Van Slides Over Embankment in National Park, Falls Twenty-Five Feet
Wet roads and freezing temperatures combined last Tuesday to make for treacherous driving conditions in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. The park service said such conditions lead to numerous accidents involving about forty vehicles but no serious injuries were reported. One such accident involved a van that slid over an embankment and plummeted to a stop some twenty-five feet below the road. Luckily, all six passengers were able to get themselves out of the vehicle and none of them sustained life-threatening injuries although two of them were taken to the hospital for treatment.
Tennessee has a national park of its own, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, that can often play host to treacherous driving conditions such as those described above. Many roads that run through the Park have steep drops to one or both sides and dangerous curves. Also, much of the Park is located in areas of high elevation, meaning it is considerably colder and more subject to wintry weather conditions than roadways in other parts of the state. These two factors combined mean that the roadways that run through the National Park can be substantially more dangerous than an average roadway. As such, drivers who attempt to navigate these roads must use extra caution, especially in adverse weather conditions.
Drivers often can do nothing to avoid slick and wintry weather conditions. Nevertheless, they have a duty to drive carefully in such conditions or forego driving in such conditions at all. Even the most careful of drivers are likely to find themselves liable for a great deal of damages if their vehicle plummets down a twenty five foot precipice due to their decision to drive in adverse conditions. Such a fall poses the risk of serious injury or death to the other passengers in the vehicle, meaning every single person in the vehicle is a potential victim who can seek to recover for the driver’s negligence in a personal injury suit.
