The Kickham Comment - Boston Accident Lawyer Blog

Here’s a breaking news story illustrating how bus accidents are anything but rare: A private (non-MBTA) bus apparently tried to squeeze under an overpass on Soldiers’ Field Road in Brighton, near the intersection with Western Avenue, and didn’t make it: Apparently, the bus was too high, and its roof collided with the overpass.

It’s been reported that a total of 33 people have been injured, with four of those injuries serious enough to require emergency transport to four separate Boston-area hospitals. Hopefully, there aren’t any fatalities involved. 28 other, less seriously injured passengers were being transported by MBTA bus to Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital.

As a Boston Bus Accident Lawyer, I’ve seen more than one bus accident that results from the bus being unable to successfully pass under a bridge or railroad overpass. Common sense would dictate that underpasses should be uniformly at least a minimum number of feet and inches high, and that buses, trucks and other large vehicles uniformly cannot be higher or taller than set maximum number of feet and inches. There are commonly signs posted at the entrance to an underpass that post the maximum clearance height of the underpass, but let’s be real: Does anyone think that the average bus or truck driver knows exactly how tall his vehicle is, to the inch? All it takes is one or two inches to cause a collision that can result in very serious injuries.

As a Quincy, Massachusetts car accident lawyer, I see too many injuries resulting from car accidents. By “car accidents,” I mean all kinds of motor vehicle accidents, including SUV’s and vans. Some are Massachusetts pedestrian-car accidents, some are bicycle-car accidents, and some are car-truck accidents. But regardless of the type, these accidents can be devastating to the injured party, and leave them forever harmed, never quite feeling or being 100% again.

Despite this, it’s my experience that an inordinate number of people think that most car accidents are a scam – an overblown matter that’s just used to score an injury settlement. Let me assure those people: When over ton of steel and glass slam into you, whether you’re a driver or a pedestrian, you are going to be hurt — the only question is how much you’re hurt, not if. And if anyone doubts that, that person needs to either take a class in physics, or talk to someone who has been injured in such an accident. A great deal of these injuries are known medically as “soft tissue injuries,” meaning they don’t consist of broken bones or lacerated tissue. Because they’re soft tissue injuries, they really can’t be viewed on an x-ray or similar imaging studies. Many of these injuries can remain “invisible,” yet cause long-term or even permanent disability.

One accident that’s often poked fun of by skeptics of motor vehicle accident injuries, is the proverbial “whiplash.” However, the fact is that whiplash can lead to very serious, debilitating injuries that can make it impossible for the injured party to function, or to go to work – sometimes permanently. While many people don’t know this, the word “whiplash” is not even a medical term. It describes what is more accurately known as a “cervical acceleration-deceleration” injury, which is medical term that describes a sudden, rapid back-and-forth movement of the neck. There is nothing new about this type of injury – it wasn’t “made up” after the automobile was created, as a means to “cash in” on “bogus car accident claims.” This injury has been around since humankind rode on anything that moved – horses, wagons, trains, cars. It happens because in many vehicle collisions, the driver doesn’t have enough time to react quickly enough to avoid the crash. The violent back-and-forth snapping action of the neck, can produce back, neck, and shoulder injuries that can result in headaches, pain in the arms and legs, and numbness – and far from being “minor,” they can last for years, or even become permanent.

It was yet another devastating bicycle accident in Boston, which has, once again, brought up all kinds of issues regarding whether motorists are too aggressive, bicyclists are too cavalier, and whether pedestrians also need to take greater care when traveling.

These questions all stem from the death this past Thursday of Christopher Weigl, a Boston University graduate student majoring in photojournalism. Weigl, 23 years old, was hit and killed on Thursday when his bicycle crashed with a tractor-trailer that was turning onto St. Paul Street in Brookline. The collision wound up shutting down the entire 900-block of Commonwealth Avenue on the border with Brookline, just adjacent to the BU campus. Weigl’s death marks the fifth bicycle-motor vehicle fatality in Boston so far this year.

According to Boston Police, Weigl was apparently doing all the right things – he was wearing a helmet and he was riding in a visibly marked bicycle lane. One of his roommates stated how Weigl possessed a great deal of common sense when riding his bike, that he had “a calm hand on the wheel,” and that he was never reckless.

It never surprises me, as a Wellesley car accident lawyer, how the most unlikely people can be involved in serious accidents and injuries. Early in my career, I long ago learned that economic or financial status is irrelevant to who can get injured in a variety of accidents.

If you were to hear about an alleged drunk driver that struck a car and caused the victim to suffer serious injuries, you would probably not think several of the facts that are present in this post. First, you might not suspect that the accused driver was from the wealthy town of Wellesley. Second, you probably wouldn’t guess that the driver is, in fact, a prominent doctor. And third, you never think that the accused driver was an acclaimed Emergency Room doctor at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, who won that hospital’s “Doctor of the Year” award in 2009.

But you’d be wrong on all points. Because that is exactly where Dr. Kristin Howard, 56, an ER physician at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, finds herself now. She was arraigned on Tuesday, November 13th, on charges of Massachusetts driving under the influence of alcohol, to which she pleaded not guilty. Very damaging to her plea, however, will be the fact that her SUV was caught on a surveillance camera, crashing into a car on a main road in Wellesley. The video demonstrates that Howard’s Subaru Outback, which drove wildly through the Whole Foods parking lot, became almost airborne upon leaving the lot, crossing a road and eventually crashing into a Mercury Marquis driven by 78-year-old Paul McDonald, whose car was stopped as he was waiting at a red light. He was sent to the hospital for two days with two cracked ribs and a leg hematoma. From what I saw of this Wellesley crash video, Mr. McDonald is lucky to be alive. An eyewitness said that Howard’s SUV was driving through the Whole Foods parking lot between 40 and 50 mph. Video footage that aired on CBS4 Boston TV (WBZ) on November 13 shows the doctor’s SUV speeding through a parking lot, completely uprooting a granite stone safety column, shaving the bark off a nearby tree, and then hitting – “T-boning” McDonald’s car at the intersection. Mr. McDonald’s car was then pushed into a truck. Dr. Howard was even wearing her hospital scrubs at the time of the incident.