passing the buck is how things get accomplished.

These are only two of Metro’s immediate needs. There are certainly other things that WMATA could put some of that $300 million towards. The first would be the escalators, and the second would be security.

There has been one high profile escalator failure at a Metro station in the past year. By “high profile,” we mean failures that result in people getting hurt. This failure happened at L’Enfant Plaza, on the same day as an enormous rally at the National Mall. Miraculously, only four people were hurt, which seems amazing when you watch the video. There was also an incident at Foggy Bottom where the last four steps on one of the escalators suddenly dropped through the bottom of the stair case, leaving a big hole that a woman fell in to. Again, fortunately, she was able to get pulled out before she got hurt. And just last month, there was another failure at DuPont Circle, where the escalator suddenly stopped, which caused people to fall. In case you didn’t know, the escalators at DuPont Circle’s north entrance are 188 feet long. While it is fortunate that nobody was seriously hurt, it would seem to be only a matter of time before there is a serious injury.

The obvious malfunctions are bad, but there are also the problems with keeping these escalators running in general. At any given time, multiple escalators aren’t working, which causes people to have to walk up and down the stairs. Would you like to walk up 188 feet, particularly during the summer months? And, how does this affect the disabled? The escalators don’t work for multiple reasons, chief among them being that WMATA does not have an adequately trained maintenance staff. This is another area where some of that $300 million could be used.

With regards to security, there have been multiple instances of violent crime taking place on our subway system. We aren’t talking about on occasional mugging. We mean multiple instances of random and severe beatings of innocent passengers. The police presence on the trains and in the stations has been severely lacking, and there have been extremely disturbing accounts of Metro personnel not even lifting a finger to help people who are being attacked right before their eyes.

We believe that operating costs will take up a fairly substantial amount of this money, but surely somebody over at Metro is aware of the multiple safety problems that exist on our subway system. These aren’t the sort of problems that you can simply ignore, because at this rate, it’s simply a matter of time before we have another serious crash, or an escalator breakdown that results in a death, or a crime that escalates into a murder. The safety of our public transportation system should be a priority.

Greenberg and Bederman is apersonal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured on our public transit system due to no fault of their own. This includes escalator malfunctions, injuries due to sudden starts and stops, and instances of neglect by the WMATA Police. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured on the Metro, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

One branch of law enforcement that is held to a particularly high standard is the FBI, which basically functions as our national investigative police force. They investigate bank robberies, terrorism, financial fraud, forgeries, kidnapping, or any crime that occurs over multiple states. It takes a lot more than standard police training to be able to join.

We were recently very shocked to learn about the following incident, particularly because it involves an FBI agent breaking the very law that he is supposed to uphold and enforce:

WASHINGTON - Law enforcement officials have identified the FBI agent suspected in a fatal drunk driving car crash in Brandywine, Md. Monday night as 37-year-old Adrian Norbell Johnson. The FBI says the agent has worked for the bureau for six years…Law enforcement sources tell FOX 5 Johnson's blood alcohol level shortly after the deadly crash was .25, three times the legal limit in Maryland. Prince George's County Police say that amount of alcohol in a driver's system is extremely dangerous.

Speaking as attorneys who help victims of drunk drivers, we can tell you  that a .25 blood alcohol level goes beyond “extremely dangerous” and veers right into “extremely reckless.” He would have had to consume at least 10 drinks in order to get to that level of drunkenness, and considering that the job of most law enforcement officers is to prevent people from drinking and driving, he must have known that drinking that much and then getting behind the wheel was both illegal and completely negligent. But he did it anyway.

If Agent Johnson had been pulled over by another police officer or got arrested at a sobriety checkpoint, this might have just been an unfortunate and embarrassing incident for the FBI. Instead it turned out to be an accident where one person died and another was left in critical care in the hospital. So this incident has turned out to be both a tragedy and an embarrassment, especially considering that Agent Johnson was meant to join the security detail for the Attorney General.

Drunk driving is a serious problem in this country, particularly in the Washington, D.C. area. There were 243 DUI fatalities in Virginia last year, 10 in the District, and 162 in Maryland. And the DUI accidents where people were injured numbers in the thousands. The cost of these accidents ranges in the tens of millions. Drinking and driving is a detriment to the safety of our society, and it is one that could be easily avoided if everyone simply exercised some basic responsibility.

There is a big difference between a run of the mill car accident and an accident that is caused by drunk driving. An accident can happen to anyone. But drunk driving is negligent behavior that is often the primary cause of an auto accident. You can’t blame a driver if a deer runs out in front of his car, but you can blame a driver if he drinks ten vodka tonics, and then attempts to drive home. Agent Johnson should have certainly known this, and why he decided to risk driving home after drinking that much is beyond us.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently helping people who have been injured in car accidents due to the negligence of drunk drivers. We can help anyone in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been injured in a drunk driving car accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

According to the Washington Post:

For the Rev. Nathan J. A. Humphrey, the ordeal began when he stepped onto the base plate of the only functioning escalator at the exit to the station, only to be lifted into the air.

"There was a gigantic noise of grinding, clashing and clanging . . . and a gaping hole coming up," said Humphrey, vicar at St. Paul's Parish in Northwest Washington.

He looked up and saw a woman ahead of him falling backward.

"I remember thinking for one terrible second: She will be pulled underneath by these falling steps,'' Humphrey said. But the escalator jerked to a stop, Humphrey leapt onto stable ground and the woman landed on the steps behind her. Humphrey and another man pulled her to safety.

"She was really lucky; she will have only bruises," Humphrey said.

Lucky, indeed. For those who don’t know what the working machinery of an escalator looks like, please follow this embedded link. It is a series of chains, wheels, gears and sprockets that could easily crush a limb or end a life.

Memo to WMATA: We’re running out of miracles. That is two incidents where nobody was killed, but it was simply a coin toss that made it that way. The pile-up at the bottom of the escalator at L’Enfant Plaza could have just as easily ended up with a broken neck, or somebody getting smothered to death. The collapse of the stairs at Foggy Bottom could have easily resulted in that woman losing her life in an incredibly agonizing fashion. 

How these escalators have fallen into such a state of disrepair is a story that is literally decades long. The condensed version is that since 1991, Metro has been responsible for maintaining and repairing the escalators themselves. Prior to that date, escalator services were provided by either Westinghouse (which is the company that made and installed the escalators,) or Schindler (which is the company that eventually purchased Westinghouse.) The problem appears to have been that WMATA was attempting to create an escalator maintenance division from scratch. The results speak for themselves. Plus, if you combine the fact that they were doing it on the cheap (paying less for workers, meaning less experienced workers were the only ones available to do the job,) it isn’t that much of a surprise that the escalators are in disrepair. You can also factor in the standard WMATA budget woes, which only look to increase since Congress has made attempts to cut off federal funding. And b y “federal funding,” we don’t mean some of it, or a budget cut, but quite literally the entire $150 million in federal funds that was supposed to go to WMATA for repairs, maintenance and upkeep.

Maybe there are other avenues of revenue that WMATA should be exploring, especially since the current Congress seems to have a dire allergy to anything with the word “public” in it. Maybe full train car advertising? Maybe newsstands should be able to operate in the stations they way they do in New York? Maybe a flat rate ride instead of a per destination charge, which would get more people on the subway and possibly increase revenue?

The repairs need to happen. The escalators need to be fixed. The money needs to come from somewhere. But the current situation is untenable. Is only a matter of time before “escalator malfunction injuries” become “escalator malfunction deaths.”

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to no fault of their own while on the premises of a Metro facility or mode of public transportation. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to negligence on the part of a WMATA driver, technician or security guard, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

According to the Washington Post:

For the Rev. Nathan J. A. Humphrey, the ordeal began when he stepped onto the base plate of the only functioning escalator at the exit to the station, only to be lifted into the air.

"There was a gigantic noise of grinding, clashing and clanging . . . and a gaping hole coming up," said Humphrey, vicar at St. Paul's Parish in Northwest Washington.

He looked up and saw a woman ahead of him falling backward.

"I remember thinking for one terrible second: She will be pulled underneath by these falling steps,'' Humphrey said. But the escalator jerked to a stop, Humphrey leapt onto stable ground and the woman landed on the steps behind her. Humphrey and another man pulled her to safety.

"She was really lucky; she will have only bruises," Humphrey said.

Lucky, indeed. For those who don’t know what the working machinery of an escalator looks like, please follow this embedded link. It is a series of chains, wheels, gears and sprockets that could easily crush a limb or end a life.

Memo to WMATA: We’re running out of miracles. That is two incidents where nobody was killed, but it was simply a coin toss that made it that way. The pile-up at the bottom of the escalator at L’Enfant Plaza could have just as easily ended up with a broken neck, or somebody getting smothered to death. The collapse of the stairs at Foggy Bottom could have easily resulted in that woman losing her life in an incredibly agonizing fashion. 

How these escalators have fallen into such a state of disrepair is a story that is literally decades long. The condensed version is that since 1991, Metro has been responsible for maintaining and repairing the escalators themselves. Prior to that date, escalator services were provided by either Westinghouse (which is the company that made and installed the escalators,) or Schindler (which is the company that eventually purchased Westinghouse.) The problem appears to have been that WMATA was attempting to create an escalator maintenance division from scratch. The results speak for themselves. Plus, if you combine the fact that they were doing it on the cheap (paying less for workers, meaning less experienced workers were the only ones available to do the job,) it isn’t that much of a surprise that the escalators are in disrepair. You can also factor in the standard WMATA budget woes, which only look to increase since Congress has made attempts to cut off federal funding. And b y “federal funding,” we don’t mean some of it, or a budget cut, but quite literally the entire $150 million in federal funds that was supposed to go to WMATA for repairs, maintenance and upkeep.

Maybe there are other avenues of revenue that WMATA should be exploring, especially since the current Congress seems to have a dire allergy to anything with the word “public” in it. Maybe full train car advertising? Maybe newsstands should be able to operate in the stations they way they do in New York? Maybe a flat rate ride instead of a per destination charge, which would get more people on the subway and possibly increase revenue?

The repairs need to happen. The escalators need to be fixed. The money needs to come from somewhere. But the current situation is untenable. Is only a matter of time before “escalator malfunction injuries” become “escalator malfunction deaths.”

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone who has been injured due to no fault of their own while on the premises of a Metro facility or mode of public transportation. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured due to negligence on the part of a WMATA driver, technician or security guard, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

What is puzzling to us about the fatality cases is that there seems to be a lack of interest on the part of the police to charge the drivers for the accidents. Out of the ten fatalities, only one driver was charged, and  he was drunk and tried to flee the scene. Nobody was charged when Constance Holden was hit by a military truck on her way home. Nobody was charged when David Williams was hit from behind by two cars, one of which fled the scene. Nobody was charged when 9 year old Rebecca Johns was hit and killed as she tried to cross a road in Franconia.

We aren’t sure why this is.  If you ride a bicycle in D.C, Maryland or Virginia are you expected to just take your chances? Are motorcycle riders treated the same way? What about pedestrians? Can you expect to receive no justice from the law when you are not in a car?

One example of this occurred very recently in Arlington on Clarendon Boulevard, which is incidentally one of the streets where there was a fatality in 2010. A bicyclist was travelling down the street when a car owner opened the car door. The bicyclist was “doored,” as the cyclists call it. This is when you collide with a suddenly opened door and then are essentially catapulted over it onto the street.

The police arrived at the scene and questioned both the car owner and the bicyclist. The cyclist claimed that he wasn’t really hurt, so the police sent them both on their way. The problem here is that the cyclist actually was hurt, but didn’t discover this until later.

This is a common occurrence. We have served many clients over the years that didn’t learn about the extent of the damage done to them until much later. Brain injuries often work that way, as does spinal damage or deep bruises. The effects aren’t immediately felt.

Later, when the cyclist realized that he was injured and would need medical care, he contacted the police and found that the officer at the scene had not filed a report. So there was no way for the cyclist to get any insurance information from the man who opened the car door.

Although there is somewhat of a happy ending here (Arlington PD have followed up personally with the bicyclist,)  the end result could be that the victim here might have to go out of pocket for medical expenses, which could be considerable. If you couple that with the fact that he would have to pay for injuries he sustained due to the negligence of someone else, you have to wonder why it was that the police didn’t file a report.

Bicyclists have as much right to our streets as cars and motorcycles do, and if they are struck by motorists, they need to receive the same care as a motorcycle or auto accident victim requires. Your responsibilites don’t disappear when you climb on to a bike, and neither should the responsibility of motorists or the police.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to bicyclists and pedestrians who have been injured due to the actions of motorists. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C. has been injured in a bicycle accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

Since we have been practicing injury law in D.C, Maryland and Virginia, we have had more than a few cases where somebody got hurt due to somebody losing their cool behind the wheel. The media takes the more dramatic examples of these cases and calls them “road rage,” but actually, a lot of these cases stem from something minor. A driver is behind another car that isn’t going fast enough. Someone doesn’t go immediately after the light turns green. A driver thinks, “Oh, you cut me off? Well, let’s see if you like it when I cut you off!”

It is very easy to think of your car as not being connected to the real world, especially nowadays. What with cruise control, immaculate suspension, anti-lock brakes, windows that filter out practically all outside noise, GPS devices, iPods, television screens and satellite radio, it is quite easy to forget that you are travelling at a high rate of speed in a vehicle that can weigh anywhere from 2500 pound to a half ton. If everything about your car is easy and convenient, it isn’t that much of a stretch for you to imagine that the world outside of your car should be that way too. But the real world is very rarely easy and convenient.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, aggressive driving leads to deaths in all 50 states every year. Of the 6,800,000 crashes that occur every year, a “substantial number” are believed to be caused by aggressive and angry driving. So if you happen to be in a situation on the road where your patience is being tested, try to imagine what your life would be like if you decide to make up for lost time and get somebody hurt, or worse. Or if you decided that you have had about enough of that person driving slowly in front of you and did something to cause an accident? Believe us; we have represented enough car accident injury victims to tell you that aggressive driving is not worth it.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We have offered legal assistance to those in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. who have been hurt in car crashes due to no fault of their own. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the aggressive or negligent actions of another driver, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Generally speaking, the answer is that your insurance company and the insurance company of the other driver get together and hammer it out. In many cases, the solution ends up being that your insurance company handles your damages and the other driver’s insurance company handles their driver’s damages. This usually isn’t a problem if it’s a no fault accident with no injuries, but things get tricky if people get hurt.

Each state has minimum levels of insurance for drivers. This basically means that there is a minimum amount of coverage that you can have before you are allowed to drive. In Maryland, the minimum is $20,000 worth of coverage for one person injured in the car, with a $40,000 total for all passengers injured. In Virginia, its $25,000 for one person injured, with a $50,000 total for all passengers injured. In Washington, D.C, the minimum is the same as Maryland’s. That might seem to be a perfectly reasonable amount, but you should remember that $20,000 is not a lot of money when it comes to emergency room treatment. You should also remember that in Virginia, the “minimum” is actually just the insurance level. Virginia is one of the few states in the Union where you can simply pay a fee every year to the Department of Motor Vehicles and drive with no insurance whatsoever.

So what do you do? What happens if the accident is just one of those things, but the insurance doesn’t cover all of your physical damages? What happens if the car accident is in Virginia and the driver simply doesn’t have insurance? It has been our experience that insurance companies are profoundly hesitant to even get close to the maximum of what they are supposed to spend, and they often delay and deny payment in the hopes that their claimant will simply give up.

The smartest thing that you can do is contact an attorney for legal advice before it even gets to this point. Insurance companies are quite good at making it seem as if you have no options, when in fact you have several. An experienced attorney can help you determine the best course of action for you, and can also help you avoid the standard tricks of the trade of the insurance companies.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people who have been injured in car accidents in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. We also help people who have been hurt in motorcycle or trucking accidents, as well as bicycle and pedestrian accidents. If you or a loved one has been injured in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, D.C, contact car accident injury lawyers Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

In a nutshell, that’s the difference between a run-of-the-mill accident and an accident caused by negligence. We think it’s an important distinction. While an accident can be an “act of God,” negligence accidents are “acts of man.”

On October 30, the escalator at the L’Enfant Plaza metro station suffered a system failure. According to the Washington Post, the escalator started speeding uncontrollably, which essentially flung all the riders to the ground at the bottom. The entire Metro system was extremely crowded due to the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally that was taking place on the mall. Just under a million people were riding the trains that day. If anything positive can be taken out of this, it can be that it was a lucky thing that only four people were hurt. Can you imagine what could have happened if the main escalator at Bethesda metro station suddenly sped up? Or the escalator at DuPont Circle? On the most crowded day Metro has had since the Inauguration?

The escalators in the DC Metro systems are notorious for being broken. It is a rare day where a regular commuter can get to work without having to climb up one broken escalator or another. But there is a difference between an escalator not working and an escalator actively malfunctioning while passengers are on it. And what should be mentioned here is that the escalator malfunction at L’Enfant Plaza wasn’t a random occurrence, nor was it unexpected.

A report performed by an independent firm weeks ago concluded that the escalators are dangerous, unstable and in need of repair or replacement. Among some of the more relevant passages:

• Major amounts of oil and lubricant on step treads and risers. Symptomatic of major leak at drive motor / reducer coupling.
• Significant accumulation of metal shavings around hand rail newel areas from worn newel wheels.
• Brake pads worn beyond usable life expectancy and out of adjustment allowing unit to freewheel to stop.
• Numerous switches in safety circuits were dirty, out of adjustment, and ineffective.
• Skirt panels were adjusted too tightly to the steps, creating metal shavings along the step roller tracks in the interior of the unit.
• Hoist ropes severely rouged [corroded] and worn beyond acceptable life expectancy.
• Sheet plastic being used to protect equipment from water intrusion. This is a critical life safety issue.

Metro authorities had this draft in their hands on September 30^th, which was a full month before the accident happened. So they can’t make the standard defense against negligence, which is “We simply didn’t know.” They can’t make the claim that the escalator malfunction was a surprise to them when an independent report commissioned by them on the state of their escalators specifically warned that an incident like the October 30^th disaster was likely to happen. The argument could be made that WMATA was negligent in maintaining its escalators, and that they knew about the danger that these escalators posed to riders for a full month before the incident took place.

To understand a little about negligence law, please read our understanding negligence page.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we are currently offering legal assistance to injury victims all over the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas. If you have been injured due to reasons that were not your fault, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

CHICO, CA - An 8-year-old boy crossing across to Citrus School was hit by a car this morning.

The student, Conrad Waters of Chico, was shaken with minor knee scrapes, according to E-R photographer Ty Barbour, who spoke to his mother, Sorrell Bobrink.

The incident happened at about 7:15 a.m. near Westwood Elementary School on the west side of New Castle.

Louisville, KY - A Bullitt East High student was hit by a car early this morning while trying to cross Ky. 44, which runs in front of the school.

The student was walking at about 7 a.m. when he was struck by a small sports utility vehicle, said Mount Washington Police Officer Stephen Hill.

As summer drags on, those of us who work for a living can almost be fooled into thinking that we live in a child free zone. If you are up and on the road at 8:00 AM, in an office by 9:00 AM and at work until 5:00 PM, it is probable that you don’t see a lot of kids. They are at summer camp, or at the swimming pool, or sleeping late. But once September rolls around, it’s a different matter entirely. You are going to work at exactly the same time all of these kids are going to school, which means that kids are on the sidewalks at about the same time that you are on the roads.

And judging from so many of these incidents, they aren’t exactly adhering to safe pedestrian behavior. They forget about the crosswalk and cross in the middle of the street. They text while they walk (as if there wasn’t enough of a problem with texting and driving.) They are wearing iPods that are cranked up to full volume. The teen sense of invulnerability can be staggering at times.

This is why it is incredibly important for adult drivers to behave like adult drivers and to be aware of their surroundings on their morning commutes. Since children and teenagers are often not taking precautions, adult drivers have to take up the slack. This means slowing down at school crossings, keeping your eyes on the road, not texting and driving, and maintaining a responsible rate of speed.

Bear in mind, those five examples listed above are just a few of the documented incidents of students getting hit by cars on their way to school. There has been at least one case in almost every state of the Union, and it’s only mid-October.

Your average midsize car weighs around 3000 pounds. Your average school age student weighs considerably less. The damage that even a slow moving car can do to a child is immense. Please be careful during your morning commute.

Greenberg and Bederman is an accident law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We offer legal assistance to pedestrians who have been struck and injured by negligent drivers.  At Greenberg and Bederman, we do everything we can to help injured pedestrians get their lives back on track.

If you or a loved one has been injured in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

We would like to say that defective cars are an anomaly, or that all car recalls occur due to minor, cosmetic malfunctions that don’t affect the safety of the car, but the truth is that history is loaded with examples of automotive recalls that occurred because people were put in serious danger. Here are just a few:

In 1971, General Motors recalled over 6.7 million cars due to malfunctioning auto mounts. One of the mounts in particular caused a serious hazard to drivers, mainly because when it broke the V8 engine would shift upwards, which, similar to Toyota’s almost 40 years later, would cause the car to suddenly accelerate. The total of accidents for such a widespread problem was miraculously low (only 18 reported injuries,) but GM still recalled the cars and made the necessary fixes.

Between 1971 and 1976, Ford released a car called the Pinto, which had no reinforcement between the gas tank and bolts attached to the rear differential. In the event of a rear collision, there was a serious danger of the gas tank getting punctured and leaking. Gasoline on the ground is never a positive thing in terms of safety. Even though the recall affected 2.2 million vehicles, six people died in Pinto fires after rear impact collisions.

Ford also had issues with a transmission defect in the 1970s that allowed cars to slip into reverse while the gear was in “park.” Although the NHTSA received thousands of complaints, only 98 accidents were attributed to the defect.

Ford Explorers made in the year 2000 were also subject to a massive recall, not necessarily due to the car but because of the Bridgestone/Firestone tires that were issued with them. They had a tendency to blow out. 250 people died as the result of these faulty tires.

Again, car recalls are nothing new, and sadly, deaths and injuries are the result of car defects. What is  not new is the fact that car companies rarely offer fair compensation for the people who were injured or killed.  Initial settlements offered are quite often incredibly low, and if the case is taken to arbitration or court, many car companies do everything they can to discredit the victims or pay the least amount they can. This is the reason that it is so important to have experienced legal counsel in the event that you have been injured by a defective car.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in Washington, D.C, and we are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to cars that are faulty and defective. We haveserve Maryland and Baltimore, and we can help anyone in the Washington, D.C. or Northern Virgnia area.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident caused by a defective car, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

In 2008, a Metro bus rolled into an apartment building in Alexandria. Considering the size and weight of your average city bus, it is a miracle that nobody was injured.

Amanda Mahnke, a 30 year old staffer for a Congressman, was jogging near her home in Northwest when an empty bus hit her. She suffered severe injuries.

About two weeks ago, a Metro bus was involved in a hit and run accident in Arlington.  The bus driver hit a car at the intersection of Fairfax Drive and Glebe Road, and then made an illegal right turn getting away from the scene.

And these are only a few of the crashes that WMATA bus drivers have been involved with. And if you consider the multiple reports of WMATA bus drivers who were caught texting while driving, regardless of Metro’s zero-tolerance policy on texting while driving, the idea of Metro taking serious steps to regulate the safe conduct of its bus operators is long overdue. Passenger safety should be the primary concern of any public transit system, and recent events have shown that WMATA is not succeeding in its primary objective.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to negligent behavior on the part of public transit employees, and that includes those who have been injured in collisions with city buses.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to a transit system accident in Washington, D.C, Maryland or Virginia, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free accident legal consultation today.

"The most disappointing . . . is when we issue recommendations and those issues do not get corrected. For us, that is a big concern about Metro," she said. Nine NTSB recommendations issued to Metro in July and September, in the aftermath of the accident, remain open, according to NTSB records.

We aren’t exactly sure why Metro is dragging its feet about making these corrections. It might be money. It might be politics. It might be a combination of the two. State politicians in Annapolis and Richmond might have a problem with paying state funds for a transit system that their immediate constituents never use. We can certainly imagine that a state delegate from Lynchburg, Virginia or Havre de Grace, Maryland would fail to see the urgency.

Whatever the reason, WMATA has continued on as if that horrible train accident never happened. We can absolutely assure them that it did. In fact, we have a few injured clients who can verify that on that day in June, there was a catastrophic system failure that resulted in 9 deaths and 76 injuries.

The second serious safety hazard doesn’t involve the trains, but instead involves escalators that allow passengers to safely get in and out of the stations. Specifically speaking, they don’t work, and the scope and size of both the number of breakdowns and the escalators themselves makes this state of affairs an accident waiting to happen.

The Washington, D.C. subway system has 570 escalators. This is more than any other subway system in the world. Due to the fact that this area was built on what was essentially marshland, our subway system has to go very deep underground. The escalator at Wheaton, for instance, goes down 230 feet. Believe it or not, this is actually the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere. The escalators at Bethesda, DuPont Circle and Woodley Park are also incredibly long. And while the escalators at Rosslyn and Clarendon don’t necessarily set records, they still are long enough to eat up over a full minute to get from the street to the station.

The way we see it, there are two potential dangers with broken escalators. The first would be the hazards involved with these escalators suddenly stopping. The stop wouldn’t even have to be a particularly jarring one for disaster to strike. One person falling down an escalator of that size and length would be catastrophic, not just for the person falling but also for anyone who happens to be on the escalator below the person falling. People can get badly hurt by falling off of a five inch curb on the side of the road, so the idea of someone falling down a crowded 230 foot escalator is so grim that it’s terrifying to think about.

The second danger is not going down, but going up. Metro might not have noticed, but not everyone who rides the subway is spry and athletic. Many of the passengers are elderly and infirm. Making them climb up 230 feet, particularly in heat that reaches upwards of 90 degrees, is something that could adversely affect their health. And if the elevators are broken (as they often are,) many passengers have no choice but to trudge up that enormous incline.

As of this writing, the escalator report for the entire WMATA system lists 62 escalators as being out of service, as well as 8 separate elevators. This reflects very poorly on WMATA. It is inconvenient, stressful, disrespectful of passengers and extremely dangerous. Among the many faults of the DC Metro system, this one is particularly galling.

Greenberg and Bederman is aninjury law firm based in Washington, D.C. We are currently offering legal help to anyone who has been injured due to negligence or poor management by the WMATA. This includes anyone who was injured while riding the subway, or anyone who was injured due to an escalator-related accident. If you or a loved one was injured on the Washington, D.C. subway system in Maryland, Washington, D.C. or Virginia, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident legal consultation.

As personal injury attorneys who serve the injured in the Washington, D.C. area, we can tell you from experience that accidents rarely “just happen.” In fact, we have found that most accidents are caused. And when people get severely hurt as the result of these caused accidents, the last thing anyone should be able to do is write them off as “just one of those things.”

Yet this is exactly the scenario that injury victims often face when they attempt to seek fair compensation for their injuries. They often have to deal with insurance companies who have no interest in treating injury victims fairly, but are instead concerned with paying out as little as possible. Car insurance companies often offer injury victims settlements that are far less than what would be needed to cover the medical costs and any lingering effects, and most of the time they don’t offer anything for pain and suffering. Medical malpractice insurance companies are notorious for not wanting to settle, but rather take the issue to court. And, quite often when they do settle, it is a paltry settlement offer.  Pharmaceutical companies have no qualms about not offering any compensation for injuries at all unless they are forced to by a court.

An injury victim who tries to deal directly with the insurance company is risking not having their individual situation monitored and protected by an injury lawyer. The insurance company has lawyers to protect their interests, so should an injury victim. Facing an insurance company on your own means you have to know all the legal angles, understand a myriad of laws that if you don’t understand could harm your injury case, leaving you potentially being treated un-fairly. Despite all of the advertising about being a good neighbor, the truth of the matter is that insurance companies are not in the business of sending out checks for the maximum value. They make money holding down costs and adding new members.

The law firm of Greenberg and Bederman has been protecting the rights of injury victims in the Washington, D.C. area since 1985, and all of our injury attorneys are dedicated to helping our clients get fair and realistic compensation for their injuries. We make it a point to address all of our clients injury needs when we deal with the insurance companies.

Our attorneys are currently offering legal counsel for the following areas:

Car Accidents:Our attorneys have decades of combined legal experience in helping victims of all types of car accidents, including accidents caused by drunk drivers, accidents due to reckless driving, rollover accidents, pedestrians who have been hit by cars, collisions, and accidents due to automotive malfunctions, and passengers in a car accident. 

Medical Malpractice:John Sellinger is known and respected throughout the country as a medical malpractice attorney who puts his clients’ interests first. In his thirty five years of legal experience, this former President of the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association has helped hundreds of victims of medical malpractice, including victims of wrong diagnosis, surgical errors, wrongful death, delay of treatment and birth trauma.

Pharmaceutical Liability: For all the good things that modern pharmaceuticals have done for humanity, it cannot be denied that there is a dark side to the pharmaceutical industry. There have been several instances over the past few years where heavily marketed and prescribed pills have resulted in serious injuries among patients who used them in good faith. The most recent example is Yaz, which is a line of birth control pills that has caused strokes, heart attacks and gall bladder disease among women who use it. Our attorneys are currently representing women who were injured and hospitalized due to the use of these birth control pills.

Social Security Disability Denial: It is not uncommon to be denied for Social Security Disability Benefits.  If you are disabled by either disease or injury, and your disability is expected to last at least a year, you may be entitled to Social Security Disability Disability or SSI. To learn more about Social Security Disability law, please read our Social Security Disability FAQ page.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located one half block from the downtown metro in Silver Spring, Maryland, one mile from the Washington, DC line. We are perfectly situated to help injury victims all over the Washington/Baltimore metropolitan area. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

We aren’t sure what went wrong with Toyota. Every car manufacturer has safety recalls, some major and some minor, but we have never seen so many things go so drastically wrong on so many models from the same company at the same time. It wasn’t just that one model had problems with floor mats jamming the accelerator pedal in one model. Or it wasn’t that just one model had a few accelerator pedals stick in the down position. This was a systematic failure of multiple cars. It was as if the entire Toyota Corporation all took a vacation at the same time and missed some very important meetings.

It was a failure of the engineering developers to not notice that the accelerator pedal was sticking. It was a failure of the design team to not notice that the floor mats were causing the pedals in other models to stick. It was another failure of the engineering team to not notice that there was an inconsistency in braking and steering when the Prius shifted between the electric and gas motor.

It was a failure of the company to “negotiate” a lesser recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which might have saved Toyota millions in costs, but cost hundreds of people pain, money, time, and in some cases, their lives.

It was only a matter of time before all of these failures caught up with Toyota. There were too many bizarre and high profile accidents involving Toyota for the government to ignore. One recall came after another, and the Capitol Hill testimony of both crash victims and the President of Toyota itself did practically irreparable damage to the Toyota brand.

So you would think that after all of this, the Toyota Corporation has learned its lesson, right?

Apr 15, 2010: Toyota now says it will investigate its entire SUV lineup for safety problems uncovered by Consumer Reports earlier this week. 

The automaker announced Tuesday it would stop selling the 2010 Lexus GX 460 temporarily as it looks into handling problems that could make it unsafe.

Consumer Reports said the Lexus GX 460 slides around too much when drivers lift their foot off the gas pedal while negotiating around a tight curve. The vehicle can actually slide sideways, Consumer Reports says, which could result in the SUV hitting a curb or leaving the road.

Right on the heels of the worst year in Toyota’s history, yet another completely unsafe vehicle is put out on the market. It is a bad sign when the staff at Consumer Reports catches a potential major safety hazard before the engineering department at a major automobile manufacturer does. It appears that whatever overhauls that were promised by Toyota during the recalls and hearings on Capitol Hill have yet to take place.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. area injury law firm that helps those who have been hurt due to no fault, or negligence,  of their own. The recent Toyota malfunctions have injured thousands of people all over the country, including people in Washington, Virginia and Maryland. If you or a loved one has been injured due to a Toyota that did not work as it should have, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free toyota injury legal consultation today.

To learn more about personal injury law, please read our personal injury lawyer page, or watch our personal injury lawyer videos.

Second would be full disclosure. Toyota should be more forthcoming with their crash data and reports than they currently are. Allowing this data to be independently analyzed would go a long way in not just determining the problems, but would also help Toyota avoid making these mistakes in the future. It is sometimes much harder to see your own errors, especially when there is a financial incentive to not see them.

Toyota should be responsible financially for the injuries and damages that they’ve caused. If someone has been killed or injured in a Toyota, someone has to pay the medical bills. For a large corporation like Toyota, the only way for them to actually feel the weight of what they have done is to make them responsible for the injuries and damages they’ve caused.   If a spouse who is counting on income suddenly is left alone due to an acceleration defect car accident, how will that spouse be able to survive financially? Is it fair to the surviving spouse to have to figure it out alone? Toyota should be held accountable for that loss of income. Doing so would not only give Toyota every reason to clean up its act, but it would also serve as an example to other automakers who are  manufacturing cars that are shown to be unsafe.

With that principle in mind, we feel that the fine of $16 million that the NHTSA recently levied against Toyota to be a good start in the right direction but falls quite short for the injured and killed, especially considering that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood issued a statement saying that the release of these defective automobiles was no accident:

“We now have proof that Toyota failed to live up to its legal obligations,” said LaHood on Monday. “Worse yet, they knowingly hid a dangerous defect for months from U.S. officials and did not take action to protect millions of drivers and their families.”

Even after the costs of issuing the recalls, Toyota still remains a wealthy corporation.  $16 million is not even a dent in their coffers. This is hardly the incentive needed to get them to improve its faulty vehicles, and compensate the injured or killed.

It appears that the only way to make this automotive giant accountable for its actions is for the victims to take their cases to the courts. If the NHTSA will not stand up and demand substantive penalties from Toyota, those who have been injured or have lost family members due to this act of negligence will have to do so themselves.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. area personal injury law firm that is currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to malfunctioning Toyotas. This includes drivers of faulty Toyotas, passengers who were riding in faulty Toyotas, drivers in other cars who were hit by faulty Toyotas, and cyclists, motorcyclists or pedestrians who were injured due to malfunctioning Toyotas. Our personal injury attorneys have decades of experience in both auto accidents and product liability, and accidents involving these malfunctioning Toyotas fall under both of those legal categories.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to an accident with a Toyota, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free Toyota Accident legal consultation today.

The vehicle that the astronauts were travelling in had to essentially break in half, and then one of the two sections had to do a 180 degree turn, and then gently thrust back towards the other section, where they re-attached. Bear in mind that this had to be done while they were travelling through the vacuum of space at thousands of miles an hour. Another stunning feat was the reattachment of the lunar module, which essentially launched itself from the surface of the moon (with two astronauts inside) and attached itself to the orbit module which was zooming along at thousands of feet above the surface. If you want a real life equivalent of how difficult that is, try hitting a bird flying overhead with a rock. If you also consider that these amazing things were done in the late sixties, which was practically the Stone Age in terms of computer technology, that gives you an idea as to how smart the NASA people are.

Any endeavor into outer space has to involve all manner of computers. All of the systems on any spacecraft are run by them, including steering, thrust, life support and navigation. Without the advent of computers, it would be impossible for us to imagine getting into space at all. If you consider that your average space craft is run by electronic systems that are often controlled from thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of miles away, you would have to assume that NASA knows what it is doing when it comes to computers.

This is why we consider it a good thing that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has brought in scientists from NASA to investigate the recent alleged unintended acceleration incidents that have occurred in so many Toyota vehicles. The NASA scientists are specialists in computer controlled electronic systems, electromagnetic interference, software integrity and hardware. In other words, they are the folks who you can expect to get to the bottom of what has been going wrong.

It might seem a little drastic, bringing in space shuttle mechanics to examine the inner workings of a Toyota Tercel, but one of the reasons that they have to be drastic is that Toyota itself isn’t talking. They are fiercely protective of their design and data, and are equally tight lipped when it comes to allowing crash data to be studied. Part of this might be because they are genuinely concerned about somebody making off with proprietary software or design, but we suspect it also has something to do with Toyota not wanting to directly provide any evidence of culpability on their parts. In other words, they want to make it as difficult as possible for any victims of random accelerations, brake failures or steering problems to be fairly compensated for their injuries and damaged property.

Toyota has shown a willingness to put profits over driver safety before. In what was probably one of the darkest moments in government consumer protection history, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration allowed Toyota to “negotiate” a 2007 recall that was limited to defective floor mats rather than move forward with a more extensive recall that could have possibly saved quite a few lives. Internal documents from Toyota referred to this as a “win.”  

We aren’t sure what the outcome will be of this NASA investigation, but what we are sure of is that too many people have been injured or even killed due to defective Toyotas for this to be considered a random, freak occurrence. Based on the evidence that has been gathered and the incidents that have been reported, we believe that Toyota not only put out a defective product, but also were aware of these defects and the dangers that they posed to the general public.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. based injury law firm that is currently offering legal assistance to those who have been hurt due to Toyota malfunctions. We can help anyone in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, D.C.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a Toyota accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued the following advice for Toyota drivers who experience unintended acceleration:

• Brake firmly and steadily – do not pump the brake pedal.
• Shift the transmission into Neutral (for vehicles with automatic transmissions and the sport option, familiarize yourself with where Neutral is – the diagram may be misleading).
• Steer to a safe location.
• Shut the engine off (for vehicles with keyless ignition, familiarize yourself with how to turn the vehicle off when it is moving – this may be a different action than turning the vehicle off when it is stationary).
• Call your dealer or repair shop to pick up the vehicle. Do not drive it.

These suggestions are all well and good, but they seem like the sort of tips that will leave your brain the instant your car speeds up when you don’t want it to, or won’t stop when you want it to stop. We can’t help but think that it would have been better if Toyota had not had such a catastrophic failure in their engineering department, and that way drivers all over America wouldn’t have to remember any “just in case” tips at all.

The Washington, D.C. area and the entire Mid-Atlantic region just went through a massive snow storm, and as a result we can expect our roads to be difficult to drive on for the foreseeable future. This is hardly the optimal time for your brakes to not work or for your car to suddenly accelerate. What we would recommend is to check the Toyota website on a regular basis to see if your car is on the recall list, and if it is, make sure that you bring it in for the necessary repairs without delay. While a knob that falls off the radio or a power window switch that doesn’t work is something that you might be able to put off, anything involving brakes or acceleration should be handled immediately.

This Toyoya recall is a dangerous situation for drivers and pedestrians all over the country, and it is also a rather unique one. This might be one of the few instances where an accident can happen between two cars or a car and a pedestrian, yet it is possible that nobody involved is actually at fault. A driver can hardly take full responsibility for an accident if his car did malfunctioned in a dangerous way. In situations involving automotive malfunctions that stem from design flaws, the only entity really at fault is the company that made the flawed system to begin with.

On the surface, these cases might appear to be cut and dried, but if the accident involves multiple cars or people, you can be sure that any litigation will be very complex. In order to secure fair compensation for your injuries and lost or damaged property, it is crucial that you obtain attorneys who have a great deal of experience in both car accident cases and product liability cases.

Greenberg and Bederman have been helping injury victims in the Washington. D.C. area since 1985, and our practice has been built on getting decent and fair compensation for our clients. We have attorneys with decades of winning experience in both product liability and car accident cases, and can certainly help you with your Toyota accident claim.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to faulty brakes or sudden rapid acceleration in a Toyota, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Thanks to the recall, it is possible to bring your Toyota or Lexus in for repairs, but what is impossible at this point is getting a straight answer out of Toyota or anyone else for that matter. Some people are speculating that there is a problem in the electronics that are used in the acceleration process, while others are claiming that the problem is strictly mechanical. Toyota has also claimed that these problems become exacerbated in cold or wet weather.

Whatever the reasons for the malfunction, the end result is that people are being put in serious danger, regardless of whether they own a Toyota or not. Automobiles do not operate in a vacuum. They share the road with other cars, and drive through neighborhoods where pedestrians walk. With this in mind, it seems somewhat miraculous that there have only been 19 deaths so far.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood halted the production of all models that fell under the recall, and wisely advised that owners of those models that were already on the road should be brought in for repairs immediately. The models that are affected by the recall are as follows:

Certain 2009-2010 RAV4’s
Certain 2009-2010 Corolla
2009-2010 Matrix
2005-2010 Avalon
Certain 2007-2010 Camry
Certain 2010 Highlander
2007-2010 Tundra
2008-2010 Sequoia

We want to reiterate that these are not harmless, run of the mill recalls. Toyota has placed thousands of people at risk ofinjury or worse due to faulty acceleration. It could have been a design flaw or it could have been a flaw on the assembly line, but at the end of the day thousands of people all over the world have been driving cars that spontaneously accelerate. They also crash into other cars and hit people.

The car recall attorneys at Greenberg and Bederman have been helping injury victims in the Washington, D.C. area for over 25 years. We have attorneys who have years of experience in product liability cases and negligence, and that includes automotive recalls. If you or a loved one has been injured because of a malfunction in a Toyota, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

“At low doses the effects of alcohol may include alterations in mood, cognition, anxiety level, and motor performance. It may also impair performance several hours after the blood alcohol level has gone down. Even slightly elevated levels result in more fatal accidents, and the majority of individuals who experience a problem related to alcohol use are light and moderate drinkers.”

This means that “only having a couple” or “just having one” is enough to adversely affect your ability to drive. And there is no magical way to make you sober, despite what some of the old wives tales might say:

“If I drink a few cups of coffee, I should be fine to drive.”

Caffeine has no dampening effect on how your brain and body reacts towards alcohol. The coffee might make you jittery and wide awake, but it won’t make you less drunk.

“I’ve just been drinking beer. What’s the big deal?”

The alcohol in beer doesn’t have any less of a punch than the alcohol in whiskey. In fact, one beer (12 oz) contains the same amount of alcohol in one shot (1.5 oz) of vodka, gin, whiskey, scotch or bourbon. And one serving of beer or liquor contains the same amount of alcohol as a glass of wine (5 oz.) When it comes to drinking, there isn’t any type that affects you less than the others.

“I actually drive better when I’ve had a few drinks.”

No you don’t. The alcohol is just making you think that you can. One of the first things that happen to people who drink is their inhibitions drop and their confidence goes up. It’s the reason you see people who can’t sing rushing to the karaoke microphone. Any feelings of extreme confidence are alcohol fueled, and should not be considered an asset when you get behind the wheel.

We’re bringing this up because tonight is New Years Eve, which is the exact night that a great deal of the population goes out and drinks a great deal of alcohol. Consequently, it’s also the night where a great many people are arrested for alcohol related offenses, and unfortunately it’s also the night where a lot of people get behind the wheel of their cars after they have been drinking.

It’s part and parcel of the holiday season, unfortunately. The number of alcohol related traffic fatalities spikes every year between December 15^th and January 1^st, and no doubt many of these people thought “I’m fine,” or “nothing will happen to me” before they got behind the wheel. 

It would be tragic enough if all of these drunken driving accidents just involved those who chose to drink and drive, but the sad reality is that they often involve other people who, quite often, were obeying both the law and common sense and chose not to drink and drive.

Drinking and driving is not just a crime. It is also unbelievably negligent behavior, in which you can and should be held both criminally and financially responsible for any accidents or injuries that you cause. You have every right to go out and celebrate as you see fit, but you don’t have the right to endanger others when you do so. If you decide to have one drink, or a few, or a whole lot, don’t get behind the wheel of a car.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm that helps victims of car accidents in the Washington, D.C. area, and that includes people who have been injured due to the actions of drunk drivers. We believe that people who have been injured because of someone else’s negligence should be fully compensated for their medical bills, loss of income, pain and suffering and emotional hardship, and we further believe that drinking and driving is one of the purest forms of negligence that exists. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident or injured due to the actions of someone who was drinking and driving, Greenberg & Bederman for afree accident legal consultation.

Serious Car Accidents:Any accident that involves a complete loss of your car and/or a stay in the hospital should not be handled without legal counsel. When medical treatment is involved, insurance companies will often try to deny liability outright or offer an artificially low settlement in order to minimize the payout. Handling a car accident injury claim without an injury lawyer is practically a guarantee that your needs will not be realistically met.

Accidents with Trucks or other Commercial Vehicles:Tractor trailers and other commercial vehicles are on the road for no other reason than to make money, and as a result the laws regarding commercial insurance coverage are different. A commercial vehicle might have multiple policies, with the driver having one policy and the freight company having another. What often happens in the event of a commercial vehicle accident is a game of “pass the buck,” where one insurer will claim that the other insurer is more liable than the other and vice versa. Commercial insurance companies are also notorious for being closed mouthed and difficult during investigations. An experienced personal injury attorney can help you sort out the liability issues, determine who was at fault, and help you receive fair compensation for your injuries and property damage. And considering the harm that a truck or tractor trailer can do, it is a safe bet that there will be both serious injuries and major property damage. The stakes are too high in a situation like that to go it alone.

Medical Malpractice: Doctors make mistakes all the time, but not all medical mistakes are necessarily a medical malpractice. If a medical provider deviates from the standard of care, and causes harm to the patient, with damages, there may be a negligence claim against the medical provider. Even if the doctors are upfront about the mistake and the insurance company offers you a settlement, there could be elements of that settlement that are inadequate. An experienced personal injury attorney should be able to tell fairly quickly whether or not your settlement offer is a decent one.

Falls:On the surface, slipping and falling might seem to be more comical that damaging, but the reality is that falls are a major cause of serious injuries and deaths. Because slipping and falling can be embarrassing, even people who are severely injured are sometimes hesitant to consult with an attorney. But businesses, hotels and rental properties are required to maintain safe premises for customers, guests and tenants. Unmarked wet floors, poorly lit staircases or cracked flooring are only some of the examples as to how negligent maintenance by an owner or manager has resulted in serious injury. A fall might be embarrassing, but if you were seriously injured due to circumstances that were not your fault, you have every right to seek compensation for your damages. An injury attorney can conduct an investigation and help determine whether or not your injury happened due to negligence.

Despite the sunny advertising about being a “good neighbor,” the average insurance adjuster is not in the business of writing big checks. In fact, most insurance adjusters, whether they work for auto insurance, commercial vehicle insurance, medical malpractice insurance or property insurance, are actually financially rewarded for paying out less in claims. It is therefore in their best interest to pay you as little as possible. To that end, they routinely offer artificially low settlements, and engage in manipulative tactics to get you to accept them. A good rule of thumb for dealing with insurance adjusters is that if there is any element of your injury that goes beyond the concrete arithmetic in front of you, then any settlement that is offered to you should be thoroughly scrutinized by a personal injury attorney. For instance, if the injury was particularly painful, then that pain and suffering should be compensated. If you are unable to return to work because of your injury, then you should be compensated for your lost income. If you will have to go through rehabilitation to recover from your injuries, the rehabilitation costs should be covered.

If your adjuster offers excuses for not providing for these costs in the settlement, or if it seems that he is trying to steer the blame for the accident over to you, or if he says things like “We don’t want to make mountains out of molehills,” you can be absolutely sure that this means you aren’t being treated fairly.

Any experienced personal injury attorney should be able to take a look at your settlement offer and determine whether or not it is adequate to cover your damages, both present and future damages. If insurance companies would simply be forthcoming and generous from the beginning, we injury lawyers may go out of business. An experienced injury lawyer can judge what any settlement is lacking and the  best way to proceed.

In any accident requiring medical treatment, it is simply better to be safe than sorry. Consulting an injury attorney after a serious accident can keep you from becoming victimized a second time. You shouldn’t find out that your settlement is inadequate after you’ve already signed it.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm based in Silver Spring, Maryland. Our attorneys have provided legal counsel for the injured of Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. since 1985. We have helped secure high settlements and judgments for those who have been injured due to car accidents, medical malpractice, or other types of personal injury. If you or a loved one in the greater Washington, D.C. area has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To learn more about personal injury law, please read our personal injury page on our website.  To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, please see our personal injury videos on Youtube.

In addition to the technology used in accident reconstruction, a professional reconstructionist conducts an investigation by first examining the actual scene of the accident by gathering evidence that may be critical to the outcome of the case. The investigator will usually examine the vehicle(s) to determine the overall damage and match those damages to the scene of the incident. Often investigators will conduct a speed analysis by starting at the final resting point and working their way back to the starting point. In the instance where the vehicle goes airborne an investigator will use a formula to calculate the speed that the car was traveling at the time of the crash, and to calculate the vehicle’s impact on the ground. There is also a slide formula used to determine a beginning and an end velocity speed at the beginning of the slide. The investigator will try to determine where the vehicle went out of control, where it went down, where impact occurred and where it finally came to rest. Pavement or ground markings should help determine this information. Investigators also look for tire marks. Tire marks can help determine what speed the vehicle was traveling. If there is “speckling” on the front tire it may be a sign of wheel lock-up or skidding.

Sometimes the investigator will bring the vehicle back to the scene of the accident and place it on the ground where the markings occurred to determine the position of the vehicle at each location. The investigator will then measure the vehicle and make sure to check whether the tires are fully inflated and if they are worn out or not. If a tire was flat before the accident occurred, the tire marks will be over deflective. The tire marks will be narrower. The investigator will also take into account whether the driver is an experienced driver or not.
Photographic evidence can be crucial to the case, but if the accident scene has changed since the incident, it calls into question whether the photos or videos are admissible. There is state of the art software and equipment that can change the subject area (accident scene) back to the original conditions,so getting the photos admitted into evidence becomes quite crucial.

Accident reconstruction is typically used when liability is disputed and the property damage is extensive. Hiring an expert to evaluate your large auto accident case should be done by seasoned lawyers who know when to hire an accident reconstructionist. Greenberg and Bederman, a lawfirm with a long standing reputation for excellence in accident law, has the knowledge and skills to review your accident case, and can determine when it is necessary to bring in an accident reconstructionist into your case.

To learn more about auto accident law, please click on auto accident lawyers.  If you want to learn about our auto accident lawyers, please click roger greenberg, andrew bederman, or jason fernandez.

Most states follow a fairer system of ‘comparative negligence,’ which allows for reduced recovery, taking into account any negligence on the part of the injured party, and subtracting it from the final award. If you live in Maryland, D.C. or Virginia, you should be aware of the defense that contributory negligence may raise by the insurance company against those bringing a claim for personal injury. If the defendant is successful in raising this defense, the injured party is barred from any recovery. For example, if one did not exercise reasonable care, such as looking both ways before crossing the street and was subsequently hit by a car, they may not recover.
Many criticize this approach for its unfairness and inflexibility towards the plaintiffs. Despite the continuous lobbying efforts in an attempt to abolish the antiquated system, it remains in place due to support from insurance and business lobbyists. Insurance companies who want to take a chance in convincing a jury that the victim was partially at fault, instead of paying for injuries, may be willing to take a chance in litigating the case, because they may end up paying nothing. You should consider contacting an experienced personal injury attorney if you encounter reluctance on the part of the other driver’s insurer to compensate you for your injuries and/or damages. You should not communicate with the other driver’s insurance company without first contacting an attorney, as any statements made by you regarding your fault may serve as the basis for contributory negligence defense in court. Be wary when attempting to navigate the system on your own, as there are many avenues of harm that may bar you from recovering. Contributory negligence is one of them.
 

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