Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Accidents

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It is often said that drinking and driving do not mix. That is never more true when the driver involved is an inexperienced teenager. A teen who consumes alcohol and then drives with passengers in their vehicle places the safety of those passengers in grave danger, a harsh reality that a recent crash in Southern Oregon reinforces. If you have endured serious harm as a result of a teenage impaired driver, you have a right to seek accountability. Reach out to a knowledgeable Oregon auto accident lawyer to discuss how you can go about getting the just compensation you need.

According to the Oregon State Police, the driver in the Southern Oregon wreck was a 17-year-old who was driving along Oregon 140 in Jackson County. The driver failed to navigate a curve and lost control of his pickup truck. The truck crashed through the guardrail and then rolled into a nearby creek. The driver and an 18-year-old passenger died at the scene. The state police reported that neither person was wearing a seatbelt, and they think “impairment and speed” were factors in the crash.

Two other 17-year-old passengers suffered critical injuries.

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Attorneys spend copious ink (and digital bandwidth) encouraging readers to consult legal counsel if they have been hurt in a vehicle crash. This advice is not self-serving — many researchers have surveyed the subject, and the results consistently show that injury victims with legal representation fare better (both in terms of success versus defeat and the amounts recovered) than self-represented victims. If you have been seriously hurt in an accident, one of your first steps should be to contact an experienced Oregon auto accident lawyer.

On TV, cases often turn on some sudden in-court revelation. In real life, the seeds of success (or failure) can be sown long before trial during the pre-trial investigation process.

Take, for example, an incident that occurred last month about 20 miles south of Portland. On the afternoon of September 26, a multi-vehicle crash closed the northbound lanes of Interstate 5. The collision claimed a total of seven vehicles. At the time that FOX 12 reported on the accident, the Oregon State Police disclosed that some of the vehicles’ occupants were injured, but did not say how many or how severe their injuries were.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that more than 39,000 people died in traffic accidents in 2024. That represents an improvement from 2023, when nearly 41,000 people died on the roads in this country. Nevertheless, highways and roadways in Oregon and across the U.S. remain dangerous, as the many collisions, injuries, and deaths attest. If you have suffered a serious injury or lost a loved one in a motor vehicle accident, there may be many people or entities whose negligence led to your harm, from other drivers to governmental entities responsible for the maintenance and repair of the road where the crash occurred. To find out more regarding holding negligent parties accountable, you should talk to an experienced Oregon motor vehicle accident lawyer.

Counties like Multnomah and Washington typically rank at the top in terms of the most crashes and deaths each year, based on raw numbers. That does not necessarily tell the whole story, however, as they are also among Oregon’s most populous counties. Recently, Stacker delved into this data and ranked Oregon’s counties not simply by tallying the number of deaths, but by assigning a fatality rate based on dividing the number of deaths by the county’s total population.

The county at the top of the list was Harney County. Harney is a large, sparsely populated county in southeast Oregon. Although it logged only six deaths, that number, given the county’s low population (less than 7,500), was enough to make its fatality rate (80.5 per 100,000 people) nearly double that of the #2 county, Malheur.

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A lawsuit in which you need to hold accountable one or more private entities or individuals is complex enough, including many potentially difficult hurdles. You face challenges related to the facts, the law, and the rules of procedure. A lawsuit where you need to hold a governmental entity accountable is even more complex, as it comes with its own special set of rules. Failure to follow these rules with precision can result in losing your opportunity to get justice entirely. Rather than face that risk, you should reach out to a skilled Oregon attorney who is familiar with Oregon Tort Claim matters.

Many cases may involve a combination of private and public actors who were negligent. This was the case in a catastrophic crash from 2020.

The accident, which occurred in South Salem, left one teenage girl dead. Police reports and evidence from the crash site revealed that the driver of the girl’s vehicle was speeding and ran a stop sign in the moments before the two-vehicle collision occurred.

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Motorcyclists and bicyclists are among the most at-risk of all those who share Oregon’s roadways. Because motorcyclists and bicyclists are physically exposed in ways that passenger vehicle occupants are not, crashes are more likely to cause serious or even fatal harm. While accidents often result from good-faith judgment errors, some drivers act with bad intentions, including those fueled by road rage. If a driver hurt you while you rode your motorcycle — whether that driver was driving negligently or recklessly — you may be entitled to obtain essential compensation via the civil justice system. In any scenario, but especially if your case involves exceptional circumstances like a road-rage driver, you should retain the services of an experienced Oregon motorcycle accident lawyer to ensure your rights are protected.

Video footage the Beaverton Police Department released in May shows how quickly a disagreement on the road can go from a verbal dispute to a life-threatening crash when a road-rage driver uses his vehicle as a weapon.

In the video from Beaverton, two vehicles — one minivan and one motorcycle — travel side-by-side on westbound Highway 26 between Highway 217 and Cedar Hills Boulevard. The motorcyclist appeared to yell, point, or gesture toward the Kia van. The van driver’s response was shocking and inappropriate.

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Traveling by bicycle offers bicyclists many benefits. It is a great way to stay healthy, to take in our area’s beautiful scenery, and to reduce one’s pollution output. Unfortunately, recent headlines paint a dangerous picture for bicyclists in and around Portland. Speeding drivers, inattentive/distracted drivers, intoxicated drivers, and other negligent drivers are dangerous to everyone who shares the road, but a wreck that impacts a bicyclist often involves serious or fatal injuries. Because a catastrophic or fatal accident often involves many steps like insurance claims, civil lawsuits, or both, it is well worth your while to retain a skilled Oregon bicycle accident lawyer who can help you understand your rights and all your options for getting justice.

One of those recent bicycle accidents occurred in Southeast Portland. OregonLive reported that a vehicle driver and a bicyclist crashed near the intersection of SE 145th Avenue and SE Powell Boulevard at around 7:00 pm on July 13. The bicyclist died from his injuries on July 14.

According to the report, the vehicle driver, who was shoeless, had “bloodshot eyes and smelled like alcohol.” The driver also allegedly “appeared to be struggling to walk in a straight line or talk.”

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A common truth posits that motor vehicles and alcohol do not mix. That theory is never more true than when the driver is someone under the age of 21. In many cases where an underage driver has crashed a vehicle due to their intoxication, they obtained their alcoholic beverages from someone else, whether that someone is a private server or a commercial establishment. When a social host or a bartender fails to check IDs or otherwise take proper steps to prevent serving minors, they may face severe consequences. A business might lose its liquor license. And, if an intoxicated minor injures (or kills) someone else in a vehicle crash, the facts of the case may present an issue of potential liability on the part of those who served the alcohol. If you have questions about pursuing a dram shop or social host case, be sure to contact a knowledgeable Oregon dram shop lawyer to receive sound, reliable advice about your situation.

A fatal accident just outside Portland was allegedly an example of mixing minors, alcohol, and “dangerous” vehicles.

The crash occurred on Sauvie Island, located approximately 10 miles northwest of downtown Portland. According to the police, an 18-year-old male crashed a Polaris utility terrain vehicle shortly after midnight on May 18. The Oregonian reported that the crash killed the vehicle’s other passenger, a 17-year-old girl.

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A common expression related to grief posits that “no parent should have to bury a child… it is not the natural order of things.” Unfortunately, this happens thousands of times every year. According to the National Institutes of Health, vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death in children and adolescents, accounting for 20% of all deaths. If you have encountered this kind of tragic loss, you may need to take legal action. If you do have such a need, your case will benefit from having representation provided by an experienced Oregon auto accident lawyer.

One of those fatal accidents occurred this month in Clatsop County.

The collision occurred along Highway 101 just south of its intersection with Highway 26. A southbound pickup truck entered the northbound lanes and crashed head-on into a northbound Honda SUV. The truck continued forward in the wrong lane, eventually hitting a Nissan SUV head-on.

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According to the Insurance Information Institute, more than one in every 10 fatal accidents involves a head-on collision scenario, taking thousands of lives each year. While head-on crashes occur for a variety of reasons — from speeding to impaired driving to unsafe passing — almost all have one thing in common: a driver who engaged in one or more dangerous actions that resulted in their vehicle ending up going the wrong way into oncoming traffic. If you have experienced serious harm — or lost a loved one — because a driver drove negligently and caused a head-on crash, you likely will need to take multiple actions to obtain a recovery. These may include insurance claims, civil lawsuits, and more. To get the recovery you and your family need, you should take the time to consult and retain an experienced Oregon auto accident lawyer.

A rural stretch of Highway 26 in Clatsop County was the scene of one of these severe accidents in the morning hours of April 29. According to Oregonlive.com, police responded shortly after sunrise to find a head-on collision between two Ford F-350 pickup trucks.

According to the report, the driver of the westbound truck was trying to pass “multiple commercial vehicles” when he crashed into an eastbound pickup. The impact threw the first truck into one of the big rigs.

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One of roughly every 80 auto accidents involves a driver who crashed due to a medical emergency. The vast majority of these involved people who experienced “seizures, blackouts, or diabetic reactions,” according to the data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. When you are hurt in a crash involving an at-fault driver with medical problems, the defense may try to use that medical condition to avoid liability. Countering that may require a variety of steps. An experienced Oregon auto accident lawyer can advise you on what actions can help strengthen your case.

Deschutes County was the site of one of those accidents earlier this month. According to the Bend Police, a 61-year-old man driving southbound on the Bend Parkway “had a medical event” that caused his pickup truck to veer into the northbound lanes. There, the truck crashed head-on into a Toyota van.

The force of the collision partially ejected the van driver from her vehicle. Central Oregon Daily reported that both drivers were hurt and that the woman suffered life-threatening harm. The police cited the truck driver for careless driving, which caused an accident. The police did not disclose the nature of the medical event that afflicted the truck driver.

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