Negligence

Post-Chatsworth Accident Recommendations Still Lacking Among Bay Area Trains

February 20, 2014 | Gregory J. Brod

The collision between a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train on Sept. 12, 2008, in the Chatsworth area of Los Angeles was a tragically memorable accident in which 25 people died and another 135 were injured. In the wake of that sad day, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a report that pinned the blame for the accident on the engineer of the Metrolink and called for additional safety measures to help prevent future collisions. However, San Francisco train accident attorney Gregory J. Brod has learned that apparently the NTSB’s recommendations have fallen on deaf ears among some rail agencies in the Bay Area.

The NTSB report determined that the probable cause of the Chatsworth collision was the fact that the Metrolink engineer failed to notice and properly respond to a red signal by stopping at a critical juncture because he was distracted from his duties while text messaging. The NTSB identified two specific safety issues relevant to the Chatsworth incident, which were as follows:

Inadequate capability, because of the privacy offered by a locomotive operating compartment, for management to monitor crew member adherence to operating rules such as those regarding the use of wireless devices or the presence of unauthorized persons in the operating compartment.
Lack of a positive train control system on the Metrolink rail system.

The NTSB’s safety recommendations to the Federal Railroad Administration were very specific as well, including the need to install audio and image recorders within locomotive cabs to verify that crew actions were in compliance with the rules and procedures necessary for safety and train operation. In addition, the NTSB recommended that railroads regularly review and employ the audio and image recorders in tandem with other performance data.

One would think that a high-profile tragedy with multiple fatalities such as the Chatsworth train accident would be a seminal event that would prompt train authorities to review their safety measures and modify them as needed, especially with a major report with safety recommendations having been produced by the relevant federal agency as a result of the accident. However, according to KTVU News, in the Bay Area the NTSB’s recommendations have gone largely unheeded among the region’s transit agencies.

Among the key rail agencies, Amtrak is working on installing equipment that the NTSB recommended in its cars by 2015; BART has added the suggested cab interior cameras but lacks a video view of its tracks; and Caltrain has no cameras within locomotives but has cameras outside its trains.

“If an engineer runs a signal the system will automatically stop the train,” said Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn. “If another train is coming into the station too fast, it’s going to slow that train down. It’s going to prevent accidents.”
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Annoying and Dangerous: Driver Who Misuse Exit Lanes to Pass Traffic

February 14, 2014 | Gregory J. Brod

We all have our driving pet peeves from drivers who leave their turn signals on for miles to drivers who seem incapable of parking within the lines and instead take up two parking spots (inevitably during a time when few spots are available. While some pet peeves are mostly annoying nuisances, others can also be major road hazards that put offending driver and everyone around them at risk. Drivers who use the exit lane to speed past traffic are not only annoying, they are dangerous and their habit can lead to serious accidents. Our San Jose accident attorney is dedicated to helping people injured by improper passing attempts, a behavior that is always frustrating and sometimes deadly.

Misuse of Exit Lanes on the Rise in Bay Area

Exit lane misuse in the Bay Area inspired a recent article in the San Jose Mercury News. The author noted that drivers using exit lanes to zip past traffic and then trying to make their way back into the travel lanes is not a new problem, but it is one that seems to be on the increase along with a general rise in traffic in the region. It is an issue that inspires calls to the paper’s Roadshow columnist and one the California Highway Patrol (“CHP”) agrees happens far too frequently.

S.F.’s Van Ness Avenue’s Reputation for Peril Worsens as Another Pedestrian is Struck, Killed by Motor Vehicle

February 13, 2014 | Gregory J. Brod

When statistics suggest the evidence of a pattern, it is usually noteworthy enough for those interested in the subject matter to pay attention. But when the pattern involves a really life-and-death matter such as pedestrian safety, action as much as attention is required. And that, San Francisco pedestrian accident attorney Gregory J. Brod would point out, is what is called for in the city by the bay in the wake of yet another pedestrian death on Van Ness Avenue.

According to KTVU News, a 35-year-old man lost his life at about 12:55 a.m. Wednesday near Van Ness and Pacific avenues when a motorist slammed into the man, abandoned his vehicle and then walked away from the scene. The police pronounced the pedestrian who was struck by the automobile dead at the scene and officers took the motorist whose car had hit him into custody. The motorist was booked into jail on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and on a misdemeanor warrant.

It is bad enough that the man who died Wednesday represented San Francisco’s fourth pedestrian fatality of 2014 – there were 21 pedestrian fatalities in the city in 2013, the most since 2007 – but perhaps just as troublesome is the fact that three of those four deaths occurred on Van Ness Avenue. In addition, there have been 84 accidents involving pedestrians on that street between 2008 and 2013. A major six-lane thoroughfare, Van Ness Avenue’s reputation as a dangerous street to cross is so notorious that some have dubbed it “Van Mess Avenue.”

While Van Ness Avenue is not the only dangerous street for pedestrians to cross in San Francisco – 19th Avenue, among others, has also earned a reputation as a deadly street to navigate – it certainly has been getting more than its share of bad press lately. And, since the street passes right by City Hall as well as some of the city’s cultural landmarks, it stands to reason that at least a few city officials have noticed the carnage.

However, it seems as though official awareness of the tragic circumstances on Van Ness Avenue has not necessarily translated into a substantive solution to the problem, or at least a solution that is in the works. Some yet-to-be-adopted plans that have been floated include ladder-style painting of crosswalks that are more visible to motorists.

“The design process takes too long,” said San Francisco Supervisor Scott Weiner, commenting on the steps needed to make Van Ness Avenue and other streets safer for pedestrians. “The public process takes too long. Everything takes too long. And it’s just completely broken.”

Another plan that has been on the city’s drawing board since last September is to institute a rapid transit bus line down the center of Van Ness Avenue. That measure, traffic experts have said, would lessen congestion and make it easier for pedestrians to cross the street. Unfortunately, the express bus corridor is not slated to be completed for another four years.
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San Bruno to CPUC: Stop Dragging Your Feet on Disclosure of Public Records

February 7, 2014 | Gregory J. Brod

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It has been three years and five months since the catastrophic gas line explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people, injured 66 others and devastated a neighborhood. Bay Area personal injury attorney Gregory J. Brod is among those people who would hope that the government agencies responsible for oversight of the disaster and Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the company that caused it, would be forthcoming with sharing germane public records. But judging by a lawsuit that was filed this week, the key agency in question, the California Public Utilities Commission, is not moving fast enough for the city at the center of the Sept. 9, 2010, conflagration.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the city of San Bruno filed a lawsuit in San Mateo Superior Court on Tuesday against the CPUC seeking to force the agency to release public records on the explosion. The city is demanding that the CPUC release the documents in order to comply with the California Public Records Act as well as four separate requests that it has made for documents pertaining to the CPUC’s deliberations on the fine it contemplated against PG&E.

San Bruno officials believe that the documents will detail improper conduct at the CPUC regarding the fine, which has not yet been imposed, as well as a too-cozy relationship between the agency and the utility it is supposed to regulate.

“We believe the PUC is deliberately withholding information that would embarrass the agency,” said San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson. “This is an issue of accountability and transparency.”

San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane was particularly concerned about the relationship between the CPUC and PG&E.

“We are concerned the leadership of the CPUC is in the pocket of the utility company it is supposed to regulate,” Ruane said Tuesday at a news conference on the steps of the courthouse after the lawsuit was filed. “Our lawsuit calls for full transparency so that the people of San Bruno and the citizens of California can be confident about the integrity of this penalty process against PG&E.

And San Bruno City Attorney Marc Zafferano posed this interesting question when he complained, “Ten months after making a series of public records requests, the CPUC has refused to comply, leading us to question what the agency is trying to hide.”
The CPUC’s response as to why it has not released the records: It’s been “very busy” and would respond “when it had free time.”

More specifically, according to the San Francisco Examiner, the CPUC says that it has the right to withhold the documents under the deliberative process privilege exemption of the state Public Records Act, which was imposed by the California Supreme Court in 1991. The Supreme Court ruled that “the key question in every case is whether disclosure of the materials would expose an agency’s decision-making process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion with the agency and thereby undermine the agency’s ability to perform its functions.”
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With Numbers in, 2013 Goes Down as Deadly Year for Pedestrians in San Francisco

January 16, 2014 | Gregory J. Brod

When there is a collision between a motor vehicle and a pedestrian, the encounter is almost always a no-contest situation – the pedestrian usually emerges as the decided loser from the collision. Unfortunately, San Francisco pedestrians were on the wrong and fatal end of an encounter with a motor vehicle 21 times in 2013, the highest number of pedestrian fatalities in the city since 2007. And San Francisco personal injury attorney Gregory J. Brod is particularly troubled that the city set a six-year high for pedestrian fatalities.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the unenviable numbers for pedestrian fatalities in San Francisco were registered through a deadly December, when six people died, including two on New Year’s Eve alone. But while the city did not surpass the 24 deaths recorded in 2007, the number of collisions between pedestrians and motor vehicles has been on an upward trajectory every year since 2009, when there were 734 collisions, to 2012 when there were 948 such collisions. The number of collisions for last year is not yet available.

There have been some notable cofactors involved with pedestrian fatalities or injuries in San Francisco, including the following:

The higher a motor vehicle’s speed, the more likely the pedestrian it strikes will die, as 90 percent die when the vehicle is traveling at 55 mph, 50 percent die at 40 mph, and 10 percent die at 25 mph
The failure of a motorist to yield to a pedestrian is cited as the cause of more than 40 percent of pedestrian collisions
Of those pedestrians who are injured in a collision with a motor vehicle, 70 percent sustained their injuries in an intersection
Approximately one-fourth of pedestrians injured are struck by motor vehicles making a left turn; 10 percent are injured by drivers making a right turn
Sixty percent of all severe injuries and fatalities occurred on just 6 percent of San Francisco’s total miles of streets

A more dangerous environment for pedestrians in San Francisco has become evident even as the city has long had a reputation for being one of the most pedestrian-friendly cities in the nation. Indeed, city officials have long vowed to address pedestrian safety, and successive mayors have made a reduction in the number of severe injuries and fatalities a municipal priority.

Interestingly enough, when it came to assessing fault in fatal collisions between motorists and pedestrians in 2013, the San Francisco Police Department put the blame on the motorist in 14 of the 21 cases and determined that the pedestrian was at fault in seven of the cases.
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Report Dials Home Message That Cellphone Use and Driving Is a Risky Combination

January 3, 2014 | Gregory J. Brod

On the heels of the New Year’s celebration, we are well aware that drinking and driving make for a deadly cocktail, and yet every holiday there is a significant increase in the number of arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol and, unfortunately, the number of injuries and fatalities on roadways. And just as in the case of drinking and driving, San Francisco personal injury attorney Gregory J. Brod would point to another strong correlation that results in injury and death on our highways – cellphone use and driving.

The latter deadly combination was driven home through a study published New Year’s Day by the New England Journal of Medicine, as reported in the Los Angeles Times. In the NEJM’s report, the act of attempting to dial a phone while driving will increase the risk of a crash or near-accident more than any other type of distraction. Other related top risk factors for distracted driving that triggers an accident include reaching for a cellphone, texting or using the Internet, looking away from the road toward an off-road object, and eating.

Another factor from the study’s findings that increases the chances of a crash is if the driver is a novice. The report found that less-experienced drivers tend to be more prone to getting into trouble than their more seasoned counterparts because the former are often more inclined to try to do something other than paying attention to the road.
Some of the statistics from the report include the following eyebrow-raising numbers:

Novice drivers are 8.32 times more likely to get into a crash or near-crash when they are dialing a cellphone
Novice drives are 8 times more likely to get into a crash or near-crash when they reach for something other than their cellphone
Novice drivers are 7.05 times more likely to get into a crash or near-crash when they try to grab their cellphone
Novice drivers are 3.9 times more likely to get into a crash or near-crash when they are looking at an off-road object
Novice drivers are 2.99 times more likely to get into a crash or near-crash when they are eating

Interestingly enough, the one activity that drives up the risk of a crash or near-crash for experienced drivers is dialing a cellphone. In such cases, the odds of a seasoned driver getting into an accident or other trouble on the road are 2.49 times more likely. However, the report also found that the more experienced a driver is, the more likely they will take their eyes off the road for some reason. Apparently, that behavioral trait can be blamed on a motorist’s increased level of confidence as they gain more experience driving.
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Government Immunity & Injury Law

December 8, 2013 | Gregory J. Brod

Often the law is an effort to resolve two competing interests. For example, traffic laws balance personal freedoms with safety concerns and tax laws balance a need for government services with the reluctance to pay for shared services. We have previously mentioned the law of sovereign immunity, a balancing decision that often protects a government institution while taking away an injured person’s right to recover damages. Last week, a federal court sitting in California looked at a question of government immunity and ruled in favor of a seriously injured individual, a decision our Berkeley injury attorney applauds for treating a government like any other business when it engages in commerce like a private entity.

Berkeley Woman Loses Legs Following Fall at Austrian Rail Platform

The dispute, covered in a San Francisco Chronicle article, arose when Carol Sachs was visiting Austria in April 2007. Sachs claims she slipped, falling through a gap to the tracks as the doors to the train she was attempting to board closed and the cars began to move. She alleges these events caused severe injury that resulted in doctors amputating both legs above the knee. Sachs filed suit in San Francisco accusing OBB, the Austrian national railroad, of negligently operating the train, not providing a safe boarding area, and failing to warn of the dangers. OBB denied any negligence, suggesting the train was already moving when Sachs attempted to board. As a preliminary matter, however, OBB asked the court to dismiss the suit based on government immunity laws.

Questions Remain About Tragic Train Accident

December 2, 2013 | Gregory J. Brod

2013 has felt like the year of transportation tragedies. Along with the rest of the world, our team has watched with heavy hearts as major accidents have occurred involving trains, planes, boats, and automobiles with transit accidents across the globe and in our own backyard. Sadly, the holiday weekend saw yet another major transit incident. Like many of you, the team at our San Francisco transportation accident law firm is watching to learn what caused the tragic New York train accident and we are hoping those lessons can prevent similar accidents from occurring in 2014 and beyond.

The Accident Scene and Early Evidence

As of late Monday, CNN was reporting that the train derailment in the Bronx claimed four lives and left at least 67 injured, with 3 remaining in critical condition. The crash occurred approximately ten miles north of Manhattan’s Grand Central Station on the Metro-North Hudson Line, a commuter route that carried 15.9 million people last year. Authorities report 150 people were aboard at the time the train derailed and all seven passenger cars jumped the track. One witness summed up the scene as “very surreal and very scary.”

Black Friday Caps Off Grim Week for Pedestrians Hit by Motorists in Bay Area

November 29, 2013 | Gregory J. Brod

Holiday weeks are supposed to be times when people can, among other things, relax and enjoy the company of their family and friends. Thanksgiving probably is the iconic holiday for such pleasant pursuits, but as Bay Area personal injury attorney Gregory J. Brod has pointed out, holiday weeks can also be a deadly time for people on our roadways. In that respect, sadly, this Thanksgiving week has been notable for several tragic deaths of pedestrians struck by motorists on Bay Area streets and highways.

During the week from Friday, Nov. 22 through Friday, Nov. 29, it has been particularly perilous for pedestrians to cross the streets of San Jose. According to ABC7 News, there were three separate roadway incidents involving pedestrian fatalities in the Bay Area’s largest city since the holiday week commenced last weekend, and all tragic deaths occurred within a 48-hour time span.

Toddler Killed While Riding in Stroller
The first of the pedestrian fatalities was an especially heart-breaking one Sunday afternoon, as a 3-year-old boy riding in a stroller his mother was pushing at the intersection of Vine and Oak and was struck and killed by a motorist making a left turn. Two other pedestrians in the group were also hit while crossing the street, but they suffered minor injuries and were released from the hospital Sunday.

According to KTVU News, the boy was killed while his mother was taking him to a nearby playground from an intersection where neighbors have complained that a lack of a left-turn signal has set up a dangerous zone for pedestrians and motorists to cross paths. Now, at that same intersection, a makeshift memorial of candles and flowers has been created for the toddler.

On Sunday night, a ninth-grade student at James Lick High School in East San Jose was struck and killed by a car after she left her boyfriend’s house and attempted to cross White Road. The 14-year-old girl was taken to the hospital, where she later died, and her classmates were left mourning the teen as the school closed for Thanksgiving vacation.

San Jose Reaches Unenviable Milestone
On Monday just before 11 p.m., a 50-year-old woman was attempting to cross Monterey Road in San Jose when she was struck and killed by a motorist. With that victim’s passing, the 24th pedestrian death in San Jose this year, the city’s pedestrian fatalities hit an eight-year high.

On Friday, a man was pronounced dead on Interstate 80 after his body was found on a stretch of the highway west of Solano Avenue in Richmond at around 12:25 a.m., according to KTVU News. The California Highway Patrol said that the 32-year-old man was apparently hit and killed by a car after he got out of his own disabled automobile that was involved in a solo-vehicle crash and tried to walk to the highway’s right shoulder. Witnesses told the CHP that the man was struck several times by other vehicles that did not stop.

Finally, on Friday at about 5:30 a.m., a woman crossing Interstate 80 near 7th Street in San Francisco was struck and killed by an eastbound truck, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The woman was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where she died from her injuries. Police said that it was not clear what the pedestrian was doing on the freeway.
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The Rescue Doctrine: Protecting Good Samaritans

November 25, 2013 | Gregory J. Brod

Many of us have wondered about how we would act in an emergency. Would we step in as a Good Samaritan and attempt to rescue a stranger? One of many valid concerns for a would-be-rescuer is fear of suffering a severe injury themselves. It is an issue many are pondering after the events that followed Sunday’s Raiders game. As an Oakland injury law firm, we wanted to take a look at legal issues related to Good Samaritan injuries – Does the law provide recourse for an injured rescuer? Does this change if the person the rescuer sought to help had placed him/herself in peril?

Good Samaritan Injured Catching Woman Who Jumped from Stadium Deck

On Sunday, the Oakland Raiders lost. We don’t know if that loss was a factor in a woman’s decision to enter a closed section of the O.co Coliseum and leap off the third deck. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that two people on the concourse below unsuccessfully tried to persuade the woman not to jump. Officials with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office report that one Good Samaritan attempted to catch the woman, breaking her fall and likely saving her life. Ultimately, the woman was knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital in critical condition. The Good Samaritan incurred serious injuries.