Florida Roadway Design Attorneys
If you are injured in a car accident, there are a range of parties that may be responsible or liable for your injury. In some cases, it’s the other driver; in other cases, it’s the owner of the trucking company; and in still other cases, it’s the very design of the road that’s at fault.
Have you or a loved one been seriously injured in a car accident? Has it hurt your livelihood? Has it made it impossible to work or care for your family? If so, you need to know about roadway design lawsuits. Unfortunately, this is a slightly tricky area of litigation, but with the right information and the right lawyer in your corner, you can get the settlement and justice you deserve.
Roadway Design Lawsuits and Liability
Liability laws vary slightly from state to state, but typically, the laws governing roadway design liability fall into the same category as property liability laws. Namely, the owner of the property hosting the roadway may be responsible for your injuries. In most cases, this is a city, state or county government, and a roadway design liability attorney can help you bring a lawsuit against any of these entities.
Laws about property owner negligence state that a public entity may be liable for injuries that occur on its property. In particular, public entities are liable for injuries on their property in two cases. If the public entity’s employee is negligent or if he commits a wrongful act, he may create dangerous conditions, and in those cases, his employer, the owner of the land is responsible.
If someone is hurt by these conditions, the public entity is liable. In addition, if the entity is notified of a dangerous condition, it is responsible for rectifying it. If it fails to do so, it is liable for any injuries that occur.
Dangerous Conditions and Roadway Design Liability
In some cases, roadway designs have immunity from liability. This means that if the if the government approves the roadway design, it is considered safe. However, this immunity doesn’t extend to all situations, and if you are fighting a roadway design liability lawsuit, you need an attorney who understand these rules and nuances.
In particular, if a roadway consistently has dangerous conditions, there is an onus on the public entity that takes care of it to take action. To be specific, the public entity needs to post warning signs, change the speed limit to make the area safer or repair the dangerous conditions. If the public entity fails, it can be held liable.
For example, imagine a case where a roadway is designed, it is approved by the government, and it has so-called immunity from roadway design lawsuits. However, a number of crashes happen. Cars collide into each other in repeated head-on collisions. This is a dangerous situation, and the public entity needs to respond. The best course of action would be to split up the road with a median. By failing to put up a median, the public entity becomes responsible for crashes that happen there.
Roadway Design Liability and Previous Accidents
In most cases, if you want to win a settlement in a roadway design lawsuit, you need to prove that the roadway is inherently dangerous, and you need to show that many accidents have happened in the same spot. Skilled roadway design attorneys know how to argue these cases. They know how to prove that previous accidents in that area were created by the design of the roadway.
In some cases, the design itself is not inherently flawed. Rather, the way that the roadway design interacts with natural features makes it dangerous. For example, imagine a roadway is designed so that drivers are blinded by the sun everyday at a certain time. If these drivers hit the median, drive into the guardrail or hit another car, they are likely not at fault. Rather, the design of the roadway and how it interplays with nature is at fault. The public entity in charge of that roadway is most definitely at fault for failing to respond to the condition.
Roadway Design Liability Lawyers
If you have been injured due to a roadway design, don’t buy into the myth that roadway designs have immunity. Instead, contact a top notch roadway design liability lawyer. These professionals have the experience you need to find justice, and they can help you get a settlement to cover your medical bills, lost time at work, pain and suffering and other effects of your accident or injury.