Jaywalking-caused Road Accidents

Jaywalking-caused Road Accidents

In road accidents, there is no such thing as the driver of a vehicle is only accountable for the damages when hitted by a car, pedestrians as well play pivotal role in keeping the road peaceful and casuality-free when traveling and exercising everyone's rights. Unfortunately, the frequency of occurrence of car accidents involving pedestrians is pretty high even in 2017, as it is situating at 5,977 pedestrians deaths in U.S., that is one death in almost every two hours. 

It is as well concerning for drivers who practice defensive driving and abide to the traffic norms when they came across or involved to an accident with a pedestrian since pedestrians, who have lesser protection, sustain significant damages when hitted and this would appear as a full-blown fault by the driver, which is most of the time is the case when the driver doesn't have or can't present a dashcam footage or CCTV captures of the whole accident and even before it had happened because it has possibilities that the reason of the occurrence of the accident is because of the unruly behavior of a pedestrian where he is drunk or disobeyed traffic laws such as jaywalking. 

If that is the case of one specific accident, that doesn't mean as well that the pedestrian is fully liable of the accident but the driver is partially liable too for the physical damages such as injuries and mental damages but pedestrian as a victim weighs more responsibilty on that one as he caused the accident in the first place. The provision of witness and police reports and footages recorded will further the innocence and liability of the driver that would drive the pedestrian to have a larger liability, hence, settlement pay to give off by his insurer, this concept is legally called comparative negligence.  

Comparative Negligence

Comparative negligence is a law of systematic and fair process of calculating compensation value of people involved where it allows the victim to recover damages and reduced by the amount of person's negligence and contribution in the accident that occurred in a form of scaling such as percentages. In states that comparative negligence is up, aside from that mechanics, they have various conditions and agreement if context of the accident is out of the mechanics such as in Ohio, wherein they have strict daunting to negligence as if a party is more than 50% contribution to the accident in form of negligence, coverage of damages is not allowed. 

• Almost 50% of all pedestrian involved crashes are linked to either drunk pedestrian or driver or generally consumance of alcohol.
• Approximately 137,000 pedestrians were significantly injuried and treated in emergency rooms in 2017.
• 1/5 of minors under 15 were killed in the same year as pedestrians. 
• Elderly as well are not safe as a road user and as a pedestrian because people aging 65 and older account for more than 20% of all pedestrian deaths and injuries in the same year. 

Ryan LLP

If ever one of your family members or closests friend has been involved in a major accident involving a pedestrian who have sustained significant injuries and even a possible disability because of the driver of the truck has shown apparent negligence and recklessness, you can always refer help from a professional experienced injury lawyer to smoothen things out as your hired lawyers can help you decide from their factual and legal advices. 

Ryan LLP is an Ohio based injury lawyer that represents victims of personal injury caused by car accidents, medical malpractice due to medical professional's negligence, and even wrongful death against large companies, agencies and even individuals. We have 40 years of experience doing our service in this field and evidently successful with our civil litigations. Call our office now for free legal consultation.