Inside a Car Accident

Houston, TXCar accidents, like any accident, can happen to the nicest people, when they least expect it, and for all the wrong reasons. Someone could hit you. Someone else could be driving. The car crash itself could have been caused by an unsafe vehicle. Or it could just be a case of serendipity, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Whatever the cause, or circumstance, most of us know someone who has been through a car accident. You may have been in one.

I was in one, too. A pretty serious one, actually, that landed me in hospital for a month. I was driving into work early, about 5am on September 24th 1986 when my 1984 Camaro left the road and careened into a ditch.

It was one of those winding, twisting rural roads. It was also extremely foggy, fog so thick you could barely see the white lines in front of you. Fog so thick on what turned out to be an extremely chilly September morning that the extreme moisture content of the air translated to a slick pavement. And, at 5am in September in my part of the world, it was also pitch black.

I was also in a hurry, having overslept. Late for work, I was driving just a bit too fast for the conditions, and not fully awake I wasn't completely alert either. I just had time to make my thermos, but there was no opportunity to have my normal cup of joe before I left the house. I could have used the shot of caffeine that morning.

No matter. Even half asleep I still recall what happened like it was yesterday. I remember the white line suddenly disappearing beneath the extended hood of my car, my desperate attempt to steer the car in the direction I thought the road had taken (the fog was so thick you couldn't see…), the headlights revealing for a split second the deep ditch I was about to drop into. I remember the impact, and the car tumbling—end-over-end at first, and then rolling, before I blacked out.

I regained consciousness lying on my back in the middle of a farmer's field. Having been too sleepy and too rushed to do up my seatbelt, I was ejected from the car through the T-roof. The car could have very easily landed on top of me. Mercifully, it didn't. And mercifully, I had been listening to the radio—loudly—in an effort to focus on my drive in. The radio was still playing, which alerted the lone other person who happened to be out at that hour. A hunter, getting an early start. He heard the radio and wandered over to investigate.

If it weren't for him, I would have died. I was losing too much blood from massive internal injuries. As it was, it was a slow ride to the hospital as the thick fog impeded the ambulance. I was told that I came within a half hour of never seeing my kids again.

That accident was my fault, caused by me in concert with unusually slick road conditions and poor weather. I can't get angry with anybody, or sue anybody. And lucky for me I not only survived, but also fully recovered. That fact is important to the story, because my kids needed me to be strong.

Three weeks after my accident my wife and my children's mother, driving on the same road, crashed her car too. But she didn't live.

Speed was most likely a factor in my partner's car crash. Conditions were pristine at 9:38 am on the morning it happened. But she was driving way to fast in a front-wheel drive car she was unfamiliar with (a rental), and she passed another car going into a corner. That was her undoing. According to the accident reconstruction report, as Laurie was getting back into her own lane she got onto the soft shoulder, oversteered to get back onto the pavement, then oversteered a second time to avoid hitting the ditch on the other side. That was her undoing, and she died at the scene.

Laurie was a good driver, but for some unknown reason she left caution to the wind that day. And I am overly cautious by nature, so the thread of events that led to mine doesn't make sense either. I don't ordinarily sleep in, but I did that day. My trustworthy alarm clock let me down the first, and last time. That was the only day I recall ever NOT wearing my seat belt. And I otherwise would have crept along the road like a sloth in light of the conditions present that early September morning.

I know why that accident happened.

But pity the family of Lloyd Leon Nesbitt, 56, who died in a Porter, TX car accident in which he was a passenger. The driver of the ill-fated Cadillac, who survived and was not injured, lost control of the car. Conditions at the time of the accident, which occurred at 8:30pm July 20th on FM 1313 at Old Houston Road in east Montgomery County were not reported, and two other people in the car were hospitalized with undetermined injuries.

The tragedy in this case, is that Lloyd Leon Nesbitt did nothing to cause the accident that claimed his life. He was simply a passenger in the car. While it is not known if he was wearing his seatbelt when the accident happened, the fact remains that he was not in control of the car that succeeded in the sudden and unforeseen loss of his life that fateful Sunday evening in July.

It is not known if the family of Nesbitt will be seeking compensation from the driver of the Cadillac. Their decision will probably be influenced by the actual circumstances that led to the accident.

The fact remains, however, that Nesbitt was an innocent bystander in this case. And in most cases where innocent bystanders are injured, maimed or killed as the result of negligence or irresponsibility on the part of others, litigation is a given.

An empathetic car crash lawyer will help you sort through the appropriateness factor, too. Sometimes it's appropriate to sue, and sometimes not. It depends on the circumstances. And while lawyers are often portrayed as cold, relentless ambulance chasers, in realty they are decent human beings skilled in the practice of law, and only show their fangs when a true injustice has been done.

That can be said for all of us. Nesbitt's family lost their loved one tragically. However, if that loss was also needless, then the story should be far from over.