Car Accidents

November 17, 2022

Brain Injuries Caused by Auto Accidents and Accidental Falls in Massachusetts

Massachusetts residents had higher rates of traumatic brain injury-related emergency department (ED) visits than residents of any other state studied, according to a 2021 report in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation. Over 998 per 100,000 MA residents went to an emergency room for a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a single year, topping the list of the 25 states reporting that data. While the Commonwealth fared better on TBI-related deaths and hospitalizations, one thing is clear: brain injuries affect a substantial number of Massachusetts residents every year.

TBIs occur when a bump, blow, jolt, or penetration to the head disrupts normal brain function. Although many TBIs result in mild concussions, serious brain injury is a major cause of death and disability. In fact, a 2018 special report by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) indicated that TBIs contributed to 68,260 emergency room visits, 5,062 hospitalizations, and 820 deaths of MA residents in one year.

Causes of Brain Injuries in Massachusetts

July 26, 2022

Why are pedestrian accidents and fatalities on the rise in Massachusetts?

by Altman & Altman

American roads have become increasingly dangerous for walkers. According to Governors Highway Safety Association estimates, drivers killed nearly 7,500 pedestrians in 2021 — the highest number in 40 years. And in Massachusetts, MassDOT crash portal data indicate that pedestrian deaths rose 40% between 2020 and 2021, rebounding even higher than pre-pandemic normals.

Pedestrian Fatalities in Massachusetts

While pedestrian accidents can happen anywhere at any time, a WalkBoston report identified several key factors regarding Massachusetts pedestrian deaths in 2021.

August 11, 2020

Can I change my Personal Injury Lawyer in the middle of my case?

by Altman & Altman

It is your right to hire a competent lawyer that you trust with whatever matter you are dealing with. Sometimes you may choose one at the outset of your case only to discover that they are not a good match. No matter the reason, you should know that you can change your lawyer at any time, including in the middle of your case.

The most common complaint about lawyers are that they are difficult to get ahold of. All too frequently, we hear of clients that hire a lawyer that they can never get in contact with. Calls and emails go unreturned and communication gets pushed off over and over again. Maybe they have an unusually large caseload and are being overworked. No matter the excuse, when you hire a lawyer, you have a right to be a priority. You have the biggest interest in the progress of the case and your lawyer should frequently update you on his or her work. At Altman & Altman LLP we pride ourselves on being highly available to our clients. You can contact us any hour of the day on any day of the week. This includes weekends and holidays. Lawsuits can be stressful. The job of your lawyer is to usher you through this process as seamlessly as possible, and certainly not to add even more stress.

Many clients hire the first lawyer they speak to. You should keep in mind that the lawyer your hire could actually be the difference between winning or losing your case. It is usually a good idea to meet with a lawyer at their office before you hire them to represent you. Altman & Altman offers free initial consultations so you can meet with our attorneys and decide if we would be a good fit. You can get a feel for the culture of our office. Some people recommend paying attention to how the receptionist talks to clients calling in to see if they are actually put through to their attorney. Many firms also have testimonials from previous clients on their websites which can help you determine how they treated past clients.

Here are some questions you should ask a lawyer you are prospecting:

Have you handled cases similar to mine?
Have you been successful with these cases?
How long will the process take?
What are my options?
How long will it take for me to reach someone at this office?

June 28, 2019

What exactly is a soft tissue injury?

by Altman & Altman

Soft tissue injuries are one of the most common types of injuries, and can occur from immeasurable amounts of different causes. They can also range in severity from minor bruises to more serious, lingering injuries such as torn ligaments. If you suffered a soft tissue injury due to the negligence of another person, property owner or other third party, contact a personal injury attorney from the Cambridge firm of Altman & Altman LLP today.

What kind of soft tissue injury did you suffer?

Soft tissue injuries can be caused by many different means, including trips, slip and falls, car accidents, being struck by an object or person, falls from various heights and other work-related types of incidents, such as falling debris. These injuries can greatly vary in severity and in the longevity of their occurrence.

June 14, 2019

Why driving your car in the summer is more dangerous than in the winter

by Altman & Altman

You might imagine that the winter time is the most dangerous time for drivers. Especially in New England, and Altman & Altman’s home base of Cambridge and the Greater Boston Area, the thought of wintry storms causing whiteouts and freezing temperatures producing black ice conjures reasonable fear in many of us and absolutely causes deaths every year.

However, you may be surprised to find out that the most dangerous months to drive are actually the summer months – specifically June July and August – for a variety of reasons. Those months are actually responsible for 29 percent more fatalities than the most wintery months of December, January and February, according to a recent study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that examined 24 years of traffic accidents in America.

What makes summer driving more dangerous than winter driving?

There are many factors that contribute to car accidents, but some of the biggest reasons for traffic accidents increasing during the months where the weather is nicer and more predictable are as follows:

There are more people on the road

According to the NHTSA study, summer months lead to an approximately 20 percent increase in the number of total vehicles on the road at any given time. Simply put, more cars on the roadways lead to a higher probability of you becoming involved in an accident.

There are more young people on the road

Partially responsible for the uptick in the number of vehicles on the road is the number of students and young people on the road due to being on summer vacation and out of school. Younger drivers have less experience on the road and in control of their vehicles, which increases the likelihood of them being in serious accidents. Teenage drivers have the highest accident rate among any driving demographic.

Hotter temperatures lead to more tire incidents

While cold temperatures cause your tires to restrict and contract, hotter temperatures cause your tires to expand. With older tires and tires that have not been maintained, rapid expansion and the hot temperatures of asphalt during summer months can lead to an increased chance of a blowout, leading to serious accidents.

Summer time is construction time

When the weather gets nicer and asphalt plants open up, municipalities rush to get as much road construction done as possible. This work leads to road closures, detours and lane changes that can surprise motorists and cause congestion, leading to rear-end accidents and other crashes. Continue reading

June 10, 2019

TRW Airbags being investigated for critical failures

by Altman & Altman

Drivers of Fiat Chrysler, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mitsubishi and Toyota vehicles may be at critical risk of catastrophic injuries due to the potential for their car’s airbag systems to be dysfunctional or fail to deploy entirely. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating ZF TRW Automotive brand airbag systems and recalls are possible for these types of vehicles and more. If you are concerned about the safety of your vehicle or want a legal opinion after an accident has occurred, the personal injury experts at the Cambridge firm of Altman & Altman LLP are here to help you.

Airbag functionality is essential to safety

Thousands of accidents occur every day in America, and when you wind up in one you need to be able to rely on a few key safety components of your vehicle to keep you from becoming more seriously injured. One of those key components is your car’s airbag system – which should automatically deploy in the event of a crash in order to cushion you from the worst effects of the impact.

Airbag systems have become far more complex and reliable since they were first standardized in the early 1980s. However, this does not guarantee that manufacturers of airbags are incapable of making crucial errors that compromise the integrity and safety of these systems – putting people at risk and forcing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of vehicles to be recalled to address the issue.

Already there have been 12.3 million vehicles investigated by the NHTSA due to a concern they may contain faulty TRW airbag systems. No recalls have been issued at this time, but the fact that the NHTSA is taking matters so seriously indicates the possibility for recalls to be issued in the future.

There have already been recalls ordered for another airbag system made by another company, Takata, which made headlines for their airbags that were prone to having explosive incidents. In the case of TRW, the issue is that electrical malfunctions may cause the airbag system to fail to detect a crash and fail to deploy when they matter most. The investigations were launched in part due to two separate incidents where the airbags failed to deploy – and in one of those cases, the failure resulted in a fatality. Continue reading

October 10, 2018

Distracted Driving Becomes Number One Danger on American Roadways

by Altman & Altman

We all know the dangers of texting and driving, yet more and more American drivers are failing to take them seriously. In fact, a recent AAA study revealed that distracted driving is now the number one danger on American roadways, followed by aggressive driving, and drunk/drugged driving. Many experts blame it on our “productivity culture,” saying the pressure to respond to texts, emails and calls right now is making us more distracted, and less safe.

To reduce this rapidly-growing threat to public safety, we need more than just billboards and ad campaigns. Drivers must understand what happens—to their brains—when they drive while distracted. Taking your eyes off the road to glance at a text impacts more than just your line of vision. Reading that text is a visual distraction, yes, but it can also be a cognitive distraction. A Boston car accident lawyer can help you determine how to proceed if you’ve been injured due to another’s negligence.

Categories of Distraction

There are three main types of distraction: manual, visual, and cognitive. Manual and visual are fairly straightforward—you take your hands off the wheel to adjust the stereo, or you take your eyes off the road to read a text. But there’s a third kind of distraction, and this one gets a bit more complicated. When a driver takes his/her attention off the task at hand—driving—he/she may experience inattention blindness, which is the inability to perceive critical driving cues due to cognitive distraction (a.k.a. “zoning out”).

Although inattention blindness can occur at any time, it’s more common following a manual or visual distraction. As a result, even after you’ve read that text and returned your eyes to the road, your mind may be too distracted to notice that the car ahead of you is braking, or that an animal is about to run into the road.

What About Fatigue?

And zoning out doesn’t only occur when a driver is texting or taking his/her hands off the wheel. Fatigue is another leading cause of distraction because it also contributes to inattention blindness. Combined with other distractions, such as reading a text or taking a sip of coffee to stay awake, fatigued driving is particularly dangerous. A MA car accident attorney can help you recover damages if you’ve been injured due to another’s negligence.

Distracted Driving Statistics

The consequences of distracted driving are often devastating. In 2016, 3,450 people were killed and 391,000 were injured in distracted driving-related motor vehicle accidents. Considering that during the day, more than 480,000 people are estimated to be using cell phones while behind the wheel, these statistics aren’t particularly surprising.

And distracted driving doesn’t only involve cell phones. Anything that takes the driver’s eyes, hands, or mind off the task of driving is considered to be a distraction. This includes everything from adjusting the stereo or navigation system, to eating, drinking, or applying make-up. Continue reading

May 30, 2018

What Caused Uber’s First Fatal Self-Driving Car Accident?

by Altman & Altman

When an Uber SUV in self-driving mode struck an Arizona pedestrian in March, it was the first fatal crash of its kind. But it was far from the only accident involving an autonomous vehicle. In fact, such accidents have dominated the headlines in recent months, raising questions about the safety of self-driving technologies.

How Do Autonomous Vehicle Computers Work?

There are three different modules in the computer systems used to operate self-driving cars—the perception module, the prediction module, and the response module.

The perception module uses sensors—such as cameras, radar, and pulses of light—to identify nearby objects.
The prediction module determines how these objects are likely to “behave.” For example, is the truck ahead going to switch lanes?
The response model uses the information above to determine the most appropriate response. For example, should the autonomous vehicle accelerate, decelerate, or change lanes?

These technologies are currently being tested on public roadways in states across the nation. Arizona’s dry climate has played a major role in its becoming a hot bed for testing self-driving vehicles (which still perform better on dry roads). But Arizona’s loose laws and regulations concerning self-driving vehicles may see some changes now that someone has been killed. A Boston car accident lawyer can help you determine how to proceed if you’ve been injured due to another’s negligence.

So, what actually caused the Uber self-driving crash that killed an Arizona woman this spring?

According to Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford professor who formerly led Google’s autonomous-vehicle department, the most challenging of the three modules mentioned above is perception. Although bicycles, pedestrians, and other vehicles are relatively easy to identify, rarely-seen objects (think of a plastic bag floating across the road) pose a problem. Thrun says that when Google first began testing autonomous vehicles, its “perception module could not distinguish a plastic bag from a flying child.”

Confused Computer

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the Arizona accident, and determined that the autonomous Uber’s computer system failed to identify Elaine Herzberg as she walked across the road with her bicycle. Her presence was detected six seconds prior to the crash, but the perception module identified her first as an unknown object, then as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle, with a path the system was unable to predict. A MA car accident attorney can help you recover damages if you’ve been injured due to another’s negligence.

According to the NTSB report, at 1.3 seconds before the crash, the computer system recognized the need for emergency braking, but the emergency braking had been disabled due to a potential conflict with the autonomous system. In such an event, the human driver is expected to react. Unfortunately, the safety operator was looking at the self-driving display screen at the time of the accident, and was unable to brake in time.

It was determined that, although the Arizona accident had multiple causes, the fault ultimately lies in the system’s design failure. The AV system should slow down, for example, if the perception module becomes confused. Of course, unexpected braking can have its own consequences. Confused self-driving vehicles have been rear-ended by human drivers when they slowed down unexpectedly. In fact, this is the exact reason why the responsibility of braking has been officially assigned to human safety operators, who are tasked with being the safety net when the AV system malfunctions or gets confused. In order for this to work, however, the human driver must be paying attention to the road as closely as the driver of a non-autonomous vehicle. Continue reading

May 16, 2018

Woman Sues Uber for Gross Negligence in Case Involving Distracted Driver

by Altman & Altman

Uber and other ride-sharing services have completely changed the landscape of transportation in Boston and millions of other locations across the globe. For the most part, Uber has provided a loved, and much needed service. But the company has also attracted a lot of negative press in recent months and years. Numerous scandals, controversies, and lawsuits have people questioning Uber’s safety and morals.

Now a woman is suing Uber and her driver for injuries she suffered when her driver ran a red light, causing a serious accident. According to Jimena Martinez’s lawsuit, Ricardo Melendez II was distracted by his smart phone at the time of the accident. As a result, he ran a red light and was t-boned by a 16-year-old driver. A Boston car accident attorney can help you determine how to proceed if you’ve been injured due to another’s negligence.

Martinez claims that she suffered head trauma, a joint separation in her shoulder, and multiple abrasions in the accident. And according to the police report, the driver’s distraction was the primary factor in the crash. But Martinez blames more than just the driver. She believes that Uber is guilty of gross negligence for encouraging its drivers to routinely look at and touch their smart phones while driving.

Is Uber Encouraging Drivers to be Negligent?

Martinez’s lawsuit alleges that Uber requires drivers to mount their phones on the vehicle’s dashboard to better see and respond to ride requests. When a request comes in, drivers have a mere 15 seconds within which to tap the phone, thus accepting the fare. It is not difficult to see how this system could contribute to distracted driving. Few, if any, drivers are going to pull over to a safe location before responding to these time-sensitive requests. And with more and more Uber drivers on the road, this problem is not just an inconvenience.

Although Martinez is seeking more than $1 million in damages, she has requested that the jury make a determination on the exact amount. According to her lawyer, Martinez’s medical bills are already in excess of $80,000. In addition, she had to quit her job and drop out of college due to her injuries. A MA auto accident lawyer can help you protect your rights if you’ve been injured in a motor vehicle crash.

Distracted Driving Statistics

The reality is, the case above highlights a problem that is much bigger than Uber, Lyft, and other ride sharing apps. Distracted driving continues to be one of the primary causes of motor vehicle crashes across the country. In fact, 3,450 people died as a result of distracted driving in 2016 alone.

Of the 2.5 million people car accidents that occur annually in the United States, about 1.6 million involve a cell phone.
Texting while driving contributes to more than 330,000 serious injury accidents annually.
One out of every four accidents involves texting.
Your chance of having an accident while texting is six times greater than if you were drunk driving.
Distracted driving involves more than just texting and talking on the phone; adjusting the stereo system, navigating, eating, and applying make-up are all forms of distraction.

April 5, 2018

Do Backup Cameras Actually Improve Safety?

by Altman & Altman

Now that backup cameras have been a common feature in new vehicles for several years, research is underway to determine whether they are actually saving lives. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that, “Despite the growing prevalence of backup cameras, federal data shows that this technology hasn’t significantly cut down on cars backing into people and causing them harm.”

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), between 2008 and 2011, the percentage of new cars with backup cameras installed spiked from 32 percent to 68 percent. During that same time period, back-over injuries only dropped less than eight percent, from 13,000 to 12,000. A Boston motor vehicle accident lawyer can help you determine how to proceed if you’ve been injured due to another’s negligence.

Fatal back-over accidents, however, have decreased more significantly. The Los Angeles Times reported that, “The fatality rate has improved somewhat, dropping 31% over the same period.” Even so, back-over fatalities are actually quite rare. Deaths caused by a vehicle moving in reverse fell from 274 to 189 during the three-year period between 2008 and 2011. The article did not indicate how many of these accidents involved a backup camera, if any.

When you ask someone who uses a backup camera if they think it’s effective, most say “absolutely!”. There is no doubt that they can improve the driving—and parking—experience. Obviously, avoiding hitting another car, pedestrian, or bicyclist is the main goal of a backup camera, but they also help us avoid backing over a bicycle left in the driveway by one of our kids, or a dog that decides to run behind the car.

Backup Cameras Will Soon be a Requirement

As of May 2018, all new vehicles weighing at least 10,000 pounds will be required to have a backup camera. According to the NHTSA, these cameras can prevent serious injuries and deaths, especially among small children. Even though—according to Autotrader—only 200 people die in back-over accidents each year, at least 14,000 suffer injuries. Backup cameras can all but eliminate these accidents. A MA car accident attorney can help you recover damages if you’ve been injured by the negligence of another.

“Deaths from back-over crashes thankfully are pretty rare, but they still are tragic,” said the vice president of research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), Jessica Cicchino. “We know that rear cameras can help, but they’re not a silver bullet.”

The Most Effective Vehicle Safety Features Available Today

Backup cameras aren’t the only vehicle safety feature reducing serious injuries and deaths. The following features are touted by the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) as being among the most effective.

Lane-keep assist
Electronic stability control
Adaptive cruise control
Adaptive headlights
Collision warning system
Active park assist
Drowsiness alert
360-degree camera

“The movement toward autonomous vehicles – self-driving cars – has brought high-tech safety features to today’s cars, too,” said USAA’s director of property and casualty loss prevention and safety programs, Jim Clifford. “Many of the groundbreaking advances in the area of car safety have come from these efforts.” Continue reading