Articles Tagged with Boston drunk driving accident

Drunk Drivers Do Not Always Have Liability Insurance

It is the law in most states that in order to drive, you must have a valid driver’s license and the vehicle in which you are operating must have a valid liability insurance policy. This means if you are in an accident and it is determined that the accident is your fault, your insurance company will likely have to pay damages – specifically those stemming from the personal injury suffered by the victims of that crash.  While it is true that Massachusetts is a no-fault state, there are ways to step outside this system, and these cases can end with settlements or verdicts compelling the at-fault driver’s liability insurance company to pay. These regulations are explained by the Division of Insurance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Those cases that do not settle will likely go to trial so that a jury can hear the evidence and render a verdict following trial with respect to whether defendant is liable. If the defendant is determined to be liable for causing the car accident, there will be an award of damages to be paid by the at-fault driver’s car insurance company. Continue reading

Drunk driving may be considered a misdemeanor for a first offense, but it is a misdemeanor that can result in serious personal injury as well as significant property damage.  There are some cases in which a defendant will crash into a building such as a home or place of business, and that can result in more people being seriously injured or even killed.

According to a recent news article from CBS Boston, a man has just been arrested in Dracut, Massachusetts for a drunk driving crash in which he allegedly slammed his car into the Dracut Department of Public Works (DPW) building.  Authorities have said the 50-year-old defendant, who is from Dracut, was driving his vehicle at around 4 p.m. when the crash occurred. Continue reading

A high-profile Boston drunk driving case recently resulted in conviction, just ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday – the No. 1 holiday for drunk driving deaths nationally. While public derision and criminal penalties can serve as powerful deterrents, it doesn’t necessarily make drunk driving victims whole. That’s why our Boston drunk driving accident attorneys are committed to fighting for compensation for victims. Note that civil lawsuits will be handled entirely separate from the criminal case, and a criminal case conviction won’t necessarily result in a civil case win. That’s why you need an experienced DUI injury lawyer.

By now many residents in the Greater Boston area have heard about the DUI arrest that led to a major scandal with the Massachusetts State Police (MSP).  According to a recent news report from the Boston Globe, the daughter of a local judge was detained following an alleged drunk driving accident in Framingham, Massachusetts.  Prosecutors alleged that the arresting state trooper wrote in his police report that the defendant admitted to performing sexual acts for drugs or money and also offered to provide sexual acts on the trooper if he would give her a break on the operating under the influence of liquor and drugs charge she was about to face.

Prosecutors say the trooper declined her offer and put all this in his report along with her allegedly telling him that her dad was a judge and, “would kill her” if he read what she said in the police report. At this point, prosecutors alleged the trooper was pressured by the state police colonel to remove these allegations from the police report to spare her and her father the embarrassment. There were also requests to remove the allegations from the report with the office of the district attorney. There have been no allegations that her father participated in any way with these efforts to redact the police report.   Her father did however, come to the MSP barracks and picked her up and found her fading in and out of consciousness.  The MSP Colonel resigned in connection with this scandal.  Continue reading

Car accidents in Boston happen all the time.  In most cases, they are a result of the negligence on behalf of at least one driver.  There are cases where it is not the driver’s fault, but they are still the result of negligence. In these cases, we are dealing with a vehicle that was defectively manufactured or repaired, or perhaps a traffic light that malfunctioned.  Again, most accidents are due to the negligence of a driver.

While any car crash can be dangerous or even deadly, drunk driving car accidents tend to involve more serious personal injury and fatalities, due to the extreme degree of bad or reckless driving we tend to see. Drunk drivers are often in the wrong lane of travel, where they hit other cars in a head-on manner, causing substantial impact.  We also tend to see more rollover crashes with drunk driving. Continue reading

Drunk driving accidents often result in serious personal injury or death. While the police are out on the roads to find and arrest drunk drivers before they cause an accident, it is difficult for them to catch everyone, and they are often left responding to an accident rather than preventing one, due the vast number of drunk drivers on the road.

Sometimes we are driving, and we see a car that is swerving or weaving, and we assume that driver is drunk or something else is wrong with him or her. A recent article from The Daily Courier discusses what you should do if you see a suspected drunk driver and what you should not do. Continue reading

For those who are new to driving in Boston and the greater Boston area, rotaries can be among the most confusing and seemingly dangerous features of the road that one can encounter.  These feature drivers going around in circles at relatively high speeds and do not seem to be yielding to other drivers regardless of who has right of way.

As it turns it, rotaries, or roundabouts as they are called in Great Britain, can cause problems anywhere. This is especially true when a driver trying to negotiate one of them is drunk. According to a recent news article from Cornwall Live, a mother was allegedly driving drunk with her 19-month-old son when she approached a roundabout at high rate of speed. Continue reading

According to a recent news article from the Boston Globe, a police officer in Wareham, Massachusetts was injured after a drunk driver allegedly hit him during his patrol shift. The accident occurred just after midnight when the defendant’s vehicle was allegedly turning into the parking lot of a local restaurant.

Authorities have said officer was on patrol when defendant was driving past a restaurant.  Without warning, defendant allegedly turned sharply to enter the restaurant parking lot and slammed into the police cruiser. Continue reading

While people often use the term “Breathalyzer” to describe the test used to determine a driver’s blood alcohol content (BAC), that is technically a brand name for a breath alcohol testing device that has not been used in many years.  It is basically the way people use the term Band-Aid for any adhesive bandages or say Photoshop to mean any digital editing of a photograph.  As it turns out, the makers of the respective products police their brands to make sure people don’t do that, but, as you can tell, those efforts haven’t worked so well.

In reality, there are various breath alcohol test devices used, and the two most popular in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are the Alcotest 9510, made by a company called Draeger, and an EC/IR II, made by a company called Intoximeter.  These devices are very important in keeping drunk drivers off the road and thereby preventing drunk driving accidents in Boston and towns across Massachusetts and the nation at large. Continue reading

Vince Young, former NFL quarterback and star on the University of Texas Longhorns football team, has just been sentenced to probation following a drunk driving conviction, according to a report from UPI.  Young is 33-years-old and has only been officially retired for a couple of years, but has not seen playing in quite some time.

Prosecutors have said that Young was arrested with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.246 grams of ethanol (drinking alcohol) per 100 milliliters of blood.  The legal limit in every state in America is 0.08.  The reason for this is because that was the limit at which research conducted over decades by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that a person cannot safely perform the tasks necessary to drive a motor vehicle. Continue reading