Intoxicated Driver Hits Sewage Truck, Killing Driver and Causing Spill

A person's arm holding a brown glass beer bottle outside the drivers side car window.

A driver died in a truck wreck caused by an intoxicated driver in Connecticut. The truck was carrying raw sewage when it was sideswiped by the inebriated driver. The truck hit the guardrail, flipped over, hit a tree and a light pole, and caught fire. Sewage was spilled everywhere, causing the highway to close for hours. The truck driver died in the collision.

DUI Accident Kills One

The crash happened just before 7 p.m. on Wednesday, September 28, 2016, on Interstate 95 in Westport, Connecticut.

Sixty-four-year-old Thomas Patrick Reynolds was driving a tanker truck filled with 6,500 gallons of raw sewage while on the job for his employer, H.I. Stone & Son of Southbury. Reynolds was driving in the right lane of the highway, one of the busiest, oldest, and longest roadways in the U.S. interstate system. Reynolds’ tanker truck was sideswiped by a Mercedes E350, driven by 35-year-old Ramses Taylor Rival, when he veered out of the center lane.

The collision, together with the weight and volatility of the liquid in the tanker, caused Reynolds to lose control of his truck. He hit the guardrail of the highway, which made the tanker flip onto its side. The truck then skidded off the highway, hit a light pole and a tree, and burst into flames from the diesel fuel inside.

During the impacts, the tanker truck ruptured, causing sewage to gush out of the vehicle and onto the roadway. All of the southbound lanes of the highway were closed for 11 hours. The sewage made it into the highway catchbasins, causing a significant environmental hazard to the local area that the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s Emergency Response Unit spent all night dealing with.

Reynolds was pronounced dead at the scene. His truck was so heavily damaged that it took emergency crews until 3 a.m. to extricate him from his vehicle.

Rival, the driver of the Mercedes that sideswiped the tanker truck, was found and charged with driving under the influence (DUI) in connection with the fatal crash. He has a history of drug and driving infractions in his past, including a 2001 conviction for possession with an intent to sell cocaine, and a recent ticket for driving while using his cell phone, which is illegal in Connecticut.

Cobb County Truck Accident Attorney Joel Williams

A lot of things happened in this terrible truck accident in Connecticut. There was an intoxicated driver who caused the crash, an extended highway closure of one of the biggest highways in the country, and an environmental disaster that could have lasting repercussions for years if it is found that it was not handled properly.

All of these things can make it easy to overlook the most terrible thing of all: That the truck driver lost his life in a car accident. Not only did he pass away, but now the family that was counting on him is put in a difficult financial plight. They deserve to be compensated for their loss of a loved one. This is where having a personal injury attorney like Joel Williams is crucial. Contact his law office if you have also lost a loved one in a car accident.

Details Emerge on Deadly Crash in Union City

A divided multi-lane highway with green grass on each side, as well as the center median, and a wooden memoral cross standing in the grass near the road.

The details are beginning to emerge of a horrible car accident in Union City that left three young men dead in late September, putting their families into grief and making their high school community react with dismay.

Driver Loses Control, Slides Into Oncoming Traffic

The deadly crash happened just after 8 pm on Sunday, September 25, 2016, near the intersection of Buffington and Royal South Parkway, in Union City, Georgia.

Jerrett Mumford, 18, and Jaylen Mumford, 16, were riding in a Toyota 4Runner SUV driven by their close friend, Ibrahim Sankoh, who was also 18 years old. They had just left the homecoming celebration at Banneker High School, where they had all gone to school. Jerrett, a first year student at Alabama State University who had been named “Mr. Banneker” the year before, had returned to Banneker High School to crown the new “Mr. Banneker.” Jaylen and Ibrahim had joined him to enjoy the event and be with friends.

Leaving the festivities in Sankoh’s car, the three were travelling eastbound on Royal South Parkway when Sankoh lost control of the vehicle, sliding into the oncoming lane of westbound traffic. At the same time Rahj Rowe was driving his Nissan Altima along the same route. Rowe saw the car skidding into his lane in the darkness, but was unable to avoid the collision.

Sankoh’s car flipped in the collision and came to a rest on its roof. All three of the teens were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that all three of the teens in the car died from blunt force trauma from the accident.

Police are still investigating the accident to determine exactly what went wrong, but have ruled alcohol out as being a factor.

Young Drivers More Likely to be Involved in Crashes

Unfortunately, young men like those who lost their lives in this tragic accident in Union City are statistically more likely to be involved in fatal accidents than other drivers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, young people between the ages of 15 and 24 make up only 14 percent of the population in the United States, but account for 30 percent of the total costs of car accidents among men, and 28 percent of the total costs of crashes among women. Per mile driven, teen drivers are nearly three times more likely to be involved in a fatal car accident than drivers older than 20.

Cobb County Car Accident Attorney Joel Williams

It is a sad fact that young drivers are so prone to fatal car crashes. With so much of their lives ahead of them, it is painful to hear that a teenager was killed in a wreck or injured another person on the road.

In either case, having a car accident lawyer by your side can make a huge difference in whether you get the compensation that you deserve to recover from the crash. Contact Williams Elleby Howard & Easter for legal representation if you have been impacted by a crash in Georgia.

Pickup Trucks Collide and Catch Fire: One Driver Severely Burned

A wreck between a white delivery truck and a black pickup truck on a multiple lane road with both vehicles engulfed in flames.

A fiery car accident involving two pickup trucks caused serious injuries, including a severe burn injury, to the drivers and passengers in Alabama. The accident closed the road and even damaged the highway due to the extreme heat caused by the inferno.

Pickup Truck Hydroplanes Over Median Into Oncoming Traffic

The accident occurred on Highway 72 close to the town of Tuscumbia, near the northern border of Alabama and Tennessee. A pickup truck, occupied by a driver and passenger, was travelling eastbound. It hydroplaned on the road and hit the road’s median, where it exploded in flames and went airborne into oncoming traffic. The vehicle landed on top of another pickup truck in the westbound travel lanes on Highway 72. That truck was carrying a driver and passenger, both from neighboring Tennessee.

The accident and inferno totaled both trucks and caused minor injuries to both passengers and the driver of the westbound pickup truck. The driver of the eastbound vehicle suffered severe burn injuries covering more than 85 percent of his body below the waist before he was able to escape from the wreckage. He was flown from the scene of the accident to the burn center in Birmingham, Alabama, for treatment.

Road Closed and Damaged

Following the wreck, four lanes of Highway 72 were closed for nearly an hour to allow emergency personnel access to the scene. Additionally, the Alabama Department of Transportation was called to the scene because the heat of the flames was intense enough to melt the asphalt on the road. Engineers surveyed the damage to ensure that it was still safe enough for driving.

Car Accidents and Burn Injuries

Many car accidents result in severe burn injuries. This is in large part because of how quickly cars can explode or catch fire – something unsurprising, considering how cars and trucks carry gasoline so closely to their engines.  Unfortunately, safety devices such as seatbelts and airbags are meant to prevent serious injuries when cars collide, but they often backfire when there are flames involved because they can make it difficult for people inside of a burning car to get out of it.

This is especially worrisome because of how often cars can catch fire after a crash. The U.S. Fire Administration says that over 13 percent of the fires in the U.S. every year are car fires, and these injure approximately 1,250 people annually.

Cobb County Personal Injury Attorney Joel Williams

Joel Williams is a Georgia attorney who represents those who are injured in car accidents around Marietta and Cobb County. People who are hurt by someone else deserve to be compensated for their injuries, their pain, and their suffering, in addition to having their medical bills covered. Contact Williams Elleby Howard & Easter if you have been hurt in a car wreck and want to explore your legal options.

New Device Can Change How Police Investigate Drugged Driving

A black car key and key fob surrounded by dried marijuana leaves on a white background.

Drunk drivers cause some of the biggest problems on the road today. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the year 2014 saw no fewer than 9,967 people killed in car crashes in which someone was impaired by alcohol. On average, this number means that one person was killed every 53 minutes.

Alcohol is not the only killer. Car accidents are also caused by people who are impaired by drugs. Unfortunately, while there are ways to tell whether someone is under the influence of alcohol, it is far more difficult to determine if someone is driving while drugged. However, this might change soon, as the engineers at one of America’s top universities have developed a device that can change how police keep our roads safe from impaired drivers.

Stanford University Engineers Create Device to Detect Marijuana

A team of engineers at Stanford University have developed a highly-portable device that can be used to detect minute amounts of THC – the chemical hallucinogen in marijuana – in the saliva of a driver suspected of operating under the influence of drugs.

The device relies on magnetic biosensors to detect THC molecules in a driver’s spit, allowing police officers to test drivers they suspect of being high in the field. This can help reduce the number of times a suspect is taken into the police station to conduct a highly-intrusive blood or urine test. If successful, the device would be a huge improvement over breathalyzers or blood tests, which cannot determine when the THC entered a suspect’s bloodstream. The device would also be a massive improvement over the current police technique, which largely leaves it up to the responding officer’s discretion as to whether a driver is under the influence of marijuana.

Better Enforcement Techniques Mean Safer Roads

If the device, sometimes called a “potalyzer,” is a success and a viable tool for police officers to use on the road, U.S. roads would be much safer. Drugged driving, like drunk driving, is the cause of countless accidents that leave numerous drivers severely injured every year, and kills many others, as well.

Personal Injury Attorney Joel Williams Fights for Your Interests

If you or someone you love has been severely hurt in or around the Kennesaw, Georgia area, contact the attorneys at Williams Elleby Howard & Easter to get the legal representation that you need to get the compensation that you deserve.

Driver Facing Criminal Charges for Wreck that Killed Girlfriend

A man wearing a black t-shirt, standing in a prison cell with his hanging down and his arm propped up the white bars of the prison cell.

Charges are being filed against the driver after a car accident in Indiana proved fatal for the passenger in the vehicle.

Single Vehicle Car Accident Proves Fatal

The incident happened in Jennings County, Indiana. Nikki Reed, 37, and Kevin Bell, 39, were driving to Indiana for a birthday party in Reed’s family. When neither of them showed up for the party, Reed’s family members filed a missing person report with the police.

Bell was driving the SUV, when he drove off the road, down a ravine, and crashed into a tree. Bell suffered a broken leg in the accident, but Reed died from the impact.

The crash happened on September 17, 2016. However, Bell claimed that he was unable to extricate himself from the wreckage until three days later, on September 20. He pulled himself up the ravine to the road, where he hailed a passing car and got medical attention.

Charges Filed Against Driver

After the accident, Bell is facing numerous criminal charges for the accident and his statements following the crash.

Bell’s license had been suspended, yet he claimed that he took over the wheel after Reed had gotten tired of driving. According to Bell, the crash happened because of Reed, who had distracted Bell, causing him to run the vehicle off the road.

It was what Bell said after the crash, however, that are the source of some of the other criminal charges that he is facing.

Police want to know why the crash went unreported for three days after it had occurred. Bell did not call 911 to report the accident or the injuries, instead texting “car accident” to his boss. According to Bell, his cell phone died immediately after sending the text, and he could not locate Reed’s phone in the wreckage.

Police also want to know why Bell did not report the death of his girlfriend immediately when he was found on the side of the road, and why he brought two 14-pound bowling balls with him when he pulled himself from the wreck.

The injuries to Reed have been ruled to have been caused by the crash, and not by any foul play afterwards.

Car Accident Attorney in Cobb County

While this particular case has lots of unanswered questions that raise eyebrows, the reality of the case is that someone lost their life in a car accident. There are few things more devastating than when someone dies in a wreck, especially when they are young and have so much of their life ahead of them.

This is why Car Accident attorney Joel Williams represents victims in car crashes. People who are hurt by other drivers deserve to be compensated for their injuries, and the families of those killed should receive what they could have expected from having their loved one in their lives.

If you or someone you love has been hurt or killed in a car collision, contact the Cobb County law office of Joel Williams for legal representation.

Car Crash Sends Pedestrian Over Bridge, Into Traffic Below

Looking up at a gray colored metal bridge and the underside of a yellow car that has driven onto the railing of the bridge and stopped before falling off the bridge completely.

A pedestrian in England suffered multiple life-threatening injuries after a car accident occurred just a few short feet away from him while he was crossing a bridge. The collision pushed him over the side of the bridge and onto a major highway that ran beneath it, where he was hit, again.

Car Crash Pushes Pedestrian Off Bridge

The accident happened on the morning of September 28, 2016, in England, in the town of Basingstoke, which is a little over fifty miles west of London. A 25-year-old man, who has not been named by authorities was walking on the sidewalk along a residential road just outside of the center of Basingstoke. This road went over a bridge under which ran the A340 highway – a rapidly moving multilane highway similar to an interstate in the U.S. On either side of the bridge were waist-high railings meant to prevent people from easily falling over the edge of the bridge and into traffic below.

While the pedestrian was crossing the bridge, two cars collided with each other right alongside him. One of the vehicles spun out from the collision, hitting the pedestrian and pushing him into the railings on the edge of the bridge. The car’s momentum damaged the railing, and shoved the pedestrian over it into the rushing traffic, below. The contact with the first car, together with the fall from the bridge, caused the pedestrian serious injuries. However, once on the highway below, he was hit yet again by another car, this one driven at a high rate of speed.

The pedestrian was flown to the Southampton General Hospital by helicopter, where he is still alive, but facing multiple life-threatening injuries to his legs and head.

Pedestrian Accidents Often Prove Fatal

Car accidents involving pedestrians are a serious problem, across the country and the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2013, 4,735 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents in the United States. At this rate, that means that one pedestrian is killed every two hours on our country’s roads. And this does not include those that are hurt by a vehicle, but survive. This number is significantly higher: More than 150,000 pedestrians were hit by cars in 2013 and treated in emergency rooms throughout the U.S.

The reason for the seriousness of a typical pedestrian’s injuries in a car accident is the lack of protection that pedestrians normally have. While drivers and passengers in cars are protected by the vehicle, itself, pedestrians are completely vulnerable to the harm presented by a car.

Cobb County Personal Injury Attorney Joel Williams

Because pedestrians often suffer terrible injuries if they are involved in a car accident, it becomes even more important for them to have adequate legal representation as they seek the compensation they deserve from the people who put them through such a terrible ordeal.

If you or someone you love has been hurt in a car accident, contact Georgia trial lawyer Joel Williams to help you get back on your feet.

Car Accident Kills Member of Indiana University Football Family

A close-up of a man, from his waist to just above his knees, wearing a dark gray suit holding the silver handle of a brown wooden casket.

The daughter of a popular and highly successful college football coach died in a Midwest car accident. Police investigated the possibility of alcohol being a factor in the collision, but no charges have been filed.

Deadly Car Accident in Indiana

The incident occurred just south of Bloomington, Indiana. Allison Hoeppner, daughter of the late Indiana University college football coach, was turning her 2003 Subaru Forester onto Indiana Route 37 – a multi-lane divided highway, and a major thoroughfare in central Indiana – when she was hit by a Prevost bus driven by 42-year-old Jonathan Brewer, of Haptonville, North Carolina. The 45-year-old Hoeppner was declared dead at the scene of the accident.

An investigation into the accident revealed that Hoeppner had the right of way: Brewer had run a red light to cause the collision, meaning the accident was not Hoeppner’s fault.

Brewer was taken to the local hospital to have his blood drawn for signs of driving under the influence (DUI), a standard procedure in Indiana following any fatal car accident. Police have stated that there was no indication of impairment.

Victim a Part of Big Football Family

The victim in the crash was the daughter of Terry Hoeppner, who started coaching the Indiana Hoosiers in 2004 and rebuilt the struggling football program during his coaching tenure. Terry Hoeppner died in 2007 of complications following a brain tumor.

Car Accidents Are a Huge Problem in the U.S.

Every year in the United States, nearly 1.25 million people die, like Allison Hoeppner, on the road in car collisions. Colliding vehicles are the ninth leading cause of death across the globe, accounting for 2.2 percent of the world’s fatalities.

In addition to the tremendous loss of human life on the roads, car crashes are also one of the greatest causes of property loss. In the U.S. alone, car accidents cost an average of $230.6 billion every year, or an average of $820 per person annually.

Cobb County Personal Injury Attorney Joel Williams

It is an unfortunate fact of life that being in such a driver-centric culture as the United States means that countless people lose their lives on the road every single year. People who do nothing wrong while behind the wheel should be compensated for their injuries, and families should be compensated for the loss of loved ones.

Car accidents are so common that the legal system has established a reputation of ensuring that the wrongdoer or the negligent driver pays for the losses, the pain, and the suffering of the victim.

That is where the attorneys like Joel Williams can help.  Joel is a personal injury lawyer who deals with car accidents on a regular basis.  He is aware of the usual pitfalls and difficulties that can plague your case, and works tirelessly to avoid them so you can get the compensation that you deserve.  Contact Williams Elleby Howard & Easter at 833-LEGALGA to speak with an experienced attorney.

Two-Year-Old Boy Hit by Car at a Bus Stop

An injured child laying on a hospital bed, an IV in their left hand, tubes coming from their mouth, white cloths securing the child to the bed and a blurry background of hospital monitors.

A two-year-old boy was struck by a car recently in Massachusetts, escaping from his mother while waiting at a school bus stop to take his older siblings to school. He was airlifted to the hospital, where he is recovering.

Young Pedestrian Hit at Bus Stop

The incident occurred on the morning of September 14, 2016, in the town of Norfolk, Massachusetts. It was 8:30am on a Wednesday, so children of all ages were gathered at bus stops around the state to get to school. One such bus stop was on Strawberry Lane, in Norfolk. There, a 26-month-old child was waiting with his mother and other siblings for the bus that would take the older children to school. Suddenly, the youngest child bolted away from his family. His mother was unable to catch or stop him from running out into the street, and he was run down by a passing vehicle.

The car accident left the child lying on the side of the roadway. He was conscious and alert, but in lots of pain and suffering from his injuries. The driver of the car stopped immediately and stayed on the scene to help until medical personnel arrived. The boy was airlifted to Tufts Medical Center, where his condition was left unreleased. The driver of the car that hit him was a 44-year-old local resident of the town. The crash is under investigation, but she has not been charged.

Accidents at Bus Stops are Common

Unfortunately, this is far from a rare occurrence. Injuries from car accidents that happen at bus stops are surprisingly commonplace. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), between 2003 and 2012, no fewer than 174 school-aged children perished in accidents related to school transportation. Out of these 119 were pedestrians at the time of the accident. Out of these 119 pedestrians, 30 percent were killed by vehicles other than school buses.

Getting Legal Help Can Lead to Compensation

If you or someone you love has been hurt by a school bus or in an accident related to school-transportation, hiring a skilled personal injury or car accident attorney can mean the difference between getting the compensation that you deserve from the people or person most responsible for your accident, or footing the bill, yourself. Regardless of whether the perpetrator was a school bus driver or someone driving their own vehicle, keeping our bus stops safe is of the utmost importance. We can ensure that this happens by holding accountable those drivers who drive negligently around them, putting kids at needless risk.

Cobb County attorney Joel Williams takes these accidents very seriously. There is no reason why our children should be afraid to stand at the corner and wait for the bus that will take them to school. We can make sure that they feel safe by doing all that we can to ensure their safety at their bus stops, and we can do this by getting compensation from negligent drivers every time they put our children in harm’s way. Contact Williams Elleby Howard & Easter to get the legal representation that you need.

Tesla Faces Lawsuit in China After Autopilot Program Causes Fatal Crash

An arial view of a 3D modeled scene of a small red car with a black roof and blue radar beaming from the front of a self-driving car driving behind a tractor trailer on a street lined by parked cars.

Self-driving cars have been heralded as the biggest upcoming invention, and experts have claimed that they would be a normal part of our lives within a decade. However, the companies that are deeply involved with making these futuristic concepts a part of our reality have struggled to put together the pieces that are necessary to make self-driving cars safe enough for ordinary people to use on a regular basis.

Now, a lawsuit in China against self-driving car pioneer company Tesla may slow things down even more.

Tesla’s Autopilot Function at Issue in Car Accident

Tesla’s Autopilot feature, which was introduced into some of its cars back in October of 2015, was one of the features of the Tesla Model S sedan that 23-year-old Gao Yaning was driving in January, 2016. It was then that he rammed into the back of a street cleaning vehicle in the province of Hebei, in northeastern China. Yaning was killed in the car accident, and his father, Gao Jubin, filed suit against Tesla and the car dealership that sold his son the car that he was driving at the time.

Video shows that Yaning’s car careened into the back of the street cleaning vehicle without breaking.

Jubin’s lawsuit claims that the vehicle was in autopilot mode when the crash occurred, and that the autopilot program failed to take account of the road conditions. Tesla, however, disputes this claim, stating that there was no way of knowing whether the autopilot program was on, because the crash was so severe that “the car was physically incapable of transmitting log data to our servers.”

Tesla’s Autopilot System a Forerunner for Self-Driving Cars

Tesla’s autopilot system is not the self-driving car that we have heard so much about. Instead, it is a program that “sees” other cars and objects while driving on the highway, allowing the car to steer itself to maintain its lane, manage lane changes, and brake for upcoming obstacles. However, Tesla’s Autopilot program does not allow drivers to completely take their eyes off the road. Possibly because of this, numerous crashes and fatalities have been reported in which the driver of a Tesla vehicle completely relied on the program to drive the car, leading to an accident.

Cobb County Personal Injury Attorney Joel Williams

Tesla’s Autopilot program is a huge step towards self-driving cars. However, the Autopilot program should be thought of more as a halfway point between cars that need to be driven, and cars that can drive themselves. This has proven to be an awkward halfway point, because it requires drivers to remain attentive, with their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel, while still assuring them that the car will do the work. These mixed messages are likely to blame for the wrecks that the device has created.

If you or someone you love has been involved in such a car accident, contact Williams Elleby Howard & Easter for legal representation.

Traffic Related Fatalities on the Rise

A white sheet covering everything except the left arm of a dead body, laying on a road, in front with a black car.

Over the Labor Day weekend, while everyone else was grilling, watching a parade, or relaxing in the knowledge that fall is on its way, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released its data on traffic fatalities for the year 2015. The final death toll: 35,092.

What This Data Tells Us About Car Crashes

Saying that 35,092 people died in traffic related accidents during 2015 does not communicate much, however, without more information to put it into context. To put this number into perspective and provide some sort of context to this figure: The final death toll for traffic related accidents in 2015 was a 7.2 percent increase over the number of traffic related fatalities for 2014, and is the largest year to year increase in traffic deaths since 1966. Additionally, the sudden jump breaks a recent trend that had seen these types of fatalities decrease on a year to year basis.

Another number that helps to put this annual death toll in context: 35,092 people dying every year from traffic related accidents means that, every day, nearly 100 people are killed. That is more than four per hour, and one every fifteen minutes.

2016 Is Already Looking Even Worse

NHTSA is not the only source for these statistics. The National Safety Council also publishes figures on death tolls from traffic accidents and other similar events. According to the National Safety Council’s numbers for the months of January through June in 2016, this year will almost definitely outpace the traffic related fatalities numbers for 2015. According to the National Safety Council, in 2015, 17,530 people had died in traffic related accidents before the start of July. In 2016, that number was already at 19,100, a nine percent increase from the year 2015.

This trend is especially worrying in light of the increase that 2015 had brought about. While the fatalities during the first six months of 2016 were nine percent higher than 2015, they were 18 percent higher than 2014’s numbers for the first six months. The rise is expected to bring the number of traffic fatalities to over 40,000 in 2016, the first time it has reached such heights in over nine years.

Car Crashes are Costly

Anyone who has been in a car crash knows how devastating they can be. Even if no one is hurt, the property damage that occurs can quickly run into the thousands of dollars. If someone gets hurt, though, the dollar amount does not even begin to tell the tale of pain and suffering that a victim is forced to go through.

Cobb County Personal Injury Attorney Joel Williams

If you have been injured or suffered property damage in a car wreck, you need an attorney on your side who will make sure you get the compensation that you deserve. Whether this comes from your insurance company or the person who hit you, personal injury attorney Joel Williams will make sure that it happens, and will represent you both in and out of court to ensure that you get what you need.