Valentine’s Day is a day that is usually filled with joy and a moment you take a break from your hectic life to spend with your loved ones. However, this Valentine’s Day is shadowed by a gray cloud of sadness, heartbreak and disbelief as we mourn the loss of a young woman who was leaving the gym on Wednesday night in uptown when she was struck by a commercial truck. The driver of the truck dragged her a quarter of a block before he even realized he had hit her. The woman had the right-of-way.
When one of my best friends texted me Thursday morning that she was heading to HCMC, my first thought was disbelief. A few hours later when my friend sent an update that the woman likely was not going to make it my shock turned to anger. How could this happen? How could he not see her? She’s only 25!
Unfortunately, I know all too well that incidents like this happen too often. I joined this law firm in January of 2011 during my second year of law school as a law clerk. I had little experience with personal injury law and did not quite understand what I was getting myself into. One of the first cases I was asked to assist with was a commercial truck-bicycle wrongful death. The woman who died in that incident was a mother and loving wife. She was out on a weekend morning with a group of bicyclists. As the group crossed a highway having the right-of-way, a commercial trucker making a right hand turn cut off the group, and our client, unable to react, was trapped underneath the massive truck. She had no chance. The trucker did not look for oncoming bicyclists or pedestrians. He had no excuse—he just didn’t think to look.
This was not the first bicycle-trucking/pedestrian-trucking accident the firm had handled, and I quickly learned it would not be the last. Over my short time at the firm, I’ve worked on numerous accidents similar to the one described above. In all these cases, the driver simply does not look for pedestrians or bicyclists that are sharing the roadway. The results are devastating. Families are left grieving the loss of their daughters, sons, mothers, dads, brothers, sisters, wives, and husbands.
Because the firm has seen these tragedies over and over, we have all become advocates for safety of both cyclists and pedestrians. My boss, Fred Pritzker, is an avid cyclist and constantly preaches bike safety to his 26-year-old daughter: “Watch for the cars – and especially the trucks – that don’t see you.” Being a pedestrian myself and not owning a vehicle, Fred reminds me to take out my headphones as I head for the door at the end of the day—treating me more like a daughter than his next superstar associate. The fact is, however, often bicyclists or pedestrians are at the mercy of drivers who must follow the most basic rules—keep a look-out for us little guys who are also sharing the road.
These tragic incidents can be avoided and should never happen.
This article was written by Kelly McNabb, an attorney who worked for our law firm at the time.