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Don't Be In The Dark About Our Legal System

Hello, I'm Karla Mitchell. Going through a legal case can be very expensive and challenging. I won't go into details, but I recently underwent my own legal battle that lasted several years. It is finally over and I successfully received a settlement, but I had to spend so much time studying law in order to play my role in my own court case. While I found a great attorney at one point, I felt completely lost initially and I don't want anyone else to experience the same thing. So I decided to create this blog for those who would like to know more about law.

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Don't Be In The Dark About Our Legal System

Heavy, Fast And Dangerous On The Road: Emergency Vehicles

by Andrew Martin

There is nothing that compares to the help and support rendered by emergency responders. Whether it is a fire truck or emergency medical services, you cannot help but to be immensely relieved and grateful when they show up on the scene of an accident. There is another side of this valuable resource, however, and it involves the large and sturdy emergency vehicles those responders drive. To learn a bit more about how dangerous these vehicles can be, read on.

Dangerously Built

The vehicles driven by first responders must be sturdy, heavy and large since they tend to carry a lot of heavy life-saving equipment and must move at a fast rate of speed in an emergency. This is a good thing; you would want something big and fast to respond and get your loved one to a hospital as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it is those very attributes that could make these vehicles so dangerous to the lighter and slower moving vehicles on the road. You don't have to be an engineer to see that a fast-moving and heavier vehicle could do an enormous amount of damage to a slower lighter vehicle.

What the Statistics Say

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has conducted studies on just this issue and the findings are alarming. They looked at crashes involving police cars, firetrucks and ambulances and the study found that people were far more likely to be injured or killed in those crashes than with non-emergency vehicles. This was a long term study that looked at crashes over a period of 20 years, and found that:

  • During the period studied, there were an average of 29 ambulance wrecks that resulted in about 33 fatalities.
  • The victims of those fatalities were distributed by 63% in passenger cars and 21% in ambulances.
  • In 60% of cases, these crashes occurred while the ambulances were responding to an accident or traveling from an accident to the hospital.

When You are the Victim

There may some natural reluctance on your part to take action against an ambulance or firetruck that caused you to become injured, but you must keep in mind that you have the right to travel the roads safely without fear of larger or faster vehicles. The drivers of these vehicles are only human, and can make the same careless mistakes as anyone. You could very well have a more serious injury if one of these large vehicles are involved, so speak to a personal injury attorney as soon as possible and get the compensation you deserve.

Visit a site like https://grdlaw.com/ for more help.

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