Can A Road Be Responsible For An Accident?
Michael Babboni
Car Accidents
One of the most common causes of vehicular accidents all over the world is driver negligence. In many cases, the inattentiveness, or even dangerous neglect of another driver more concerned with looking at their phone or driving while under the influence causes a driver error that results in a mishap.However, in the same way that sometimes an accident on a property can be the result of poor maintenance or care for the environment, the same is sometimes also true of driving. While not as common a cause, there are some instances when the poor maintenance or design of a road is at fault for causing an accident.
How It Happens
An accident as a result of poor roads can occur in many different ways, and it’s not just contingent on bad weather conditions. Some roads are simply too poorly maintained, and have too many potholes, that can result in a car’s erratic traction and performance on the road. Other roads can have poor drainage management, meaning that they get too wet and can cause a high likelihood of “hydroplaning,” where a vehicle travels on liquid too quickly and literally rises above it, causing it lose contact with the road, and thus lose traction and controlled steering.
Sometimes road work requires maintenance, which means that workers may have to create their own obstructions to block and redirect traffic while they work. If this is poorly done, it can lead to accidents as cars go in wrong directions, or are inadequately redirected. In some cases, traffic lights may stop functioning correctly, and people who think they are obeying normal traffic signals run into each other.
In all of these cases, there is a basic responsibility to ensure safe travel on the road. However, a failure of that responsibility has occurred.
What To Do Next
If you get into accident as a result of a careless driver, the next steps are obvious. It is the careless driver that has been negligent, and thus a personal injury lawsuit has an obvious defendant to take to court for a civil trial. But what happens in accidents where poor road conditions are responsible? Depending on the situation there may be one or more responsible parties.
For some road-based accidents, the fault may lie with the municipality itself, either for failing to properly maintain the road, or for approving a road design—such as one with a serious blind spot—and allowing it to be constructed anyway. In other cases, the engineers, or engineering firm responsible for the road or aspects of the road may be at fault. As an example, a company that produces traffic lights in which there is a consistent, known flaw that they fail to address may be the defendant in a lawsuit if there are multiple, instances of traffic light failure that lead to collisions.
Whatever kind of injury you sustained, if it was the result of the road you were driving on, you should still talk to a lawyer for car crash about your options. Just because it wasn’t necessarily another driver that was responsible for your injuries, it doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t at fault.