Personal Injury News: Could Maryland Motorists be Some of the Worst Drivers in the Country?

Here in the Baltimore area one has many opportunities to observe, or sometimes be involved in a variety of accidents that cause some kind of personal injury. The trick, it would seem, is to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As Maryland auto and trucking accident attorneys, my firm is experienced helping those people who have become victims of someone else’s negligent or thoughtless actions.

When it comes to roadway collisions, it could be said that Maryland drivers are right up there in terms of being involved in mild to severe car-, trucking- and motorcycle-related wrecks on a fairly regular basis. Of course, nobody asks to be involved in any kind of traffic-related accident situation. And on a similar note, no one would ever want to be sent to the hospital with life-threatening injuries as a result. Regardless, every month dozens of innocent men, women and children are hurt or killed as a result of a bad car, SUV or minivan crash.

As the people at the Allstate insurance company have illustrated with their annual report of cities with the worst drivers, many Marylanders live and work in the epicenter of national car accidents. In a way, Washington, D.C., is the capital of more than just our nation; the District is also number one, according to Allstate, in traffic wrecks. Anyone who might be thinking that only D.C. residents have to worry about increased rates of car accidents just has to look at the number two position: Baltimore City.

How can this be? Well, Maryland and the District of Columbia do have a rather high population density, which may contribute to the increased incidence of motor vehicle collisions. The folks at Allstate studied the frequency of insurance claims in 200 of the nation’s largest metro areas, but despite there being numerous other areas with high accident rates, Baltimore and D.C. still topped the list.

This information only confirms what Maryland residents likely already know in their hearts to be reality. If it wasn’t for accidents like the one we read about not too long ago, maybe things would be different. In that particular instance, 11 people were hurt in a multi-car pile-up in Crofton, MD. Based on news reports covering that serious accident, the incident occurred a little after 7am during a weekday morning rush hour in the vicinity of Routes 3 and 450 in Anne Arundel County.

Initial police reports indicated that as a pickup truck attempted to make a left-hand turn onto Rte 450, it struck another truck coming from the north on Rte 3. The force of the impact resulted in the pickup truck being flipped and subsequently hitting several other vehicles in the process. One of the vehicles involved in the multi-car collision caught fire as a result.

Two individuals, one of which had sustained life-threatening injuries, were transported to Prince George’s trauma center, while the other nine victims with non-critical injuries were sent to several different medical facilities in Bowie, Baltimore, and Annapolis.

In all, seven vehicles and nearly a dozen people were involved in the accident, which shut down traffic in the area for a number of hours as police, EMS and accident clean-up crews cleared the wreckage from the area. Fortunately, based on news reports at the time, no one was trapped in any of the vehicles caught up in that incident. With one of the cars having burst into flames, an entrapment scenario could have ended up with deadly results.

PHOTOS: 7 Vehicle Crash, 1 Fire In Crofton, Md.; WUSA9.com, October 16, 2012
11 injured in multi-vehicle pile-up in Crofton, CapitalGazette.com, October 16, 2012

Contact Information