During rush hour this morning, the Philadelphia driver of a minivan lost control of his vehicle and plowed into a parked car on Ben Franklin Parkway. The force of the Philadelphia car accident triggered a chain reaction that damaged two additional vehicles. No serious personal injuries were reported, and the accident is under investigation. It is not yet known what caused the driver to lose control.
Driver error is sometimes found to be the cause when a car veers out of control and causes property damage or a personal injury accident. Other times, the problem is mechanical failure as was the case recently with Toyota's accelerator problems. Many Toyota vehicles as well as other manufacturers' cars and trucks are equipped with a black box attached to the engine that records vehicle performance data during a crash. Used by automakers to solve problems, Philadelphia personal injury lawyers now regularly request that black box accident data be shared. While many automakers comply, Toyota typically had not.
In the wake of the recent Toyota recall, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has released a draft bill of legislation that would increase vehicle safety for Philadelphia citizens. The proposed legislation would require all new cars and trucks to be equipped with black boxes to aid car and Philadelphia truck accident investigators. The legislation would also eliminate the cap on civil penalties that limits automaker liability. If made into law, the measure would also beef up National Highway Traffic Safety Administration authority, enabling it to order immediate vehicle recalls if it believed a vehicle posed an "imminent hazard of death or serious injury."
Philadelphia personal injury attorneys support any measure that allows the victims of personal injury car accidents to obtain facts about car crashes. Black box findings could be a real help to Philadelphia personal injury investigators working to reconstruct car accidents.
