Articles Posted in Car Accidents

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is reminding motorists that January is Move Over month.

We recently reported on our Florida Injury Lawyer Blog about the risks of highway driving, including the need to understand what to do after a vehicle breakdown or a traffic collision, both of which put you at risk of a secondary collision. It’s always a good idea to move away from vehicles stopped along the roadside. But Florida law requires drivers to slow down and/or move over when approaching roadside vehicles with activated emergency lights.

Last year, the Florida Highway Patrol reported 231 crashes and nearly 17,000 citations issued to motorists who failed to obey the law. 

 The Move Over Law was added to section 316.126, Florida Statutes, in 2002 and requires drivers to move out of the lane adjacent to stopped safety traffic whenever it is possible and safe to do so, and to otherwise reduce speed to 20 mph below the limit in areas where the speed limit is greater than 25 mph. Utility and sanitation workers were added to the law in 2014.

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From all of us at Associates and Bruce L. Scheiner, Attorneys for the Injured, we wish you a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend with friends and family.

However, we remind you that will mean putting particular emphasis on safe driving as Labor Day weekend is typically the second most-dangerous weekend of the year on Florida roads, according to the Sun-Sentinel. 

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A 45-car pileup in Tallahassee is being blamed on slow traffic and bad weather.

According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the incident on I-10 injured eight people and led to hours of gridlock for motorists in the state’s capital. As many as five semis were involved in the incident and a motorcyclist was critically injured. Authorities identified 18 separate collisions in the pileup, which occurred during afternoon rush hour. 

FHP Maj. Chris Blackmon attributed cause to a motorist driving slowly in front of a tractor trailer during a torrential downpour. “There was extremely heavy rain in the area,” he said. “Then it became total chaos.”

A hidden danger that is seldom talked about is the risk of traffic accidents caused by a health condition or medical emergency.

Florida has the nation’s largest population of older drivers, whose chronic conditions can put them at increased risk. Just recently, the Florida Highway Patrol reported a fatal crash on Interstate 75 near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard that is being blamed on a medical episode. 

Authorities say the 70 year-old Punta Gorda man was pronounced dead at Gulf Coast Medical Center. The truck he was driving veered right and struck another car before driving into the median, where it struck a guardrail several times before coming to rest in the grass.

Even safety-conscious drivers rarely stop to think about the risks of accidents at railroad crossings.

Most are surprised to learn that Florida is among the nation’s deadliest states when it comes to traffic accidents at railroad crossings. 

Our injury lawyers in Fort Myers took note of a recent article in the Sun-Sentinel, which touts new technology as a means of reducing the risks at railroad crossings. About 60 new crossing gates, known as quad gates, are being installed along the corridor where the new higher-speed Brighline trains have begun running in Southeast Florida.

The Sun-Sentinel reports Florida motorists continue to struggle with sticker shock when purchasing auto insurance.

Our Fort Myers car accident lawyers recently reported on the high-number of motorists involved in hit-and-run accidents in Florida, which roughly corresponds to the high number of uninsured motorists on the state’s roads.

One in four drivers involved in a motor-vehicle collision last year left the scene; 1 in 4 Florida motorists are on the roads uninsured.