WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU ARE INJURED IN A HEAD-ON COLLISION IN GEORGIA
A head-on collision is one of the most serious and dangerous types of collisions. If you or someone you love has been injured in a head-on collision in Georgia, call a head-on collision attorney to find out what your legal rights are. Contact The Wallace Law Firm, LLC today.
GEORGIA LAW ABOUT HEAD-ON COLLISIONS
Pretty much by definition, if two vehicles collide head on, one (or maybe both) of the cars was not in its proper lane.
O.C.G.A. § 40-6-40 requires that every vehicle stay on the correct side of the highway:
Upon all roadways of sufficient width, a vehicle shall be driven upon the right half of the roadway.
Id. The Georgia code section makes some obvious exceptions when one vehicles is legally passing another, when obstructions block the roadway (although the driver driving on the wrong side of the road has a duty to yield the right of way to vehicles traveling on the other side of the roadway before he enters that roadway to pass the obstacle), when a road is divided into three lanes, and on one-way roads.
TYPES OF HEAD-ON COLLISIONS ACCIDENTS IN GEORGIA AND IN ATLANTA
Typically head-on collisions happen when one vehicle crosses the center line and begins driving on the wrong side of the road. Head-on collisions also may happen when a driver takes the wrong ramp onto a highway. Either way, the driver who was proceeding down the correct side of the roadway has very little notice of what is about to happen. With so little time to react, the driver driving on the right side of the road has almost no chance of avoiding the collision.
All too often, head-on collisions are caused because the driver driving on the wrong side of the road is driving under the influence (“DUI”). A drunk driver may have more difficulty discerning which side of the road is which, and may well miss the right ramp and try to enter the highway from the wrong ramp.
A head-on collision also may occur in an intersection when one car is turning while another is trying to cross the intersection. Generally these auto wrecks are only partially head-on, rather than full frontal collisions. Even so, they can be extremely dangerous.
WHY HEAD-ON AUTO COLLISIONS ARE SO DANGEROUS AND CAUSE SUCH SEVERE AUTO ACCIDENTS, INJURIES AND DAMAGES
Head-on collisions are among the most dangerous accidents of all, and result in relatively more deaths in car accidents. To think about why, dust off your old high school science book and think back to what you learned about velocity. If a vehicle is hit from behind, then the impact is “softened” by the fact that the forward vehicle was already traveling in the same direction; the velocity of the front vehicle is subtracted from the velocity of the second. In a head-on collision, however, the two vehicles are traveling toward each other, so the full velocity of each is directed toward the other. In my high school days, we were taught that the velocity of the two vehicles was added together, and that a 50-mile-per-hour frontal collision was the equivalent of hitting a rock wall at 100 miles per hour. According to Wikipedia, that teaching was “disproven” in 2010 with testing under Newton’s Third Law, and a frontal collision in which both vehicles are traveling at 50 miles per hour is the same as hitting a rock wall at 50 miles per hour. Either way, a head-on, frontal collision is a very dangerous collision.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU WERE INJURED IN A HEAD-ON COLLISION IN GEORGIA OR THE ATLANTA METRO AREA
Have you or a loved one been injured by a driver driving on the wrong side of the road in Georgia or the Atlanta metro area? Call The Wallace Law Firm, LLC to contact a head-on collision attorney to see what your legal rights are. You may be entitled to recover damages such as your medical bills, the lost wages you incurred because you could not work, the pain and suffering you endured, or the extra living and care expenses that you incurred.