Victim Recuperating from SUV Crash Injured When another SUV Crashes Into Home
Talk about being unlucky. A fifteen year-old from Jacksonville, Florida was home recuperating from a deadly crash involving an SUV on Tuesday when another SUV plowed through her house and into her room, aggravating her previous injuries and causing several new ones. The driver who plowed through the home was allegedly looking at his cell phone while driving, which caused him to veer off the road, run through a fence, and crash into the home. He has been cited for careless driving.
This is a textbook example of negligent driving. Looking at one’s cell phone instead of the road while driving is not something a reasonably prudent driver would do, as demonstrated by the fact that it can cause a driver to run off the road, bulldoze a fence, and mow down an innocent teenager in her bedroom. The activity the driver was participating in is known as distracted driving and is becoming increasingly common as mobile devices like cell phones become increasingly advanced and able to harbor more distractions. While some of these distractions are quite entertaining, they aren’t an indulgence that works well with the act of driving. The simple fact of the matter is that looking at the road while you are driving is far more important than tabulating the amount of times your girlfriend told you she loved you in your last text message or checking how much your stocks fluctuated during the trip from your driveway to McDonald’s. In the context of personal injury law, one of the worst actions a driver can take in a vehicle is to take his or her eyes off of the road.
The driver at fault in the above scenario will have to pay both for the injuries he caused the victim, but also for the aggravation his conduct caused to pre-existing injuries that the victim had prior to the crash. From the looks of this case, those amounts will be substantial, as the victim is certain to have a lot of medical expenses. Distracted driving that causes an auto accident can thus be a very costly and dangerous mistake.
