On the evening of June 21, 2011, just three days after many local high school students graduated, a Grassfield High School graduate looking forward to her freshman year at Norfolk State University student died in a car accident after a SUV collided head-on with her car in Chesapeake, Virginia (VA). According to police, an SUV was traveling east the westbound lanes of Moses Grandy Trail when it struck the teen girl’s four-door sedan at around 8 pm.
Both drivers died at the scene of the accident. The driver of the sedan was only 18-years-old. My thoughts go out the families of these two victims.
As a Virginia personal injury attorney I know that wrong-way drivers are often confused, distracted and, sometimes, driving drunk. It’s tragic that this young lady lost her life when she had only just begun to live it.
Like wrong-way collisions, failure-to-yield accidents, while a very preventable type of accident, are quite common. Anytime you enter an intersection, you should be alert even if you have the right-of-way. Driving through an intersection with a red light, whether unintentionally or because of blatant disregard, is a recipe for disaster. We recently wrote about how a neighboring city, Virginia Beach, dealt with the situation.
Virginia Beach police say red light violations have declined at intersections that have been monitored by cameras. Some intersections at which cameras operate have seen a 69 percent reduction in cars speeding through stop signals. I hope the city of Chesapeake looks into red light cameras to help reduce the number of car accidents and injuries in the area.
CA