Driving instructors at the Department of Motor Vehicles are usually well aware of the risks involved with their occupation. Just recently, the Virginia DMV has seen one of their worst accidents yet. It occurred about two weeks ago in Williamsburg, and killed driving instructor Shirley Martin at age 56. Martin was carrying out a driving test with a 36-year-old woman in Williamsburg. The two were driving in a 1998 Honda south down Parkway Drive when the vehicle ran off the road, struck a tree, and trapped both women inside. The roof was removed, and Martin was airlifted to the Medical College of Virginia Hospital in Richmond. She died the next day at 1:30 a.m.
The story seemed to really bother Karen Green, a driving instructor who had been involved in a serious accident with a student driver six years back. She was issuing a young man a road test in Fredericksburg before the boy decided not to yield on a left turn at a green light, colliding with a tractor-trailer head-on. Luckily both survived, and Greene went on to complete her 15 years with the agency. The accident has led Greene to support mandatory passenger-side airbags in road test cars. The DMV doesn’t want to discriminate against those drivers whose cars don’t possess airbags, so it is not a requirement of theirs. Thankfully for Greene’s case, both the airbags in the car deployed.
This accident really calls attention to the dangers driver instructors face when traveling with inexperienced drivers behind the wheel. Right now my Virginia Beach personal injury law firm is working on two severe accident cases where young drivers hit motorcyclists causing life changing injuries. We are also helping a private ed teacher who was hurt by a student’s mistake. I think even teenagers and young adult driver realize that inexperience makes a driver more dangerous. If you or a family member has recently been injured in a car wreck, contact our injury law firm and we will be glad to assist.