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A New Jersey jury last week awarded $10.6 million in compensatory damages and $42,500 in punitive damages to a driver who became paralyzed in an accident caused by a defective throttle design in her 1997 Ford Explorer, according to an article in the New Jersey Law Journal posted on the Yahoo Business News Website.

The article also states that Ford Motor Co. may have been spared a monster punitive damages verdict in the SUV rollover case because its lawyer was allowed to tell jurors about the carmaker’s financial troubles and recent mass layoffs.

The lawsuit claimed that the 2000 accident was caused by a defective throttle design in the 1997 Ford Explorer that made its accelerator stick in the closed position. According to the lawsuit, when plaintiff Rebekah Zakrocki, then 21 years old, pressed hard on the gas as she was driving, the vehicle lurched forward. Panicked, she turned the wheel to the left, causing the vehicle to roll onto its roof.

The suit also charged that the “design of the vehicle’s suspension, brakes and geometry gave it a heightened propensity to tip over.” Zakrocki’s right hand was nearly severed in the crash, but doctors reattached it in surgery. She also suffered torn nerves in her brachial plexus, leaving her with only 10 percent use of her right arm, and she can no longer work as a cosmetics salesperson, the article said. After the four-week trial, the jury awarded $8.5 million for pain and suffering, $1.5 million for medical expenses and $1 million for lost wages.

However, the jury reduced the award by 28 percent, factoring in evidence that Zakrocki was speeding and not wearing a seatbelt. After those deductions, the woman will receive about $7 million in compensatory damages. The judge also did not allow the plaintiff’s attorney to present evidence to the jury about Ford’s recall of Explorers for throttle plate problems. Zakrocki received notice of the recall a few months after the crash. Ford plans to appeal the verdict, the article said.
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This is the story of a friend and a client and a classic case of how insurance companies can let you down very badly when you need them the most.

Mary Nehrlich was a top insurance saleswoman. She was as good as they got. Mary was a top producer in insurance sales and received many awards and accolades for her sales volume.

Mary thought she had prepared herself for every eventuality that insurance could cover, and she had. In selling insurance, she was a total believer. She had purchased, for herself and her family, every type of insurance she sold, including disability insurance. What she wasn’t prepared for was the way the insurance companies whose products she sold would show her the door when she was down and out.

Mary was severely injured in a horrible car crash on Oct. 18, 1995. She was driving near the intersection of McFadden and Springdale streets in Huntington Beach when a speeding motorist ran the red light and struck her vehicle. The other driver had been drinking.

The car was totaled and she suffered traumatic head, shoulder, hip and back injuries. She underwent knee and shoulder surgeries and later rehab at UCI Medical Center for three years. But, quite unexpectedly, she was also diagnosed with a brain injury months after the incident. The man who hit her also turned out to be an uninsured motorist. Her disability insurance carrier, for whom she was a top salesperson, declined to pay her the benefits promised in her policy.
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Seat and head restraints in more than 60 percent of newer passenger vehicles on the road fail to offer optimal head and neck protection in rear-end crashes, a leading safety group said last week, according to a Reuters news report posted on ABC’s Web site .

Although the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that more vehicles performed better than before, several vehicle designs are still rate “marginal or poor,” said the group’s president, Adrian Lund. He said rear-end collisions are frequent and neck injuries are the most common reported in auto crashes, accounting for 2 million insurance claims annually that cost at least $8.5 billion.

“It’s not difficult or expensive to design more protective seat/head restraints,” Lund said.

The safety group’s study shows that head and seat restraints in 22 car models were rated good while 53 other vehicles posted marginal or poor scores. The results were based on analyses of restraint designs and simulated crashes at 20 mph. Tests analyzed how people of different sizes would be protected in a typical rear-end collision.

The results were an improvement over similar tests in 2004, when only eight models earned good ratings.
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A 58-year-old bicyclist was hit by a hit-and run driver, while riding in a bicycle lane in Rancho Santa Margarita on Saturday. He is in extremely critical condition today, according to Orange county Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Amormino.

Deputies arrested 32-year-old Agustin Hernandez Perez, who speaks no English and carried no driver’s license or other identification was arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run. They say Perez struck the bicyclist.

Orange County is full of 50-year-olds riding their bikes. This accident could have been me in “extremely critical condition”. From an economics/legal prospective let’s analyze the injured cyclist’s options using the facts as we know and I suspect them to be.
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The Irvine Police Department said that neither drugs nor alcohol seemed to cause the accident that killed 18 year-old Northwood High School student Han Hung, and hospitalized his female passenger today after Hung lost control of his Acura and hit a tree, according to an article in the OC Register.

The cause of this terrible accident wasn’t stated in the new article but I do know that one of the primary factors involved in teenage auto accidents, especially single vehicle accidents, is driver distraction. Distraction by passengers is one of the biggest contributors, that is why young drivers have restrictions relating to who can ride in the vehicle with them.

A study done by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia , which surveyed more than 5,000 high school students, found that:

90 percent of teens said friends in the car distracted the driver
89 percent of teens said their friends used cell phones while they drove
79 percent of teens said passengers or the driver danced and sang in the car
20 percent of ninth- through 11th-graders have been involved in at least one crash as
a passenger in the last year.
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Over the weekend police were called to yet another injury traffic collision. A Honda Accord broadsided a GMC Yukon, leaving the driver of the Accord in critical condition. The police indicated that it appeared neither alcohol nor drugs played a part in the accident. What could have caused this near fatal accident? Could it have been age? You see, the driver of the Accord is 87 years old.

Driving is a privilege, not a right. As our population ages we will need more stringent testing of older drivers for not only their sight, but actual ability to drive. At some age, maybe 70, a driver’s license renewal should include a sight test as well as an actual driving test, like when we first get a license. It isn’t good enough to wait for an accident or a plethora of tickets.
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A 55-year-old Corona woman died last week after the car she was riding in tried to cut into the FasTrak lanes on the eastbound 91 Freeway during the evening rush hour on March 27, according to a news report posted on The Orange County Register’s Web site on Tuesday.

Officials confirmed the woman’s identity on Monday because her husband, who was on a fishing trip in Mexico, had to be located and informed, the article said.

Maria Maldonado, 55, of Corona was in the front seat of her daughter’s car when the car flipped over and crashed into a wall after losing control near Weir Canyon Road just after 5 p.m., coroner officials said. Maldonaldo was the only one not wearing her seat belt and the only person who died in the crash.Her daughter and another passenger were taken to Kaiser Permanente in Anaheim.

Both toll lanes and the northbound Costa Mesa (55) Freeway connector to the 91 were shut down for several hours that evening.

This is a tragic death that may have been avoided had the woman’s daughter not cut into the FasTrak lanes and had the woman been wearing a seat belt.
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A safety research company has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in federal District Court in Washington, seeking publicly-owned data about deaths and injuries that is being concealed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), according to a report by consumer watchdog group, posted on www.consumeraffairs.com.

R.A. Whitfield, Director of Quality Control Systems Corp., said that the public needs access to the Early Warning Reports collected under the Transportation Recall Enhancement Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act to better understand why so many deaths and injuries related to tire failures in the Ford Explorer have continued long after the well-known and well-publicized tire recalls that affected the vehicle.

The article says taxpayer money was used to gather this data, which is ironically being withheld from the public that paid for it. The TREAD Act was passed in October 2000 in response to Ford Explorer-Firestone tire-related rollover deaths in the U.S. and Ford’s overseas recalls. As the article goes on to explain, TREAD amended federal transportation law to require vehicle and equipment manufacturers to report safety recalls or campaigns on vehicles and components in a foreign country if they also sold substantially similar products here in the United States.

The law also required NHTSA to create regulations governing quarterly Early Warning Reports — information on property damage and warranty claims, consumer, dealer and field reports, production numbers and deaths and injuries collected by manufacturers — with the intent of using the data to spot defect trends.

The suit alleges that after all these years the public has consistently been denied access to this information. The article points out that between July 1994 and January 15, 2007, at least 420 persons have been killed in tire-related, Ford Explorer, Mercury Mountaineer, and Mazda Navajo crashes, including 396 deaths found in NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and 24 recent deaths found in news accounts. For more than a year, Whitfield has been seeking Ford’s EWR death and injury data on Explorers to better analyze the rise in tire-related Explorer fatalities.
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A single-vehicle auto accident in Orange County, involving the combination of alcohol and speeding have taken the life of an 18-year-old Buena park man this morning, the Orange Country Register reported.

Authorities stated that Philip Na was driving a Toyota Camry early Wednesday morning when it careened off the road and hit a light pole, killing Na and injuring his passenger, according to the article.

Na’s 17-year-old passenger was taken to La Palma Intercommunity Hospital with minor injuries. His identity was not disclosed because of his age. He was treated at the hospital and eventually released to his parents, officials said.

Preliminary reports indicate that a combination of alcohol and speeding contributed to the auto accident. An investigation into the cause of the accident is continuing.
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A two-vehicle accident in Tustin left a 7-year-old boy in critical condition Wednesday, according to a news report in the Orange County Register.

The driver was later arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, the article stated.

The father of the injured boy, Patrick Fleury, and his other son aged 9, were also hospitalized for moderate injuries The accident occurred when a 2000 Chevrolet 1500 truck broadsided their Lincoln Town Car around 3:45 p.m. on 17th Street at the intersection of Holt Avenue in Tustin, traveling westbound, according to reports from the California Highway Patrol .

All three were transported to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana for treatment, the article said.

The driver of the truck, Brian Cherrett, 32, had tried to turn left from the eastbound lanes of 17th Street onto Holt, striking the left side of Fleury’s vehicle, CHP reports said. Cherrett, of Orange, is being held in Orange County Jail in lieu of $200,000 bail.

The collision is under investigation by the CHP. Any witnesses with information are asked to call the CHP Santa Ana area office between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. at 714-567-6000.
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