Older Roadways Not Designed For Trucks Cause More Pedestrian Deaths
Apr 6, 2013
Atlanta, GA (Law Firm Newswire) April 5, 2013 – Pedestrian accidents are on the rise. Often they are a result of multiple issues.
“Thanks to technology, more pedestrians are being seriously injured and killed as a result of texting while walking, or surfing the Internet while thumbing their iPhones. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Even those walking with headphones on are becoming injury statistics or fatalities. There is just too much going on for people to pay attention to everything around then,” indicated Stephen Ozcomert, an Atlanta injury lawyer, who practices personal injury, accidents and malpractice law in Georgia.
Not paying attention because someone is distracted by the siren lure of portable technology is one thing; walking into a crosswalk with the wrong kind of street layout in another. “And by that I mean that once upon a time a street was designed for certain types of traffic that existed ‘then.’ In short, there were not as many big rigs on city streets and byways as there seems to be today. Clipping a pedestrian while behind the wheel of a semi is a recipe for death,” said Ozcomert.
In this case, a 26-year-old man was hit and killed while crossing a street in New York. He was heading north on an Avenue when a truck making a left turn struck him. The man was severely injured and taken to hospital by ambulance, where he died, as a result of wounds to his arms and torso.
As it turned out, this accident was almost looking for a place to happen, thanks to the design of the road at that particular location. Semis and other large commercial trucks are now driving on roads that were never originally designed for truck traffic. Despite New York adding even more safety features to crosswalks, it is not doing much good.
A recent study suggests the crosswalks need to be moved to the middle of blocks, not left where they were originally planned; at the end of a block. The turning radius of large trucks eats up space into a crosswalk, and if that crosswalk has a pedestrian in it, there is bound to be a bad outcome. “The thing is, New York is not the only city in America with a problem like this, and in the meantime, while safety is being studied, people will continue to die. If something like this has happened to you, make a call to my office. We should talk,” suggested Ozcomert.
To learn more, contact Atlanta personal injury lawyer Stephen Ozcomert by visiting http://www.ozcomert.com.
Stephen M. Ozcomert, PC
215 North McDonough Street
Decatur, GA 30030
Call: (404) 370-1000
