Police say that a Pompano Beach man took the unusual step of punching a woman’s car after causing a rear-end accident with his pickup truck recently. Officers report that the 50-year-old man rear-ended the woman’s car after it had stopped at a red light in Delray Beach. The man drove off in his Dodge Ram pickup truck after the accident, prompting the lady to follow him into a parking lot, where she confronted the man. After a brief but heated exchange, the man began punching the rear window of the woman’s car before driving off again.
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Orlando personal injury lawyer James O. Cunningham would like to remind readers that not all court awards or settlements result in multi-million dollar damages. Many of the clients he has helped over the last 36 years receive damages in the thousands or tens of thousands, depending on the nature of the injuries. The following post provides an example of clients who could pursue smaller damages in a lawsuit or negotiated settlement.
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Florida Highway Patrol troopers are investigating a trucking accident that seriously injured three people on Jan. 11. They report that the accident occurred around 5 p.m. at the intersection of S.R. 44A and Forestdel Drive when a car driven by a 22-year-old DeLand man turned into the path of a tractor-trailer. The driver and two passengers, the driver’s 43-year-old father and a 44-year-old man, were airlifted to Orlando Regional Medical Center, where they are being treated for undisclosed injuries. The accident closed S.R. 44A while troopers conducted their investigation, and the road was reopened a few hours after the accident. Troopers say that charges are pending in connection with the accident.
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Earlier this month on Dec. 3, two people were killed and two more injured in south Florida when a truck collided with a passenger car, causing it to burst into flames. This trucking accident exemplifies the potential dangers of passenger cars sharing the road with huge trucks weighing up to 80,000 pounds. The truck driver was cited for making an improper lane change and operating a vehicle in an unsafe condition after the accident.
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Florida Highway Patrol Capt. Keith Gaston is using a newly formed database and computer models to track Florida auto accident data and help the law enforcement community identify trends. Capt. Gaston began working on the database nearly ten years ago when he was a graduate student at the University of North Florida. He wanted to develop a way for police to collect and analyze accident information in order to better serve their communities. What began with a single handheld GPS device has now become an innovative program at the University of Florida.
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Will Florida finally pass a substantive ban on texting while driving? James O. Cunningham and other Orlando personal injury lawyers certainly hope so. The most recent attempt to enact a texting ban in Florida was filed in the Senate on Nov. 21. If passed, the bill (SB 52) would ban drivers from sending or reading texts, emails and other electronic messages while driving but would not prevent them from reading weather alerts, maps and other navigational tools and safety information.
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Last month, we wrote about an Apopka man whose lawyer said he was not to blame for a fatal DUI motorcycle accident because the rider was popping a wheelie at the time and his lights were impossible for a driver to see. The man had already served three years of a 12-year sentence in connection with the accident. In September, an appeals court agreed with the man’s lawyer and threw out his DUI manslaughter conviction and the rest of the sentence, saying that the rider had been riding recklessly with his front wheel in the air and could not be seen.
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Orlando police officers closed two lanes of Interstate 4 recently after a semi truck jack-knifed, causing an accident that sent one person to an area hospital with injuries. Police say that the recent accident occurred in the eastbound lanes of I-4 south of Universal Boulevard. They report that the driver lost control of his rig and that it jack-knifed, causing it to strike a tree in the median and stall traffic past Sand Lake Road. The collision caused a fuel tank on the truck to rupture, and emergency crews had to spray fire retardant around the accident scene.
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Orlando motorcycle accident lawyer James O. Cunningham is urging all motorcyclists to ride defensively and exercise extra care after the second fatal accident within nearly a week on Curry Ford Road. On November 10, a 22-year-old man was killed when a sport utility vehicle violated his right of way by turning into his path. The most recent accident occurred around 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 18 when a 20-year-old rider was traveling east on Curry Ford Road and was cut off by a Hyundai Electra driven by a 66-year-old Orlando woman. Florida Highway Patrol troopers investigating the accident say that the woman was attempting to turn left from Pinebranch Drive onto Curry Ford when she turned directly into the motorcyclist’s path.
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Palm Bay police officers believe that the man who drove his car into two patrol cars on Nov. 26 was intoxicated at the time of the accident. The 61-year-old man suffered minor injuries in the accident, which occurred around 10 p.m. that evening. Police say he was traveling southbound on Babcock Street when he drove his pickup truck into the rear of one police car and pushed it into another, totaling one car and extensively damaging the other. Officers were assisting a driver with a disabled car when the accident occurred and were not injured in the collisions. The suspect was taken to a Palm Bay hospital for treatment, and police say that they expect to file charges against the driver, pending their investigation.
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