New Jersey Accident and Injury Law Blog : New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : Law Offices of Scott D. Grossman : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

As a Bergen County personal injury lawyer, I have followed the Robert Higbee case with interest, and have discussed it earlier on this blog. A jury has now cleared the New Jersey State trooper in charges resulting from a car accident in Cape May County in 2006. Higbee was accused of running a stop sign while engaged in a pursuit with his light and siren off, resulting in a fatal collision with a van.

On September 27^th 2006, Higbee was on duty racing through an Upper Township neighborhood in pursuit of a speeding car. He was driving at over 79 mph when he allegedly ran a stop sign. His car crashed into a van containing Jacqueline and Christina Becker. The teenage girls suffered massive head injuries in the car accident, and died. Robert Higbee was charged with death by auto. Higbee denied ever having been seen the stop sign that he allegedly ran. He testified that his concentration was focused on the speeding car that was pursuing. If convicted, he could have faced  five to ten years in prison. 

The decision to file charges against Higbee had generated strong protests from the police union who have held that the accident was just that - an accident. According to David Jones, head of the main state police union, if Higbee had been found guilty, it would have negatively impacted  law enforcement officers who had unintentional "bad outcomes” in the performance of their duties.

The verdict brought to an end an agonizing trial in which the deaths of the two girls were played out again and again. The girls' mother, Maria Caiafa has voiced her anguish at the decision. Caiafa - who had earlier this year settled for $2 million with the state - believes that the verdict sends law enforcement officers the wrong message – that it’s OK for innocent motorists and bystanders to pay when officers make a mistake.

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We have to wait till next year to see if Kyleigh’s Law will actually reduce the number of car accidents involving teen drivers, but the legislation has already generated plenty of heat.

Just under two weeks ago, Governor Jon Corzine signed the legislation that will require drivers below the age of 21 who don’t have full driving privileges yet, to display an identifying decal on their vehicles, allowing officers to distinguish them from others. The law is first of its kind to be passed in the country, and the main intent is to make these younger and inexperienced drivers easily identifiable.

The law is named after Morris County teenager Kyleigh D’Alessio, who died in a car accident involving a teenage driver. The decal itself will be a small rectangle affixed to both front and back license plates, enabling police to identify these drivers easily. According to the New Jersey Division of Highway Safety, cops will identify teen drivers violating curfews, or passenger restrictions with the help of the decals.

Not surprisingly, teen drivers have not been too happy about a law they say is equivalent to profiling on the basis of age. One attorney in Rockaway has already filed a lawsuit to overturn the law on behalf of his teenage son and nephew. According to lawyer Gregg D Trautmann who’s suing the governor and state of New Jersey, the law would give police a free pass to pull over and harass young drivers needlessly. Besides, criminals including sex offenders, would be able to identify young drivers through the decals on their cars.

However, New Jersey’s car accident lawyers and law enforcement agencies have wholeheartedly supported the bill. It’s a fact that accidents are the number one cause of teen deaths. According to the Teen Driver Study Commission, there were 55,792 teen-related accidents in New Jersey in 2006. These left 48 teen drivers and 19 teen passengers dead. The Teen Driver Study Commission had made a set of recommendations to Governor Corzine, including the development of an identifier that could mark a vehicle driven by a new driver with a permit or probationary license, and make the vehicle easily identifiable.

We need to be making more efforts to instill safe driving practices among our teen drivers, and if an identifying system helps us monitor and correct teen driving behavior than this Monmouth County personal injury lawyer is all for it.

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Image Courtesy: Flickr - streetsmarts

In March, 18 municipalities across 17 counties in New Jersey, including Bergen County undertook a special two week crackdown on motorists who use their cell phones while driving, thereby increasing their risk of being involved in an automobile accident. The two week crackdown also included the participation of Atlantic, Morris, Union,  Mercer counties and others.

New Jersey passed a law last year prohibiting the use of hand held cell phones behind the wheel.  However, judging by the number of people who continue to use handheld cell phones while driving, many New Jerseyans, including those in Bergen and Monmouth County, still haven’t received that particular message. 

Since the law was passed, more than 108,000 errant motorists have been pulled over and ticketed for talking or texting on their phones. To reinforce these efforts, a special two week crackdown on drivers operating handheld cell phones resulted in hundreds of summons being issued to motorists who were in violation of the law. Disturbingly enough, after the two week crackdown ended, a survey showed that the number of motorists using cell phones after the crackdown was almost the same as those before the special enforcement. Even more disturbingly, 90% of New Jersey drivers are aware that there is a law prohibiting them from operating a handheld phone, and that they can be pulled over and fined for doing so. Also, 80% of the people seem to support it. 

So, what does that mean?  That people are aware of the law, but many of them support it only in theory? There could be other reasons why the law, even though it has resulted in dramatic spikes in the numbers of people ticketed for cell phone use, has still not led to people curbing that itch to reach for the phone when it rings. Law enforcement has had a problem putting enough officers on duty to enforce the law. So, the numbers of motorists who have been able to get away with cell phone use has been higher than Governor Corzine would have liked when he signed the law.

Personal Injury Lawyers Support the Ban

Cell phone use behind the wheel has grown into enough of a driving risk for states across the country to move quickly to enact laws regulating the use of these devices. No state in the country has a complete ban on the use of all cell phones while driving, but many including California and New Jersey have laws banning the use of handheld phones, which includes texting. In New Jersey, the law itself has been controversial with safety experts divided over how effective a ban on handheld devices is. Many MonmouthCounty personal injury lawyers however believe that the ban on handheld devices is a promising first step, and while it may not show the kinds of results we want immediately, it could lead to a more comprehensive ban down the road.

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Emergency crews responding to a Monmouth County car accident involving a child passenger will now have access to all essential medical details of the child The Sheriff's office is putting into action a new program that will make children's health information available to emergency crews in the event of a crash.

The We Have a Little Emergency or WHALE program was initiated out of Virginia caregiver Connie Day's concerns about what would happen to the children in her care in the event of an accident. Every year, thousands of children are involved in car accidents when they are traveling with parents, grandparents, caregivers and other adults.  Children are easily the most traumatized in the immediate aftermath of an accident. Even if the child suffers from minor injuries, it may not be possible for him or her to disclose important medical information to the emergency rescue teams who arrive at the scene. An unconscious adult inside the car and a terrified, screaming child hinders rescue efforts, leading to wastage of precious time. When the rescue personnel have access to the child's important information, including name of the child, contact information as well as important medical information like blood group etc., it makes their job much easier, and they can contact the family of the child, as quickly as possible.  

The information, according to the program, will be contained in five decals, one on the back of the child's safety seat and four elsewhere in the car where they can easily be found by rescue teams. The WHALE program is one of those simple, yet highly effective programs that don’t cost much, and can pay off richly in terms of making it easier for a child to receive medical treatment after a crash.

New Jersey Personal Injury Lawyers

In these days of budget deficits and slashed funding for important auto safety programs, it's nice to see Monmouth County make additional efforts for the safety of its most vulnerable and precious citizens - the children. The County is paying for the decal program with funds from its existing child safety seat programs, and some additional funding from the CentraState Medical Center of Freehold Township.  In my practice as a Monmouth. Bergen, Passaic, Middlesex, County personal injury lawyer, I have often seen the effects of an accident on little children, and anything that makes those terrifying few hours easier on the child, is worth making an extra effort for. 

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New Jersey's share of the federal stimulus package funds may well end up lowering the state's accident rates. According to Senator Frank Lautenberg, the funds will be used for repairing deficient roadways highways and bridges. In fact that is probably going to the one of the biggest priorities, if not the biggest one for the administration.

The state is expecting over $1 billion worth of federal money for roadway and railway improvement projects. That’s about a 30% increase in the state's yearly budget for these facilities. Governor Jon Corzine, who has been a vocal supporter of President Obama’s plan has also confirmed that repairing roads and constructing new ones will be a priority. Rebuilding infrastructure using stimulus money is not likely to cause complaints even among opponents of the federal stimulus plan, because of the substantial job generating potential it has. In an economic downturn, as states all over the country begin to chalk out plans for what they are going to do with their stimulus funds, programs that result in job generation will obviously receive higher priority. Infrastructure projects will mean jobs for construction workers, like masonry workers, crane and heavy equipment operators, contractors and several others. 

Most importantly, from a New Jersey car accident lawyer's point of view, these new roads, highways and perhaps sidewalks and crosswalks, will mean greater safety for all citizens. I’m hoping the funds will be used to make roads and sidewalks safer for pedestrians in the state. New Jersey has one of the highest rates of pedestrian deaths in the country. Lawmakers have for too long neglected pedestrian safety concerns in favor of major infrastructure development projects that are geared towards automobile convenience. That mindset has to change. There are more people walking to work now than ever before, and making the streets safer for them must go back to being one of the key points of infrastructure planning.  Recently, a Freehold woman and her two daughters were injured when they were struck by a car as they crossed the road. In New Jersey, we are getting to comfortable with the notion that crossing the street, even on a designated crosswalk is a highly dangerous activity for the pedestrian, and fraught with risk. It shouldn’t have to be this way, and hopefully some of the money is going to trickle down to Monmouth County and Bergen County for safer roads for all.

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Carrying on in the tradition of legislation named after victims, aimed at preventing repeats of the heinous actions that cost their lives, new legislation that will require drunk drivers in New Jersey to install ignition lock devices on their cars, could soon be passed.

The bill is called Ricci's Law, named after Ricci Branca, a 17-year-old boy from Egg Harbor Township, Atlantic County who was killed in a drunk driving accident. Ricci was biking to Ocean City with a bunch of friends, when Stephen Fench slammed his car into the group. The friends escaped with minor injuries. Ricci died from injuries sustained in the crash. Fench, it was revealed later was not only a repeat DUI offender, but had a blood alcohol level of .339 at the time of the crash. That's more than four times the legal limit in New Jersey of 0.08.   The police reported that  he spent the four hours before the accident drinking up to 10 glasses of wine at a nearby bar. Since, then Fench has been sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Since their terrible tragedy, the Branca family has pushed hard for widely supported legislation that they insist will prevent other families from going through what they did when their child was killed by a person's criminal negligence. Ricci's Law will mandate all first time DUI offenders who have a blood alcohol level of .015 or higher to have anti ignition locks installed in their cars. The devices function like breathalyzers, and prevent the car from starting if the driver is above the legal limit for blood alcohol.  Currently, New Jersey has a law that requires repeat DUI offenders to have the locks installed, but the law has been poorly enforced. The new legislation is not only tougher on first time DUI offenders, as it should be, but would also allow judges to order that first time offenders who have a blood alcohol limit of between .08 and 0.15 have the ignition locks installed in their cars. 

As a Bergen and Monmouth County car accident lawyer, I am more than aware of how limited the effect of suspended licenses as well as jail time is on people who commit the most criminally foolish negligence while driving. License suspensions are hardly the tough deterrent for drunk drivers that they are meant to be and, and while jail time is fine, it doesn't help bring back the people who have already been killed. If a single life is spared because a DUI offender was prevented from starting his car and driving off with his system pumped with alcohol, it would be worth the effort getting the law passed. As a Monmouth and Bergen County car accident lawyer we often have to step in to deliver civil justice to the victims or their families after a devastating horrific turn of events. Unfortunately, our efforts can never really make the victim or their family whole again.

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New Jersey car accidents have always been a problem and a local dealership is doing its part to improve motor vehicle safety. According to a Sunbeam article the Pointe Pontiac Buick GMC is offering scholarships to attendees of a driver safety class offered by the AARP at Merion Gardens Assisted Living June 10 and 11. A two day course is being offered which could help lower insurance rates and reduce penalty points on your driver’s license. The AARP requires a $10 cover fee for class materials but the owner of Pointe Pontiac Buick GMC is willing to pay the cost of the entire class. Larry Davis, owner of Pointe Pontiac-Buick-GMC says "We are committed to giving back to our community and this seemed like an ideal fit. We provide transportation and this course helps raise safety awareness which can only benefit our customers and neighbors." The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) does not require for you to be a member or senior citizen to attend classes or qualify for an insurance discount. This program is a great way to improve driving skills and could refresh a lot of driving techniques that may have been forgotten over the years.
 

New Jersey has very busy roads during the summer months especially in Monmouth County. As an attorney representing many motor vehicle accident clients throughout the New Jersey and the Monmouth County area, I ask you to be extra careful driving this summer because the roads will get busy as people travel towards the shore to beat the summer heat. According to AARP, the likelihood of attendees being involved in an auto accident or receiving a traffic ticket should decrease by 15 percent following the completion of the two sessions. Being a Monmouth County and New Jersey injury lawyer I would recommend completing some of these courses to help improve driving safety and to help reduce those outrageously over priced New Jersey auto insurance rates.

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