Date: July 3, 2010

County: Guernsey

Type: Car Accident
 
Over the Fourth of July weekend, two teenagers were killed in Guernsey County when their car veered off of Route 265 and hit an embankment.  According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, both the driver and passenger were ejected from the vehicle.  They were not wearing their seat belts.  A rear passenger was wearing his seat belt and he survived the ordeal with only minor injuries.  Authorities believe that the crash involved alcohol but the investigation is ongoing.   We want to wish our sincere apologies and sympathies to the grieving families and friends during this tragic time.  

Unfortunately, this type of fatal crash is repeated over and over throughout Ohio each year, even in Guernsey County.  According to statistics released by the Ohio Department of Pubic Safety, in 2008, there were five fatal crashes in Guernsey County with six people dying in those crashes.  Of these, one was alcohol related.  This may seem like a lot of fatalities with a county population of only 40,792.  There were also 324 injury crashes in 2008 which injured 442 people.  Cambridge Township had the most fatal crashes  in Guernsey County in 2008 with three.  Of these three, one was alcohol related.
 
This tragedy underlines the larger Ohio problem of drunk driving or alcohol related collisions. In 2008 there were 412 fatal collisions involving alcohol in Ohio, and 6,031 were hurt at the hands of an alcohol affected driver. The total alcohol related crashes were 14,425.  In 2008, alcohol impaired drivers were involved in just under 5 percent of accidents but 37.7 percent of fatalities.  This statistic shows that people are more likely to die when alcohol is involved in an Ohio accident, all things being equal.

During the 4th of July weekend 2008, there were seven alcohol related deaths in Ohio.

From a general personal injury legal point of view, drunk driving adds a different element to the usual car crash scenario.  Drunk drivers can be criminally charged when they drink and drive and when they hurt someone while drunk. Being drunk is no excuse for harming someone behind the wheel under Ohio law.  Many Ohio drivers find out too late that drinking and driving can end up with prison time and a felony black mark on their employment record for the rest of their lives, making it very hard to get a job. Also, a person who is drunk and causes a collision can be forced to pay punitive damages, which can amount to a lot more than the actual monetary damages they cause.  People should think about these things before they “just drive home down the road.”  Many people live to regret that decision each year, and sadly many don’t live at all because of this decision.  Drinking and driving in Ohio is deadly serious business. 

Seat belts are also a critical issue on Ohio roads. The injuries caused by lack of seat belt usage are truly saddening.  Without a seat belt, we are like rag dolls inside of these vehicles.  The forces placed on the human body are unbelievable. According to physics, the force asserted on an object is equal to its mass times acceleration of the object. With cars weighing several tons, it does not take much acceleration to cause catastrophic damage to the relatively frail human body.  Add to this the very real possibility of blunt force trauma to the head inside a vehicle and the danger of ejection, as was the case in the above tragedy, and you begin to understand the dangers of not wearing a seat belt. A driver not wearing a seat belt will also find it harder to control a vehicle once an accident sequence begins or bad weather occurs, and so it is also harder to mitigate or reduce the damage caused by a potential collision without the seat belt. In summary, seat belts can help avoid accidents and help you survive those that cannot be avoided.  There are also new devices coming to market that keep a car from starting unless you have your seat belt on.  These will be great for concerned parents who want their children to wear their seat belts when no one is looking.


If you have lost a loved one in a Guernsey County car crash, call the Guernsey County car accident lawyers at Chester Law Group at 1-800-218-4243 or order your FREE BOOK entitled “The Insider’s Guide to Handling Ohio Accident Claims” at www.chesterlaw.com.