Posted on October 22, 2012 in Commercial Vehicle Accidents

On October 15, a man sustained serious injuries as the result of a frightening collision with a dump truck. The commercial vehicle accident happened near Old Hundred Road and the Midlothian Turnpike in Chesterfield, where a single vehicle crash closed parts of Courthouse Road earlier the same week.

The accident victim in the more recent wreck was driving his Nissan Maxima when the dump truck slammed into the side of his vehicle. The wreckage was so severe that first responders had to cut the man from his car, later taking him to MCV medical center via helicopter.

Authorities later described the victim's condition as life-threatening, although officials have yet to charge the driver of the dump truck with any wrongdoing. The crash investigation continues as police seek more detailed information on the events leading up to the collision.

Last month in Albemarle County, a tractor-trailer overturned following a crash on Gordonsville Road. Thankfully, no catastrophic injuries resulted from that incident.

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 Posted on October 19, 2012 in Drunk Driving Accidents

Parents and teens in one Virginia locale are turning their attention to young peoples' drinking and driving habits. In Fairfax County, the first of several community forums took place on October 2, with a focus on educating to prevent drunk driving accidents.

The forums are the result of efforts by the Unified Prevention Coalition of Fairfax County, one of 13 groups across the state that tries to lower the number of teenaged drunk drivers on the road.

The coalition also tries to measure community members' perceptions of teenage drunk driving, posing questions such as "where are young people getting alcohol?" and "what's driving underage drinking?"

One parent, whose teenager attends West Potomac High, said he attended one of the forums because he didn't want his son to learn the hard way about drinking and driving.

During the past five years, drunk drivers between the ages of 15 and 24 caused almost 1,900 car crashes in Fairfax County.

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 Posted on October 11, 2012 in Commercial Vehicle Accidents

On the weekday afternoon of September 26, a tractor-trailer collided with a box truck in New Kent County, resulting in minor injuries, an eight hour road closure, and charges of reckless driving. The smoldering remains of a commercial vehicle accident were nearly all that was left of a tractor-trailer following the fiery incident in Virginia last month.

The semi-truck accident occurred around 1pm on Interstate 64, near the exit to Bottoms Bridge. After losing control of his vehicle and veering off the freeway's right shoulder, the driver of a box truck slammed into a tractor-trailer. As in many semi-truck accidents, police later determined that the semi-truck had been illegally stopped.

At the time of the crash, the semi-truck was loaded with tea bags, which helped spark a fire that quickly ignited both vehicles and even spread to a wooded area nearby.

Charged with improper stopping on the interstate, the 26-year-old tractor-trailer driver was transported to VCU medical center after the fire. Responders evaluated the 34-year-old driver of the box truck at the scene. Thankfully, both men escaped serious burns.

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 Posted on October 05, 2012 in Drunk Driving Accidents

Two decades behind bars now await a 22-year-old man from Shawneeland, Virginia, who killed four people in a drunk driving accident in 2011.

On June 26 of last year, the Roe family was in their car stopped at a red light on Martinsburg Pike in Frederick County. The Shawneeland man crashed his 1985 pickup truck into the rear of their SUV, causing the Jeep Cherokee to erupt into flames.

According to autopsy results following the grisly incident, however, fire was not the cause of death of two of the vehicle's youngest passengers. An 11-year-old boy and his 4-year-old brother experienced blunt force trauma to their heads, both of them dying as a result.

Also losing their lives were the boys' parents, a 49-year-old man and his 31-year-old wife. Medical examiner findings indicated smoke inhalation and thermal injuries as their causes of death.

The family had stopped a gas station prior to the accident; the recently-sentenced drunk driver had also stopped at the same gas station at the same time as the family. Footage from the store shows the convicted man standing just a few spots away from the mother before the crash.

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 Posted on September 24, 2012 in Car Accidents

Fleeing the scene of an auto accident is a serious offense in Virginia. For the 40-year-old man who allegedly struck a bicyclist on September 14 in Virginia Beach, further police investigation will reveal the causes of the car crash, which will in turn determine punishment.

The incident occurred on a Friday night, around the intersection of Sykes Avenue and Virginia Boulevard in Fairfax County. According to police, the bicyclist was riding west on Virginia Boulevard, headed in the same direction as a nearby motorist. The car hit the bicycle and its rider from behind, but instead of stopping, the vehicle quickly sped away from the scene.

Transported to a local hospital, the cyclist sustained life-threatening injuries as a result of the impact, and was later in critical condition. According to the American Hospital Association, critical condition involves unstable vital signs and unfavorable indicators, as well as a possible unconscious state of a patient.

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 Posted on September 21, 2012 in Drunk Driving Accidents

Alliance with the law is apparently no protection against being the victim of a drunk driver in Virginia. Earlier this month, a driver suspected of being drunk ran into a state trooper who had been guarding a construction project.

The construction was on Gilmberton Bridge in Chesapeake, where the suspect in the drunk driving accident was previously arrested for drugs. Last spring, an undercover drug bust in that area netted the driver in this more recent incident, as well as her brother and a friend. According to police, law enforcement had been observing the woman for some time.

Around 1:30 am on September 12, the driver from Zuni, Virginia somehow bypassed a construction zone barricade and hit the trooper's car. The policeman's car even had its emergency lights on at the time of the crash, but the woman still collided with the brightly-lit vehicle.

While the alleged drunk driver did not sustain any injuries, the officer required treatment at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. His injuries thankfully proved non-life-threatening.

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 Posted on September 14, 2012 in Fatal Motor Vehicle Accidents

A Virginia baby is dead after a teenage boy lost control of his vehicle and ran into a group of pedestrians on August 31. The fatal car accident happened in Rockingham County near Harrisonburg. A 16-year-old driver of an SUV was driving through the Belmont subdivision early that Friday morning; he somehow veered off the roadway and plowed into a small crowd of people — most of them children — standing nearby.

While fatal motor vehicle accidents are often composed of multiple cars or trucks, single vehicle wrecks can prove equally deadly, especially when children and young drivers are involved. In this incident, two adults and five children happened to be in the path of the swerving Jeep, and a 17-month-old girl did not survive the event.

Rockingham Memorial Hospital later saw all of the pedestrians who were hit in the accident. The six people who survived all sustained severe injuries, though thankfully none have proven life-threatening. However, one of the adults in the group, a 45-year-old woman, required transport to the University of Virginia Hospital for additional treatment.

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 Posted on September 08, 2012 in Truck Accidents

Virginia drivers face many perils on the roads close to home. However, traveling out-of-state on busy interstates can also put local motorists at risk for fender benders and serious motor vehicle accidents. Each year, more than 5,000 motorists in the country die in accidents involving tractor trailers or other large commercial vehicles. The end result of such a catastrophic collision is often serious injury or tragically, even death.

Late on the night of August 25, a semi-truck ran into the back of a passenger car, causing a fiery catastrophe that took the lives of two involved. One of those who died as a result of the truck accident was a 50-year-old woman from Monroe, Virginia. She had been sleeping in the truck that rear-ended the car on Interstate 40, near the town of Santa Rosa in eastern. New Mexico.

The truck crash also involved a third vehicle, another truck that was slammed by the first.

Initial reports indicate that the first truck overturned after hitting the car and then veering into oncoming traffic, when it hit the second truck. After turning over, the first truck became engulfed in a sudden fire.

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 Posted on August 28, 2012 in Drunk Driving Accidents

Despite Virginia's reputation as one of the toughest states on drunk drivers, one resident's long string of drunk driving convictions shows that dangerous drivers can still fall through the cracks to cause more drunk driving accidents .

On August 21, the 44-year-old Spotsylvania man pleaded guilty in a Virginia circuit court to three dubious distinctions: felony driving under the influence (DUI), refusing a breath test, and driving with a suspended license. The felony DUI charge is his third of the same type within five years.

In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors dropped charges of eluding police.

The man's previous drunk driving incidents spanned several states, putting motorists nationwide at risk of a serious accident. Starting in the early 90s, he accumulated six convictions in Mississippi, three in Alabama, and two previous DUI convictions in Virginia.

The states of North Carolina and Washington also want him on even more drunk driving charges, but his criminal activity is not confined to the lower 48. Alaska is also seeking him on a misdemeanor court order violation charge.

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 Posted on August 21, 2012 in Fatal Motor Vehicle Accidents

A fatal motor vehicle accident sent a police officer to a hospital and resulted in another driver's death on an early Monday morning in Alexandria recently. On Aug. 13, a driver suddenly swerved to his left near the intersection of Van Dorn Street and Franconia Road. A police car was headed in the opposite direction at the same time, and the consequence was a deadly head-on collision.

Fatal car accidents are, unfortunately, not uncommon in Virginia. Earlier this month, authorities located the body of a 27-year-old woman — previously missing — in her car in Giles County. She had been in a car crash and her vehicle fell almost 50 feet down an embankment.

In the Alexandria crash, the incident forced closings of area roadways while crews remedied the situation. It was too late for the driver of the car that inexplicably swerved into the oncoming lane, however. That vehicle, a 2006 Infiniti, caught fire following the violent impact, and the driver died at the scene.

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