Fort Worth is just the fourth city in Texas to adopt Vision Zero. And there are only about 50 cities out of approximately 300 which have done so in the United States. All cities must adopt this bold concept. Our roads and highways are alarmingly dangerous.
What is Vision Zero?
Historic bad weather has hit much of the country on possibly the biggest travel day in history – today. What a terrible combination. Dangerous storms are heading towards the Panhandle of Texas, West Coast, Rocky Mountain states, Midwest, and East Coast. Snow, ice, and slick roads already cause about 500,000 crashes each winter. In case you are traveling today to one of the affected states, here is useful information that can hopefully keep you from being in a car wreck and protect you if, God forbid, you are in one.
If you have been injured in a car or truck wreck in North Texas, you may think you know how the insurance claims process works. But you might be operating under assumptions that are not accurate. Berenson Injury Law tries to keep the public informed about important car and truck crash topics. We have seen that too much wrong information is spread about how personal injury law works. We want to help debunk widely believed myths about car accident claims so injured people can make the best decision on how they should proceed.
False!
This belief is out of a fairy tale book. Insurance companies are in business to make large profits. The best way is for them to do this is to question and fight every claim.
More and more drivers across Texas are installing a dashboard mounted camera in their cars and trucks. Although most are using it to help them avoid crashes, we recommend that all drivers buy a dash cam because it can help you prevail in a disputed liability claim. We have a staggering 80,000 plus car wrecks each year in Dallas and Tarrant Counties, so there is a chance of this happening to any driver here in North Texas.
Video footage can win or lose a car crash trial. Watching the actual depiction of where the vehicles were, how fast they were going, and how they came to a stop will allow insurance company adjusters, attorneys, and juries determine which driver was at fault.
What if you have been in a car accident in Fort Worth and it was clearly the other driver’s fault for rear-ending you? But when the police officer arrives, the other driver argues loudly that you slammed on your brakes. The officer finds that you — or both of you — are at fault. What do you think will happen when you make a claim against the other driver to recover your damages? When the insurance company denies or minimizes your claim and you have to file a lawsuit, can the police officer testify in court that you were at fault? This is a problem that a personal injury lawyer sees often and it requires immediate attention so that you get paid for your damages.
How Texas Personal Injury Protection can help youIf you have been injured in a car or truck wreck, you can receive additional money from your insurance company if you purchased Texas Personal Injury Protection (PIP). You never expect to be in a car accident but if you unfortunately are, PIP is designed to make sure that you have money available to pay for your medical care and lost wages. Under Texas law, every driver automatically has $2,500 in Texas Personal Injury Protection benefits available unless he or she has specifically rejected it in writing. Many people have it and don’t know it so they leave a lot of money on the table when they are settling their insurance claims. This post will answer your questions about
We wanted to write about this important topic because yesterday we obtained a large settlement for our client, after obtaining his $10,000 PIP policy, then reduced his medical bills to make sure he maxed out his settlement funds.
We don’t know why every weekend produces another round of fatal car and truck crashes across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Or why we treat this news as if it is inevitable. Or that there is nothing we can do about it. But we all know that it can be frightening to drive on our North Texas highways. This past weekend produced more tragedies including these:
Under Texas law, a driver who causes a crash must pay the other driver’s damages including medical bills, lost wages, and pain that he caused. But often people have been hurt before. With little if any evidence, insurance companies will argue that someone’s damages were not caused by this collision but from a preexisting injury from a prior crash or event to get out of paying what the case is worth. That is not fair. Any good personal injury lawyer knows how to fight this trick so that his client is compensated fairly.
You see this as you drive in North Texas all the time. You slow down and come to a stop when you see that the traffic light changes to yellow, then red. This is Driver’s Ed 101, not to mention common sense. But another driver — often a young man in an oversized truck — guns it and blazes through the intersection. We saw that happen as we were taking this photo. The problem is when someone — often in a smaller car coming from a side street — doesn’t or can’t see that truck. These red light runners are causing more and more fatal car crashes.
A new study reveals that this serious problem has reached a new high. Almost 1,000 people died at the hands of red light runners in 2017, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. This was the fifth year in a row that this terrible number increased and there is no apparent end in sight.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area is growing furiously with over 100,000 people moving here each year. This has naturally increased the amount of people driving and the number of car accidents — especially at intersections. Almost half of wrecks happen there. Which ones in Fort Worth where are primary office is are the most likely to be the site of car and truck wrecks?
No, the answer is not all of them! But we already have 80,000 of them each year year in Tarrant and Dallas Counties. They were all preventable. Here is a photo from one of many crash cases we are currently handling where our client was rear ended by a man in the pickup truck running a light at an intersection and hitting other cars.
But first, people will have to stop texting or surfingthe net while driving, slow down, not drive while intoxicated, and obey traffic laws.
Until those things happen, you can be safer if you know where the most dangerous intersections are so you can hopefully avoid them. While collisions are reported on the news constantly, you never think that you will be in one — until it happens.
The Safe Communities Coalition that I am a member of researched crash data and reported that these were the top five intersections last year:
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