Tragedy Illustrates How Bad Things Can Happen To Good People

Diego Madrigal

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The tragic death of an Inverness girl last week on the Florida Turnpike brings up several thought provoking  points that may bring a positive out of this sad instance.  The girl was traveling with her family and was driving through Clermont when the accident occurred.  The Citrus County Chronicle has a nice and touching report about what the family feels after the death.  However, the case also goes to illustrate the biggest danger of all could come from an unexpected source.  I am from Inverness as well, and have made the trip along the same route as this family many, many times.  I am usually very attentive to other drivers and to the speed limit because of the inherent dangers that can come from not paying attention to either of those.  However, this case goes to show how the greatest danger may come from a source that you did not think about and how that can lead to bad things happening to good people.  A good illustration is in this case, where there seem to be no other cars involved and also no reports of speeding.  The local Citrus County newspaper's report on the accident does provide some clues as to what may have happened:  

According to a preliminary Florida Highway Patrol investigation, the left rear tire failed causing the driver, Elizabeth, to lose control of the 2003 GMC Envoy and run into the median.

Tire failure could have been caused by many things.  One of them might be tire pressure.  The tire may have been under or over inflated, both of which can be dangerous and lead to tire failure.  Another reason may have been that the tire simply ran over debris in the road and went flat, causing the car to lose control.  Finally, the tire failure may be the fault of the manufacturer of the tire creating a faulty product.  Many times, even though tires are being maintained properly, they may fail.  A good example of this is the instance about 5 years ago where the tires put on Ford Explorers routinely failed.  If an investigation in this case reveals that the tire should not have failed, then this poor girl’s family would have a right to recover from the manufacturer under a wrongful death and products liability action.
Another aspect of the accident mentioned in the article is that the girl’s seatbelt snapped.  An investigation may be needed to examine whether or not the seatbelt should have malfunctioned.  Seatbelt are supposed to protect us in case of an accident.  Here, the young lady put on the seatbelt just as she should have and the seatbelt let her and her family down.  She took all necessary steps and still was not protected.  A products liability investigation should perhaps be called for in order to determine the cause of the failure.
Finally, the fact that the vehicle caught fire should be looked at.  The Florida Supreme Court has examined the crashworthiness of vehicles in its D’Mario decision.  In that case, the court found that a secondary occurrence (such as a car catching fire) that causes new and separate injuries to passengers can be an independent cause of action not related to the cause of the original collision.  So for example, if a car loses control because it is speeding but the people are not injured until the car catches fire because of a mechanical malfunction then an action can exist against the manufacturer even though the malfunction did not actually cause the original accident.  
The impact of this tragedy to the Inverness family is unexplainable, especially because they took all necessary precautions.  However, if we can learn from this case and try to prevent something like this from happening by ensuring that manufacturers have made safe products we can ensure that in the future bad things do not happen to good people.