Articles Tagged with bicycle accident lawyer

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Electric scooters will be rolling into Boston this spring as part of a pilot program approved by city council, now meeting with three separate companies: Lime, Bird and Lyft. Unlike Blue Bikes, e-scooter services wouldn’t be limited to a single company. Their presence – just like that of any other alternative transport mode that’s smaller, slower and non-reliant on fossil fuels – will make city streets cleaner, less congested, safer and more accessible to a broader range of travelers. Long-term, it also drives down costs for road and bridge repairs (more frequent with heavier traffic) as well as emergency response resources for serious injury crashes (you’d much rather your bike get hit by an e-scooter than a dump truck).escooter

Boston bike attorneys know that much of the vexation around e-scooters is two-fold: Bold guerrilla marketing and confusion about they are supposed to fit into the traffic matrix. Bird’s dockless e-scooters showed up unannounced on Cambridge and Somerville sidewalks overnight last summer, taking motorists, cyclists and pedestrians by surprise (never a good thing in traffic) and sparking ire among city leaders who weren’t given the chance to weigh in first. Technically the service wasn’t operational in Boston, but a few made their way across those borders (to the chagrin of the mayor, who warned the company if they were found lying unattended they’d be hauled to a tow yard). Bird, a California company, used the same strategy in other cities with mixed success. It only lasted about two months in the Boston suburbs before caving to pressure and packing up.

Now, instead of the mayor basically shouting e-scooter companies off his city lawn, they’ve been welcomed with a seat at the table for a chance – with the city’s blessing – to try again. (Cambridge may soon do the same, which is good news because better connectivity boosts use rates with dockless systems.) Continue reading

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Two years ago, Shane Snowdon, a non-profit health educator and consultant, lost one of her good friends to a fatal bicycle crash in Cambridge. Her 65-year-old friend, a songwriter and social activist, was struck by a vehicle while on her bicycle. sadness

For Snowdon, it was 1997 all over again. That was the year Snowdon says she struck and killed a bicyclist in Boston. Writing for WBUR 90.9, she notes that she was not found at-fault for the fatal crash that night. She was not speeding or distracted and she was completely sober. However, she says she’ll never forget the look of the cyclist, staring wide-eyed at her as he crossed in front of her vehicle just as she was rounding a curve. His body flew into her windshield and over her car. She stopped at the scene, as required, and got out to find him motionless.

“You do not want to be me,” she writes. “No destination, no text, no drink, no glance away from the road is worth knowing that you have killed another human being.”

She went on to add that it’s agony living life knowing that whatever you accomplish isn’t going to matter because you caused the death of someone else. Whatever happiness you may enjoy could only serve as a reminder of the happiness you stole from the person whose life was lost, and their family and friends.
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The number of bicyclists killed in 2015 rose by 12.2 percent from the year before. That’s according to the most recent final statistics released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which annually releases national traffic safety facts.bike1

This report specifically analyzed bicycle-car crashes, in which a motor vehicle collided with a bicycle causing injury or death. The report did not include incidents wherein a bicycle defect may have contributed to a single-rider crash into a fixed object, such as a tree or pavement. It also excluded incidents that occurred in private property – including parking lots and driveways.

So once we understand that we’re actually discounting a number of fatal crashes, we know the figures about which we’re talking are low to begin with. That means the rate of bicycle crashes and bicycle injuries is actually quite a bit higher than these statistics suggest.  Continue reading

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World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, held on the third Sunday of November each year, had special significance for us at BikeAttorneys.com this year. bikememorial

That’s because last year, in October 2015, a former client and talented musician, David Tasgal, was killed when he was struck by a pickup truck while bicycling near his home in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Tasgal, a gifted and accomplished musician on numerous instruments and a beloved teacher of music, was killed in the bicycle accident at the age of 72. 

On November 20th, human-shaped silhouettes were installed throughout Boston and carried along the memorial ride, representing the lives of those lost too soon to traffic crashes. Each of these deaths – including Tasgal’s – was 100 percent preventable. In each case, it is the negligence and general carelessness by motorists that results in needless, tragedies like this one.  Continue reading

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Hit-and-run accidents have been on the rise in major cities in recent years, spiking more than 13 percent in a recent three-year time frame. In some places, like Los Angeles, it’s so bad that half of all crashes in the city involve at least one driver who fled the scene. In total, these accidents kill about 1,500 people a year – disproportionately affecting pedestrians and bicyclists. In fact, 60 percent of hit-and-run fatalities are pedestrians.bicycle9

Just recently in New York City, friends and family gathered in Brooklyn to remember the 35-year-old founder of a company called Bikestock, a bike repair vending machine business and avid bicycling advocate, who was riding home form his night job when a black Chevrolet Camero with tinted windows struck him around 2:30 a.m. He was dragged for a distance. The driver didn’t stop. He was later pronounced dead. It was the 12th cycling fatality in New York City this year, compared to five this time last year. Said a police investigator, “Most of the time, it’s errant and lawless motoring that is to blame.”

Several states, including Texas, Florida, Arizona and Colorado have increased criminal penalties for hit-and-run drivers. In Massachusetts, M.G.L. c. 90 s. 24 makes failure to stop after a collision a misdemeanor, with a maximum penalty of up to 2 years in jail, a $200 fine and between 60 days and 1 year of license loss. Of course, that assumes the driver got caught. So here does all this leave Boston bicycle accident victims?  Continue reading

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The City of Boston has announced it will dedicate nearly $10 million over the course of three years – starting in fiscal year 2017 – to improving the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians. bikeride

Whereas the Boston Vision Zero initiative had originally been allocated $500,000 annually in funding, city council recently upped it to six times that amount, citing the ongoing commitment to reduce auto accident injuries and fatalities to zero.

Boston bike accident attorney Andrew Fischer is actively involved in promoting Vision Zero as part of a task force working under the auspices of State Senator Will Brownsberger and including a coalition of bicycle and pedestrian advocacy groups. Attorney Fischer, a former MASSBIKE president and longtime board member, met last month with Attorney General Maura Healey and a team from the Attorney General’s office to garner her support. The issue is one of public safety.

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Boston bike riders are daily dodging large trucks, drivers who are distracted and vehicles that are double-parked. They are doing so on fast-paced roads that more often than not were designed without consideration of their existence. bicycle1

From 2010 to 2015, more than a dozen people were killed on city streets, ranging in age from 8 to 74. In each case, riders were struck by motor vehicles – buses, cars and massive trucks without side guards to stop them from falling underneath.

The Boston Globe reported last year that Boston has more cycling deaths per 10,000 commuters than Washington D.C., Portland, Seattle, Denver and Minneapolis – all cities of similar sizes where, like here, bike travel is increasingly popular.  Continue reading

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Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers
1 International Pl 18th Floor
Boston, MA 02110
Phone: 617-777-7777

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