New York Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

On January 1, 2011 the Move Over Act was made the law of New York State. Although the statute has been in effect since January 1, 2011, many motorists are unaware of its existence. The Act requires that motorists who observe emergency vehicles with their lights flashing on the side of a highway must reduce their speed and drive with "due care." If the driver is on a highway with multiple lanes, he or she must pull the vehicle one lane to the left to avoid the possibility of endangering the safety of the emergency personnel.

For those of you not aware of the Move Over Act, beware, for it has now been expanded to include tow trucks and maintenance vehicles with flashing amber lights, as well as other vehicles assisting motorists at the side of the roadway.

The Act was instituted in response to several cases over the last ten years in which emergency personnel and police officers were either killed or suffered severe injuries due to motorists following too closely or too fast in proximity to responding emergency personnel or officers. The official title of the statute is the Ambrose-Searles Move Over Act, named after New York State Trooper Robert W. Ambrose and Onondaga County Sheriff Glenn M. Searles who were killed in the line of duty while they were responding to emergencies on the roadway. In the case of Trooper Searles, this occurred in nearby Yonkers, New York when Ambrose was struck and killed by a motorist while preparing an accident report on the New York State Thruway.

More recently, in November of 2011, a tow truck operator was struck by a passing vehicle and killed while he was assisting a disabled vehicle near Syracuse, New York. Undoubtedly, this tragic fatal car accident was an impetus for the expansion of the scope of the regulation. Two weeks ago, in Peekskill, New York a motorist was charged with a violation of the law and other traffic infractions when his vehicle struck and injured a Westchester County police officer who was involved in a traffic stop on Route 9 in Croton on Hudson.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, since 1999, more than 160 law enforcement officials have been killed as a result of being struck while assisting in roadway incidents. A violation of the Move Over Act results in a $275.00 fine and a two point assessment on the motorists' driver’s license.

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According to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City set a new record in 2011 for the fewest fatal traffic accidents in the last 100 years. There were 237 deaths in 2011, a reduction from the 267 who were killed in 2010, which was the previous record for fewest fatalities on New York City streets. This is also a huge drop from ten years ago, when there were approximately 430 fatal traffic accidents in the city.

The New York City Transportation Commissioner attributes the significant reduction in deaths to numerous measures that the City has implemented over the last five years, including reconfigured streets with pedestrian plazas (particularly noticeable around Herald Square and Time Square); crosswalks with timer signals, and bicycle lanes. Particularly in historically dangerous intersections on Delancey Street in Manhattan and Queens Boulevard in Queens, this has had a substantial impact according to NYC statistics, with the installation of countdown signals. In total, 1,100 such signals have been added.

Bicycle fatalities have actually gone up for the last two years, with 21 deaths in 2011, 18 in 2010 and 12 in 2009. However, Mayor Bloomberg claims that bicycle ridership has increased significantly during that span, with NYC installing several hundred miles of bike lanes. Thus, Bloomberg asserts that there has been a per capita decrease in the death rate for bicyclists.

When compared to traffic fatalities in 1970, when there were 944, and the shockingly highest number registered in 1929, when 1,360 people lost their lives in traffic crashes, the 237 in 2011 seems even more impressive. In the beginning of the 20th century, the roads in urban areas were much more congested with pedestrians, trolley cars and horse drawn carriages, in addition to cars, and traffic rules essentially did not exist yet. This was borne out by an amazing 11 minute film recorded in San Francisco one week prior to the Great Earthquake on 1906, which was broadcast on CBS’ “Sixty Minutes” earlier this year. What I found truly amazing about this film was the utter lack of fear of injury by pedestrians, who proceeded to walk right in front of cars, trolley cars, and carriages, the non-existence of traffic “rules of the road”, (such as yielding the right of way!), and the vehicles moving in all possible directions at all times!

New York City Police Commissioner Kelly noted that the improved safety on New York City streets is also due to the more than one million traffic tickets issued this year. There were 164,000 for not wearing a seat belt; 161,000 for texting or speaking on a cell phone while driving, and 127,000 for driving past a stop sign. Additionally, there were 8,500 DWI arrests in the city in 2011, which led to 900 vehicles being confiscated from those convicted of these charges.

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In a very important decision for the safety of bus passengers, the New York Court of Appeals recently held in the case of Doomes v. Best Transit Corp. that a bus company could be found responsible for a failure to install passenger seat belts. Under New York State statutes, there is no specific requirement that passenger buses be equipped with seat belts. However, the Court determined that by common law (not statutory but by decisions over the years) a jury could find that an owner or manufacturer of a bus could be responsible for injuries from an accident due to a lack of seat belts.

The plaintiffs in Doomes were injured when the bus drove off the highway after the bus driver fell asleep. Clearly, the bus driver was at least partially responsible for the accident, but the jury decided that many of the passengers' injuries would have been averted if the bus had been equipped with passenger seat belts (the driver did have a seat belt).

The defense attempted to argue that federal law, which does not specifically mandate passenger seat belts in buses) preempted the state jury’s decision in Doomes. In fact, the dissent argued that The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) made a “conscious decision” that seat belts in buses were unnecessary due to their “size and function.” Thus, the dissent contended that the field of bus safety was in fact regulated by federal law, leaving no room for a contrary decision by a state court jury. However, the Court of Appeals noted that a clause in the federal regulation (known as a “savings clause”) “did not expressly prohibit plaintiffs’ seat belt claims.”

The Court did reject another claim by plaintiffs as to the “weight balance” of the bus, in which the plaintiffs argued that the negligent design and manufacture of the chassis affected the weight balance, leading to the rollover. In that regard, the Court ruled that plaintiffs’ arguments were speculative and not supported by sufficient evidence.

The Doomes decision is one more example of the best news for the safety of New York accident victims in 25 years—the ascendancy to Chief Judge of the Court Of Appeals of Jonathan Lippman in February of 2009. Justice Lippman, who has shown in his almost three year tenure that when the evidence warrants same, he is truly dedicated to the rights of those injured through the negligence of others, despite the large scale and well financed efforts of automobile liability insurance companies, hospital CEO’s, and large corporations to fight these efforts at every turn.

Continue reading "New York Bus Accident—Bus Company Held Responsible For No Passenger Seat Belts" »