City: Washington Township, Ohio

County: Montgomery County, Ohio

Date: September 18, 2010

Type: Car Accident
 
According to reports, a vehicle traveling west along Alex Bell Road struck a guardrail, throwing it into oncoming traffic, where it hit another car. The impact caused the vehicle to flip onto it’s top, trapping the driver inside. The driver of that vehicle was rushed to Miami Valley Hospital with serious injuries. What caused the driver to hit the guardrail is still under investigation.

The issue in this type of case is what caused the original driver to strike the guardrail in the first place. If the driver was inattentive, he was negligent and has to pay.  If the driver was trying to avoid another negligent driver, than that other negligent driver may be at fault for the accident, assuming there is independent corroborative evidence of the existence of the negligent driver forcing the other into the guardrail. This would normally mean a passenger or someone else seeing the accident.  If this was the case, then all parties could file a claim against the original driver at fault (who forced the other off the road) or if unknown, file an uninsured motorist claim with their own auto insurance company. 

If the driver who hit the guardrail had a heart attack or some other illness that caused the impact, the issue would be whether he knew the health condition would put him in jeopardy of crashing. Remember, in Ohio you have to be at fault to be liable for the injuries of another. You have to be negligent. We have had cases where somebody has a heart attack with no prior history of heart problems. They are not negligent so they do not have to pay for the injuries they caused.  If the person with a heart attack has no insurance,  the injured people may try to file an uninsured motorist claim with their own auto insurance company, and their company may argue they do not have to pay under that policy provision because the other person was not liable (at fault) for the accident. Uninsured motorist coverage pays when the other person at fault has no insurance. If the other person is not at fault, the policy provision does not usually kick in.  

Montgomery County, Ohio (population 559,062) had a total of 12,747 reported accidents in 2008. 36 of these accidents were fatal, with a total of 39 fatalities. 3,507 of these accidents were injury crashes, with a total of 5,246 injuries. Washington Township, Ohio (52,991) had a total of 508 reported crashes in 2008.


If you've been seriously injured or have lost a loved one in a Washington Township truck / car accident, call the Montgomery County auto accident and wrongful death attorneys / 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.