Virginia Beach Personal Injury Lawyer - Crash

One Dead, Three Injured in Virginia Beach Car Accident

John Cooper — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:19:42 GMT

The driver of a 2006 Toyota Scion was traveling along Indian River Road in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA) when tragedy struck. The driver turned too quickly around a curve, overcorrected, and wound up in the opposite lane hitting a Honda Odyssey in a head-on collision, according to WAVY.com.

There were three people in the Honda Odyssey – a wife, husband, and their daughter – all of whom sustained injuries from the car accident. What a nightmare to have a car coming at you the wrong way, in your lane! There is nothing the parent/driver could do, once the other driver made the grave mistake behind the wheel which set the collision sequence in motion.

This terrible incident reminds us how important it is to reduce our speed when making sharp turns around curves on the road.

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper, Lewis & Appleton personal injury law firm (VA-NC law offices ) edits the injury law blogs Virginia Beach Injuryboard, Norfolk Injuryboard, and Northeast North Carolina Injuryboard as a pro bono service to consumers.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

Virginia Beach mom dies in Chesapeake crash

Jim Lewis — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:30:41 GMT

Katie Young – a Virginia Beach wife and mother of two – died Friday night when the car she was riding in collided with a second auto at Mount Pleasant Road and Stadium Drive in Chesapeake.

The death of Young, 29, is particularly tragic – a national newspaper wrote two days before her death about how her family was dealing with her recent diagnosis of Crohn’s disease.

The Young family has my deepest sympathies. They are bearing a burden no family should ever have to.

Young was a passenger in a Honda that was traveling on Stadium Drive in Chesapeake when it crossed Mount Pleasant Road. A Buick headed east on Mount Pleasant collided with the Honda, and Young was thrown clear by the force of the impact, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

Police have not yet identified the driver of either auto, and no charges have yet been announced.

The crash happened just after 11 p.m. Friday near Colon Hall Stadium and Great Bridge Middle School.

Young lived in the 3900 block of Rainbow Drive in Virginia Beach, the newspaper said. She was married to Justin Young and they had two children together: Justin, 8, and Madison, 5.

Young’s husband had recently restarted his music career – songs and more at justinyoung.com – to help pay medical bills for his wife’s Crohn’s disease.

"You look at the trials that happen in your life and say, OK, why am I going through this? What am I supposed to learn from this? Let's learn this and move on,” Justin Young told the Mormon Times before the crash. “That's how we're looking at it."

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jim Lewis

Early Evidence Shows Red-Light Cameras Are Making Virginia Beach Safer

Jim Lewis — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:37:30 GMT

"Virginia Beach police say red light violations have declined at intersections that have been monitored by cameras since March," begins an Oct. 31 Virginian-Pilot article. Some intersections at which cameras operate have seen a 69 percent reduction in cars speeding through stop signals.

Having written previously about the need to enforce traffic laws at busy intersections, I was pleased to learn that drivers in the Resort City have taken to heart the not-at-all subtle reminder--and threat of being ticketed--to always stop at red lights. At the same time, a fatal accident on General Booth Boulevard in mid-October in which the driver at fault appears to have run a red light sent an even greater message that no intersection can ever be completely safe when drivers do not follow traffic laws.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety created this profile of red-light runners: "younger, less likely to use safety belts, ... poorer driving records, and drove smaller and older vehicles." Demographic data portrays the "typical" Virginia Beach resident as a 33-year-old with an annual income of just under $30,000. Seat-belt wearing behavior and driving history must be left to speculation, but the typical Beach resident seems young and at least potentially likely to own an older car-- to speed through an intersection when he or she should stop.

This is not to say that most people who live in Virginia Beach ignore stop signals. The recent reductions in red-light running shows that city residents will follow traffic laws when prompted. And that is great to know.

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is a law firm which focuses on injury and accident law, and our attorneys have handled thousands of car and truck accident cases. Check out our case results to see for yourself. In addition, check out our FREE Best Guide to Car Accident injuries in Virginia and our special report on distracted driving. Our primary office is in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), but our lawyers also hold licenses in NC, SC, WV, KY and DC. We are ready to talk to you by phone right now, and we provide free initial confidential injury case consultations. Call us toll free at 1-800-752-0042. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube. Further, our lawyers proudly edit the Virginia Beach Injuryboard and Norfolk Injuryboard as pro bono public information services.

EJL

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jim Lewis

Crash near Colonial Parkway leaves Williamsburg teen dead

Emily Mapp Brannon — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:24:04 GMT

Elizabeth Marie Shannon of Williamsburg died Tuesday night in a crash near Colonial Parkway, The Virginian-Pilot reported Wednesday.

Shannon, 19, was driving her Chevrolet Aveo south on Penniman Road when the accident happened at 9:23 p.m., a Virginia State Police spokeswoman told the newspaper.

The accident happened when Shannon went off the road and struck a cement pillar, the Daily Press of Newport News reported.

Shannon graduated from Williamsburg's Lafayette High School in 2008. Any fatal traffic accident is a tragedy, but a crash when a young life is needlessly snuffed out is doubly so.

Shannon was taken to Riverside Regional Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead shortly after the crash.

A passenger – not publicly identified as of Wednesday afternoon – was seriously injured and airlifted to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. Affitional information about her condition was unavailable.

The Virginia State Police spokeswoman said “reckless driving” caused the crash, the Daily Press said.

The crash happened in York County on a stretch of Penniman Road near the James City County-York County line.

Penniman Road has the third-highest crash rate of any location in York County, according to a 2008 York County traffic safety study. There were 23 crashes on the road from 2004 to 2006, according to the study, giving it a crash rate of 1.49 and an injury rate of 2.72.

“This high crash frequency clearly indicates that some kind of additional safety measures need to be taken at these locations,” the study concluded. I hope authorities in York County heed those words and work to make Penniman Road safer for all.

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is a law firm which focuses on injury and accident law and our attorneys have handled thousands of car and truck accident cases. Check out our case results to see for yourself. In addition, check out our FREE special reports on distracted driving and The Best Guide to Car Accident injuries in Virginia. Our primary office in based in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA) although our lawyers hold licenses in NC, SC, WV, KY and DC. We are ready to talk to you by phone right now—we provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at 1-800-752-0042. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube . Furthermore, our lawyers proudly edit the Virginia Beach Injuryboard and Norfolk Injuryboard as a pro bono public information service.

(MM)

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Emily Mapp Brannon

Motorcycle Crash in Chesapeake Claims a Life, Shatters Another

Emily Mapp Brannon — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:47:08 GMT

Take two motorcycles, add excessive speed and a narrow residential road lined with parked cars, and you all too often wind up with a tragedy like the one that occurred Tuesday evening in Chesapeake. Two motorcyclists speeding down Holly Cove Drive off of Airline Boulevard in the northwestern part of the city crashed into each other, slammed into a parked vehicle and flew into a concrete utility pole that snapped from the impact.

Police had not released the motorcyclists' names as of Wednesday morning, but one of the bike riders died on the scene. The other, who was not wearing a helmet, went to Sentara Norfolk Hospital with head and brain injuries.

Hampton Roads has seen more than its share of fatal motorcycle accidents this year. A large number of these accidents have resulted from unsafe riding. Riders have died after losing control of their bikes while speeding. Others have died as result of not following basic traffic rules such as always passing on the left. Too many have died after climbing onto their motorcycles while drunk. It's too early to calculate the death toll among motorcyclists in Virginia for 2009, but in 2008, nearly 90 people died in speed-related motorcycle crashes alone throughout the Commonwealth.

Motorcyclists already face risks of serious and fatal collisions with much larger vehicles on the road. Bike riders do not need to increase their risks for injury and death by operating their motorcycles in unsafe ways.

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is a law firm which focuses on injury and accident law, and our attorneys have handled thousands of car and truck accident cases. Check out our case results to see for yourself. In addition, check out our FREE special reports on distracted driving and The Best Guide to Car Accident Injuries in Virginia. Our primary office is in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), but our lawyers hold licenses in NC, SC, WV, KY and DC. We are ready to talk to you by phone right now, and we provide free initial confidential injury case consultations. Call us toll free at 1-800-752-0042. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube. Further, our lawyers proudly edit the Virginia Beach Injuryboard and Norfolk Injuryboard as pro bono public information services.

EJL

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Emily Mapp Brannon

Virginia Beach (VA) police chase ends with driver's death

Emily Mapp Brannon — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:30:55 GMT

Another high-speed police chase in the Hampton Roads of Virginia (VA) has ended tragically – with the death Saturday of Reginald M. Butler of Virginia Beach.

Saturday’s chase was one of a number of recent chases. In September, my colleague Jim Lewis wrote about a lengthy chase that went from Virginia Beach to Norfolk and back to the Beach.

And in July, my colleague Randy Appleton wrote about a high-speed chase that started in Chesapeake and ended in Newport News.

The chase started when Virginia Beach police tried to pull Butler over near the intersection of Lynnhaven Parkway and Princess Anne Road shortly before 2 a.m., WAVY-TV reported.

A police officer wanted to stop Butler for speeding, WVEC-TV reported, but Butler would not pull over.

Instead, authorities said, Butler led police on a three-mile chase at speeds as high as 100 miles an hour.

Butler led police west on Lynnhaven – passing within a block of his own home in the process – but lost control of his car shortly after he crossed Indian River Road and went off the road to the right, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

Butler overcorrected, went off the road to the left, rolled over and crashed into the home at 1701 Chilhowie Circle, on the corner of Chilhowie and Lynnhaven.

Butler was thrown from his car and was pronounced dead at the scene. He lived in the 1600 block of Handcross Way, The Pilot reported.

While I support police efforts to keep the roads safe, I hope officers use common sense when engaging in these high-speed chases.

(MM)

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Emily Mapp Brannon

Virginia investigators studying boat collisions

Jim Lewis — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:11:17 GMT

Virginia authorities are crashing boats – on purpose.

The collisions are part of an effort to learn more about how recreational boat collisions happen and how to prevent them, the AP reported.

"It gives officers a chance to see it, because very few times do police officers have the opportunity to witness a traffic crash, let alone a boat collision," Jim Getz, a coordinator for the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators, told the AP.

The controlled collisions happened in September on an isolated part of the James River near Richmond. The collisions were recorded and photographed, with materials to be disseminated across the country.

Recreational boat accidents are an ever-present danger in Hampton Roads, and I support any efforts to make boating safer. In May, my colleague David Hurt wrote about a boat capsizing near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, an incident that left one man dead and another injured.

And my colleague Emily Mapp Brannon wrote less than a month ago that boating accidents were steeply rising throughout Virginia.

In 2008, 709 people died in recreational boating accidents, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Of those 709, 60 were killed in collisions. Another 856 people were hurt in collisions.

In the latest project, 12 pairs of boats were crashed into each other. All were donated and were crashed by remote control.

"It is a complex, very dynamic event, and the only way to fully understand it is to study actual collisions, where you know what actually happened and can carefully examine the aftermath," accident investigator and consultant Miles Beam told the AP.

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is a law firm which focuses on injury and accident law and we have experience handling wrongful death cases. Check out our case results to see for yourself. Our primary office in based in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA). Our attorneys have handled numerous wrongful death cases and we understand the difficult circumstances which accompany these types of cases. Our lawyers hold licenses in NC, SC, WV, KY and DC. We are ready to talk to you by phone right now—we provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at 1-800-752-0042. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube . Furthermore, our lawyers proudly edit the Virginia Beach Injuryboard and Norfolk Injuryboard as a pro bono public information service.

(MM)

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jim Lewis

Feds Get Serious About Cutting Texting While Driving

Randy Appleton — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:52:46 GMT

I’m not used to hearing a federal official describe much of anything as a “menace” these days. But that is exactly the word U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood choose to describe texting while driving. LaHood also called distracted driving in general an epidemic in the days leading up to, and throughout, a two-day Distracted Driving Summit in Washington, D.C., this week.

The candor was refreshing regarding a problem that led to a significant proportion of the 515,000 car cashes in which people got injured during 2008. Nearly 6,000 of those accidents involved at least one distracted driver and one fatality.

Just in case there is any doubt that texting while driving constitutes a—to agree with Secretary LaHood—menace, I’ll point to a recently published study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. The researchers found that texting commercial truck drivers were 23.2 times more likely to have an accident than nontexting truck drivers. People driving cars were 2.8 times more likely to crash while dialing their cell phones.

LaHood, backed by President Barack Obama, has decided to act on his understanding of the seriousness of the texting and driving problem. By Executive Order, no military personnel or federal employees can text while driving a government vehicle or conducting official business. Federal laws prohibiting bus, tractor trailer and train operators from texting while driving are promised.

Virginia was somewhat out in front on curbing texting while driving. I would like to see federal laws banning the practice move quickly to bolster and extend the protections the Virginia law gives drivers.

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton personal injury law firm is based in Virginia (VA), near the Northeast North Carolina (NC) border. Lawyers with the firm practice primarily in the southeastern U.S. and handle injury law cases, including car, truck and railroad accidents, medical negligence cases and more. The firm’s website is hsinjurylaw.com. Lawyers with Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton also edit the injury law blogs Virginia Beach Injuryboard, Norfolk Injuryboard, and Northeast North Carolina Injuryboard and host a YouTube injury law video library with more than 50 videos covering many FAQs on personal injury subjects. The firm’s lawyers are licensed in VA, NC, SC, WV, DC and KY.

EJL

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Randy Appleton

Plane Accident Kills Pilot in Virginia Beach

Jim Lewis — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:50:00 GMT

Five airplanes were practicing for an aerial demonstration. Everything was going smoothly until the very end. One of the five planes failed to properly pull up while in descent and crashed killing the pilot in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA).

My deepest condolences go out to the pilot’s friends and family.

It turns out the pilot suffered from a cardiac condition and became incapacitated during the flight, according to Aviation News. What’s troubling is that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) knew about the pilot’s medical issues and denied his application for a medical certificate on an earlier occasion. Granted, the pilot falsified information on at least three applications for medical certification regarding his evaluation and treatment for cardiac conditions.

As an injury lawyer who’s represented people in plane accidents, I think it’s so tragic when incidences like this occur and it's clear something should have been done in terms of monitoring the pilot's flight activities.

The medical records indicate a protracted history of chest pain, an enlarged heart, and intermittent atrial fibrillation. The pilot was using a blood thinner and beta-blocker medication to reduce their heart rate, and was using an alpha-blocker medication that also reduced blood pressure. If the pilot had these medications in his system during his flight, they could have played a role in his sudden incapacitation while in the air.

For many pilots, participation in a cardiac rehabilitation program is essential to achieve the minimal functional capacity in exercise testing, document tolerance of medications, and achieve successful rehabilitation in order to obtain the certification the pilot who died had such trouble attaining.

A full investigation needs to be conducted to see how much the FAA knew at the time this pilot was allowed to fly a plane. It’s pretty clear he should not have received authorization given his physical ailments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41pnyX8umoY

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton personal injury law firm is based in Virginia (VA), near the NE North Carolina (NC) border and handles car, truck, railroad, and medical negligence cases and more. Our injury attorneys host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube . In addition, our lawyers proudly edit the Virginia Beach Injuryboard, Norfolk Injuryboard, and Northeast North Carolina Injuryboard as a pro bono public information service. Lawyers licensed in: VA, NC, SC, WV, DC, KY.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jim Lewis

Couple Tragically Killed in Car Accident

John Cooper — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:26:00 GMT

Bob and Reggie Wade, two active citizens in their 80s, were killed in a car accident. They were driving home to Valley Forge when their Cadillac was struck by a Dodge Durango, according to philly.com. The driver and passengers in the Durango were not seriously injured.

The Wade’s were a couple that enjoyed life to the fullest and spent Fourth of July weekend in Virginia (VA). They were surrogate parents to nine nieces and nephews with a passion for enjoying the company of friends and family.

Working for an injury law firm which represents clients hurt in car accidents, I’m always saddened to hear about good people dying in these terrible crashes.

Nearly 70,000 people were injured in car accidents last year in the state of Virginia (VA) and over 800 were killed, according to the DMV.

Here are some general safety tips to follow when driving. These may seem rudimentary, but it’s always good to keep them in mind…

1. Wear your seatbelt
2. Follow the speed limit
3. Don’t drive while impaired
4. Exercise caution at intersections, red lights, and stop signs
5. Always signal your intentions

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton personal injury law firm is based in Virginia (VA), near the NE North Carolina (NC) border and handles car,truck,railroad, and medical negligence cases and more. Our lawyers proudly edit the Virginia Beach Injuryboard, Norfolk Injuryboard, and Northeast North Carolina Injuryboard as a pro bono public information service. Lawyers licensed in: VA, NC, SC, WV, DC, KY.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper