Even by mid-month, this past August was shaping up to be the the worst 30-day period for fatal car, truck and motorcycle crashes in the D.C. area. According to news reports, by the 15th of the month almost 20 fatal traffic wrecks had been recorded, many of them involving commercial trucks.
As Baltimore auto accident lawyers and Maryland personal injury attorneys, we hear about numerous roadway collisions on a regular basis. Not only do these violent and sometimes fatal car and truck crashes injure dozens of people across the state every week, a percentage of these motor vehicle wrecks involve deaths. Even those individuals who survive the worst of these collisions can end up suffering for months or years from the deleterious effects of a vehicle-to-vehicle impact.
Broken bones including simple and compound fractures, as well as internal bleeding and damaged organs, can result from a broad-side or head-on collision. Many times, life threatening injuries, such as closed-head trauma and sometimes irreversible spinal damage may be sustained by the driver or passengers of a smaller vehicle when struck by a large commercial box truck, delivery vehicle or semi tractor-trailer rig.
No amount of money can bring back a lost loved one, but the compensation returned to a victim’s family can hopefully pay for the extensive medical bills and potential lost wages that result when a bread-winner is killed in a senseless car, truck or pedestrian traffic accident.
The following list briefly summarizes a few of the crashes that occurred throughout the District through mid-August. Many of these sad events are typical of the highway and surface street crashes that happen on a regular basis in Maryland and across the U.S. It’s not something most people like to think about, however it is sobering to realize how quickly a life can be taken as a result of another individual’s indiscretion behind the wheel.
— Three people died in two separate accidents on Tuesday, August 2nd. Two of the three were killed along a stretch of the Capitol Beltway in a 6-vehicle pileup that occurred near Forestville, MD. The crash, which took place during the morning rush hour, also resulted in another couple of people being sent to the hospital with apparently severe but non-life-threatening injuries. The third person who died that day was riding a dirt bike along a portion of Florida Avenue in the northeastern part of the District. The victim, a teenage motorcycle rider, was hit and killed by an 18-wheel semi tractor-trailer rig.
— A few days layer, on Friday, August 5, two women died in a head-on motor vehicle crash in St. Mary’s County. The accident occurred along a stretch of Rte 5 when one of the vehicles apparently crossed the centerline and crashed into the other fatally injuring the two victims.
— In another instance, the very next day, a commercial truck driver died in what news articles described as a tractor-trailer crash along the northbound side of Interstate 95 near Fairfax County. The fatal collision happened on I-95 not far from the Lorton exit on August 6.
— On Wednesday, August 10, three people died as a result of a three-vehicle wreck that occurred near the intersection of Fullerton and Backlick roads. No additional details were provided, however authorities stated that this crash, as well as the others that occur during the year in the metropolitan D.C. area, both fatal and non-fatal, add up to a little over five billion dollars in public and private loses, not to mention the human toll, which can never be properly quantified.
Nearly 20 traffic fatalities so far this month in D.C., WJLA.com, August 15, 2011