Articles Posted in Dangerous Road Cases

Today a driver was seriously injured when she careened over an embankment at a sharp curve on Lakeshore Road, near Ontario Ave, in Cicero, near the edge of Oneida Lake. Some witnesses say the car was going too fast, but a neighbor was quoted in the paper saying the curve has a history of bad crashes.

The “history of bad crashes” caught my eye. By force of habit, my NY car accident lawyer thinking cap went on. Get under that cap with me for a moment.

Here’s my stream of thought: “Could this unfortunate driver, even if she was going a bit too fast, bring a claim against the State, County, Town or whoever designed the roadway? Did the design of the roadway contribute to her car accident? Was the posted speed limit too fast? Were there adequate signs announcing the curve? Should they have installed flashing yellow lights or other hazard warnings for the curve?”

Last Sunday a van careered across several lanes of traffic on a highway overpass on the Bronx River Parkway before plunging off the side of the road and landing, upside down, in the Bronx Zoo, where all seven occupants, including three children, met their death. Yes, the van driver was surely at fault. He was probably speeding (68 in a 50 mile per hour zone), and he should not have lost control of his vehicle. But that doesn’t let the State of New York off the hook if it failed to design and maintain a safe roadway.

And it sure looks like New York State screwed up here. The van apparently hit a concrete curb on the right side of the roadway, which catapulted the van so high that it completely cleared, without touching, the four-foot high guardrail/fence.

This is totally unacceptable. What kind of engineering genius would put concrete curbs that act as launching pads for errant cars and send them flying over the guardrails? Make no sense at all.

In an article entitled “NY DOT chief nixes big fixes for Onondaga Lake Parkway railroad bridge”, the Syracuse Post Standard quotes a top New York Department of Transportation official as saying that structural design changes to keep trucks, buses and other tall vehicles from crashing against the railroad bridge above the Onondaga Lake Parkway are too expensive and impractical. According to this official, while other less costly, minor improvements might be possible (including tinkering with the warning signs’ height), major structural changes aimed at eliminating the low clearance of the bridge are all but impossible.

How does a Syracuse bus accident attorney go about investigating this defense? Well, first, he or she would have to recognize that this “we couldn’t do it” defense is not new. It was probably invented about the same time as roads were! Therefore, there is a whole body New York roadway design liability case law that defines the parameters of this defense.

Here’s what that law says in a nutshell: While a governmental entity (such as the State of New York or Onondaga County) has a duty to plan, design, construct and maintain reasonably safe roads, highways, streets, bridges, intersection and traffic control devices, they have what’s known as “qualified immunity” from liability. Under this “qualified immunity”, the governmental body may be held liable only when its roadway design was “plainly inadequate or there was no reasonable basis for its plan or design”. The State or County can’t be held liable just because there might have been a better, safer design. The actual design has to be, in light of all the circumstances, “plainly inadequate” or “unreasonable”. Further, once the State is made aware that something about the road is dangerous (for example, tall trucks keep crashing against the bridge!), it must then undertake new studies to see if the danger can be reduced.

At about 2:30 a.m. this morning, the top of a double-decker bus smashed into an overpass railroad bridge spanning the Onondaga Lake Parkway. The impact threw the entire bus on its side. The bus had left from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and was making its way to Toronto with scheduled stops in Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo. There were apparently about 25 passengers on board, of which four are now dead, and several suffer serious injuries. A bus company spokesperson said that the driver had not made his scheduled stop in Syracuse, and that the bus was not on its scheduled bus route.

Our hearts go out to the families of the dead, and to the injured. Even those who are not seriously injured are undoubtedly experiencing severe emotional distress and post traumatic shock at this time.

As a Syracuse New York vehicular accident lawyer, I can tell you that this kind of accident cannot happen without some negligence or carelessness on the part of someone.