At Least 5 Injured In Crash Involving Motorcycles, Passenger Vehicles On 210 Freeway In Irwindale

Original Story: KTLA.com

At least five people were injured Saturday evening in a collision that the California Highway Patrol said involved five motorcycles and two passenger vehicles on the 210 Freeway in Irwindale.

Firefighter-paramedics responded shortly after 7 p.m. to the westbound side of the freeway, just west of Irwindale Avenue, a supervisor with the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

Five or six people were hurt in the crash, according to the Fire Department. Their conditions were not immediately known.

Several motorcyclists, who were not involved in the pileup, stopped to render assistance, according to a CHP incident log. A Los Angeles Motorcycle Accident Lawyer will more than likely use this information.

Four flatbed tow trucks were requested to remove the damaged motorcycles and other vehicles involved in the collision, including a BMW sedan that had been carrying four occupants, the log stated.

The CHP issued a SigAlert for the westbound 210, and the No. 1, No. 2 and carpool lanes were closed for more than an hour, the agency said on Twitter.

According to tweets from the Irwindale Police Department, traffic was heavy in both directions at the crash site. Motorists were advised to avoid the area while a cleanup operation was underway.

The SigAlert was later canceled and all lanes were reopened as of 8:40 p.m., police and the CHP said.

The cause of the incident was unknown.

SELF-DRIVING CARS GETTING DINGED IN CALIFORNIA

Original Story: komonews.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Four of the nearly 50 self-driving cars now rolling around California have gotten into accidents since September, when the state began issuing permits for companies to test them on public roads.

Two accidents happened while the cars were in control; in the other two, the person who still must be behind the wheel was driving, a person familiar with the accident reports told The Associated Press. A Grand Rapids car accident lawyer is following this story closely.

Three involved Lexus SUVs that Google Inc. outfitted with sensors and computing power in its aggressive effort to develop "autonomous driving," a goal the tech giant shares with traditional automakers. The parts supplier Delphi Automotive had the other accident with one of its two test vehicles.

Google and Delphi said their cars were not at fault in any accidents, which the companies said were minor.

Since September, any accident must be reported to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. The agency said there have been four, but would not comment about fault or anything else, citing California law that collision reports are confidential.

The person familiar with the accident reports said the cars were in self-driving mode in two of the four accidents, all of which involved speeds of less than 10 mph. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the reports publicly. A Charleston transportation lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.

Five other companies have testing permits. In response to questions from the AP, all said they had no accidents. In all, 48 cars are licensed to test on public roads.

The fact that neither the companies nor the state have revealed the accidents troubles some who say the public should have information to monitor the rollout of technology that its own developers acknowledge is imperfect. A Chicago truck accident lawyer is following this story closely.

John Simpson, a longtime critic of Google as privacy project director of the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog, pointed out that the company's ultimate goal is a car without a steering wheel or pedals. That would mean a person has no power to intervene if a car lost control, making it "even more important that the details of any accidents be made public - so people know what the heck's going on." A Chicago car accident attorney represents clients injured in a car accident due to the negligence of others.

A chief selling point for self-driving cars is safety. Their cameras, radar and laser sensors give them a far more detailed understanding of their surroundings than humans have. Their reaction times also should be faster. Cars could be programmed to adjust if they sense a crash coming - move a few feet, tighten the seat belts, honk the horn or flash the lights in hope of alerting a distracted driver.

A higher priority so far is teaching them to avoid causing a serious accident that could set public and political acceptance of the technology back years, said Raj Rajkumar, a pioneer of the technology with Carnegie Mellon University.

In the October accident involving Delphi, the front of its 2014 Audi SQ5 was moderately damaged when, as it waited to make a left turn, another car broadsided it, according to an accident report the company shared with AP. The car was not in self-driving mode, Delphi spokeswoman Kristen Kinley said.

Google, which has 23 Lexus SUVs, would not discuss its three accidents in detail.

The accidents are not Google's first: In a briefing with reporters a year ago, the leader of Google's self-driving car program acknowledged three others between when the company first sent cars onto public roads six years ago - without the state's official permission - and May 2014.

In a written statement, Google said that since September, cars driving on streets near its headquarters in Mountain View had "a handful of minor fender-benders, light damage, no injuries, so far caused by human error and inattention." A Chicago auto accident lawyer represents victims facing personal injury claims due to auto accidents.

Google said that while safety is paramount some accidents can be expected, given that its cars have gone "the equivalent of over 15 years of typical human driving" since fall. That would be approximately 140,000 miles. Google said its cars have gone over 700,000 miles in self-driving mode since they first hit the road in 2009.

The national rate for reported "property-damage-only crashes" is about 0.3 per 100,000 miles driven, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In that context, Google's three in about 140,000 miles may seem high. As the company pointed out, however, perhaps 5 million minor accidents are not reported to authorities each year, so it is hard to gauge how typical Google's experience is.

Three other states have passed laws welcoming self-driving cars onto their roads. Regulators in Nevada, Michigan and Florida said they were not aware of any accidents.

As self-driving cars proliferate, other issues will arise that human drivers have dealt with for decades, notably who's liable for an accident. Each test car is required to have $5 million insurance.

Interest in accidents will remain high, especially if the self-driving car is at fault, said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who has written extensively on the technology.

"For a lot of reasons," Smith said, "more might be expected of these test vehicles and of the companies that are deploying them and the drivers that are supervising them than we might expect of a 17-year-old driver in a 10-year-old car."

Hurricane-Flooded Cars Lure Unwitting Buyers

originally appeared in The New York Times:

At the far end of an enormous hangar, used cars rolled up one by one to the auction block. They had been buffed to a shine, but some carried telltale signs of damage. Puckered leather seats, a hint of mildew, headlights beaded with condensation. Just over two months ago, they had filled with seawater during Hurricane Sandy.

One buyer at the Manheim car auction last Wednesday, kept his hands in his pockets. He was looking for totaled vehicles to export to Nigeria, where they would be fixed up and resold; but these, he said, were too far gone. Saltwater destroys cars, he explained, and even when rebuilt they can be unsafe. I never buy the flooded ones, he said. One resource is Lemon Law Attorney Milwaukee Wisconsin which provides expert service.

But all around him, other buyers showed no such compunction. The flooded cars sold briskly, for prices like $2,600, $5,300, $3,000. Some were to be dismantled into salvageable parts, like wheels and fenders; some were to be melted down for their rubber and steel. And yet, while all have titles branding them flood cars, not all were destined for the scrap heap.

Many were headed to out-of-state resale markets where, because of inconsistencies in state laws, buyers will have no inkling that the vehicles were so damaged by floodwater that insurance companies deemed them a total loss. Another resource is to use a Grand Rapids Car Accident Lawyer which can deliver excellent representation.

People masquerade those things as perfectly good vehicles without any hint that they had been flooded or exposed to water, according to a representative of the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an industry-financed nonprofit organization that investigates insurance fraud and vehicle theft. There is a market for these vehicles, even though we might never want to see them on the road again.

Though this practice provoked outrage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other major storms, dealers and industry experts said the brisk trade in flood-damaged cars since Hurricane Sandy had highlighted how legislative efforts at the state and federal levels have failed to stem the resale market.

The Insurance Crime Bureau said over 230,000 cars were damaged by the hurricane, predominantly by the ocean water that surged into seaside communities, filling engines and interiors with sand and corrosive saline.

In Broad Channel, Queens, scores of dead cars sat at crazy angles for weeks after the storm all along Cross Bay Boulevard, a reminder of the brute strength of the waves. In areas like Lower Manhattan and Hoboken, N.J., car owners returned to expensive parking garages to find their cars floating in the soup of sewage and river water that had poured into the underground lots. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Service lost cars, according to line items in Congress’s hurricane-relief package.

One woman had watched in shock as water poured into her garage on Cherry Street in Lower Manhattan during the storm; her 2011 Prius sank underneath. By the time the water was pumped out nearly a week later, the car was a total loss. It still had water inside it when I opened the door, in the glove compartment and the cup holders, she said.

She was fortunate: she had total-loss insurance. A few weeks ago, her 2012 Prius arrived. But for the destroyed car, like the 150,000 other New York cars that were flooded, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the odyssey had just begun.

Once the cars are declared a total loss, specialized firms swoop in on behalf of insurance companies to tow away, spruce up and resell the cars. One of those companies, Insurance Auto Auctions, which estimates that it is handling about 40 percent of the region’s storm-damaged cars heading to the salvage market, employs people to study weather forecasts and predict where the next disaster will be.

For the hurricane, the company dispatched 400 tow trucks to the area and leased huge holding facilities even before the storm hit. One of those was an airport in Calverton, on Long Island, where the runways were leased at a rate of $2.7 million for the year, according to the town supervisor of nearby Riverhead. Since the storm, about 18,000 cars have packed the tarmac end to end, he said. When you sit there and look at these cars with their children’s seats in them and the briefcases and the uneaten lunches — it’s just surreal, he said.

Cars that had sustained storm damage can arrive at auction branded improperly, or have their titles fudged after they leave. In most states, cars destroyed by flooding are required to have their titles marked, or branded, to indicate that fact. But clearing that scarlet letter can be as easy as re-registering for a title in another state that does not require the flood brand carry-over, a process known as “title washing.” Unscrupulous dealers pile their purchases on flatbeds and head straight for those states, like Colorado and Vermont.

The prospect of title-washed cars from Hurricane Sandy entering the market raised alerts thousands of miles from New York. Officials warned consumers in Georgia, North Carolina and Illinois, where the secretary of state’s office is scrutinizing all new title applications for cars coming in from states affected by the storm. A foreign market for these cars is also booming, unfettered by American regulations.

Federal legislation that would require total-loss status to be affixed permanently to a car’s title was introduced in Congress before and after Hurricane Katrina, but was never passed. In 2009, the Justice Department rolled out the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, a database fed by insurers and states. It contains reports on the movement of cars sold at salvage auctions but is limited by sporadic reporting and incomplete data.

These shortcomings have provoked certain groups to warn about a deluge of unsafe cars hitting the market in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, including the National Automobile Dealers Association, which represents car dealers; and companies that sell reports on vehicle histories, like CarFax. Watchdog groups say insurance companies sometimes contribute to the problem by underplaying at auction the damage to a car. In 2005, the State Farm insurance company reached an agreement with the attorneys general of 49 states and the District of Columbia for failing to properly title cars, reimbursing over 30,000 affected consumers. A spokeswoman for State Farm, said the company was complying with the laws in each state affected by Hurricane Sandy.

The explosion of car sales over the Internet, where vehicles can be sold person to person and bypass official channels, has made the problem harder to resolve.

One New York resident never bothered to buy replacement insurance for the 1996 Nissan Altima he had used to ferry his two dachshunds around his Belle Harbor neighborhood in Queens. After it was soaked, he sold it for $250 to a junk-car buyer who had left a flier under the windshield wiper. Such uninsured cars are even more susceptible to ending up back on the road with no indication of their soggy history — they are often rebuilt, reinspected and retitled, without their true affliction ever being reported.

Not all owners are ready to discard their waterlogged cars, to be rolled out potentially into a commerce of deception. Though her insurance company deemed her 1969 Land Rover a total loss, one woman took the vehicle, which was steeped in water in Red Hook, Brooklyn, to a mechanic for a second opinion.

But just last week, she gave in, and her beloved car, which she calls “Landy,” was towed to a salvage auction. It’s hard to wrap your head around it, she said. And what happens to all that stuff? Where does it go?

Returning Soldiers At Risk for More At-Fault Accidents

Story first appeared in USA Today.

Warriors returning from deployment had 13% more at-fault accidents, compared with their driving record before deployment, according to a USAA analysis of its claims data.

The insurer's findings seem to bolster ongoing research into the effects of these deployments on driving behaviors of troops long after they return.

Soldiers experienced the highest increase of at-fault accidents, at 23%, compared with the drivers' experiences before the deployment. Marines experienced a 12.5% increase in at-fault accidents; sailors, 3%, and airmen, 2%.

Those who had deployed three or more times saw a 36% increase in at-fault accidents. Troops younger than 22 had the biggest increase in accidents, with a 25% increase, compared to a 7.5% increase in those older than 29.


A Washington DC Transportation Lawyer is following the resulting trends in this research.

USAA data does not include specifics on the behaviors that contributed to the increase in accidents, because that data is not captured in claims reporting, officials said. But most accidents were caused by "losing control of the vehicle," as reported by drivers. And accidents attributed by drivers to "objects in the road" increased more dramatically after deployment than any of the other 11 causes that were tracked in the research, officials said.

The insurance company based its research on about 158,000 drivers who served on 171,000 deployments between January 2007 and February 2010 and compared their driving records to the six months before they deployed.

An associate professor in occupational therapy at the University of Minnesota, said USAA has not provided enough information on its methodology or analysis for her to comment on its research. But the information they have provided falls in line with her ongoing research into the driving behaviors of returning troops.

These behaviors aren't necessarily associated with post-traumatic stress, or traumatic brain injury. Those with PTSD and TBI may indeed have these behaviors, but these are seen throughout the returning soldier population.

This can be viewed as a reasonable carryover of ingrained maneuvers and anxieties. These are things that kept these people alive in combat. For example, in their study of driving behaviors reported in the past 30 days by about 150 National Guard troops mostly in Minnesota and South Dakota, more than 45% said they focus intently on other drivers or passengers, as compared to 15% of a group of ROTC cadets who exhibited this behavior. In addition, 25% of returning troops said they had driven through stop lights or stop signs, compared to 10% of the non-deployed ROTC cadets. When they were deployed, they became targets if they were stopped.

In addition, more than 20% of the returned troops said they had driven on the shoulder of the road, or into the oncoming lane in the past 30 days, compared to a little over 5% of the non-deployed cadets. This has been reported by some troops as a maneuver to get away from heavy traffic.


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