In many cases where personal injury lawsuits are filed as a result of a car crash, the negligent party who caused the crash is the driver of another vehicle. However, this is not always the case. People in Connecticut who have been injured in a single-car crash due to obvious negligence on the part of the driver may be entitled to seek damages form that driver. This is the situation that may come to pass in the aftermath of a May car accident in South Windsor, Connecticut, that killed two teenagers and injured two others.
The crash occurred when the driver, herself just 19 years old, was allegedly speeding on a hilly road, simulating a roller coaster kind of feeling for herself and her passengers. The group had left a party in order to pick up some speakers and bring them back to the party. The woman’s arrest warrant says that some of the teenage passengers in the vehicle encouraged her to keep going faster to exacerbate the effects of the hill on their way back to the festivities.
However, the driver allegedly drove the car at unsafe speeds. Police estimate that the car could have been traveling as fast as 90 mph — or 60 mph above the posted speed limit. When the car hit a bump, it went airborne and flew 100 feet in the air. After landing, the vehicle crashed into a group of trees.
The driver was charged with several criminal counts, including second-degree manslaughter with a motor vehicle. The survivors and families of the victims who died could initiate a civil action against the driver in the weeks and months to come as well.
Source: The Hartford Courant, “Woman Arraigned In Deadly South Windsor Crash,” Hilda Munoz, Aug. 1, 2013