A tanker truck carrying over 8,000 gallons of gasoline crashed in Atwater (outside of Merced) on May 23, killing the driver and sparking a massive fire. The investigation of the crash is still ongoing, but the driver appears to have lost control and overturned the tanker while exiting Highway 99 to make a delivery nearby. The load immediately burst into flames, and it’s been reported by some witnesses that the truck was already on fire before the crash.

Dramatic, Terrifying Situation

You’ve probably seen some of the photos and video from the crash scene. Huge fireballs billowed above the site and at least two explosions were reported. Workers and customers in nearby businesses fled, describing a wave of fire caused by the gasoline as it spilled down the street. The tanker was left in charred fragments as lampposts and street signs were melted and the road itself was damaged by the blaze. A nearby McDonald’s suffered direct damage from the fire, and at least one other vehicle was burned almost beyond recognition.

This latest trucking crash, along with another fiery truck crash, an overturned load, and a fatal car accident—all in the same week—add to Highway 99’s bad reputation: Last year, one organization declared it to be the most dangerous highway in the United States.

Businesses Optimistic for Recovery

Several businesses on the street were forced to close after the crash, but most reopened within two days. Unfortunately, those businesses depend on traffic from the freeway, and a week after the crash that exit remained closed.

The owner of a gas station at that exit estimated business was down by 50 percent, and others might have been doing worse, but they seemed optimistic that things would pick up again, especially if the road is repaired soon. The exit was closed over the busy Memorial Day weekend holiday, which cost many of them still more. CalTrans has not issued an estimate for when the exit will reopen.

Investigation Continues

While the driver had a spotless record, the trucking company’s history is not so pristine. Public records show the company has had twenty-one collisions since 2015, including two fatal crashes. The company says it is cooperating with authorities and will not discuss the crash publicly until the investigation has been completed.

Truck safety has been a growing concern in recent years. At the beginning of May, SCPR produced a lengthy story on the growing number—and growing cost—of truck crashes in Southern California. Truck traffic has been increasing, as has the expense of major accidents: Nationally, the total cost of a large truck accident is around $7 million (five times that of the average fatal car crash). While not at record levels, the number of crashes in California has been creeping up steadily.

Orange County Truck Accident Lawyer

While the driver was the only fatality and no one else was injured in the Atwater crash, that’s not always the case. In April, a crash and subsequent fire involving a tanker, two other trucks, and at least five other vehicles, left one dead and ten injured on the I-5 near Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

If you’ve been injured in a crash involving a commercial truck, the experienced truck accident law team at Kohan & Bablove, Injury Attorneys can help. Contact us online today using the form at the bottom of this page or call 1-844-404-2400 to schedule a free consultation to discuss your case.

May is Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month in California, and even though it’s coming to a close it’s not too late to stress motorcycle safety. The operators of all vehicles on California’s roads are collectively responsible for everyone’s safety. Whether you drive a motorcycle, a car, an SUV, a big rig, or anything else with wheels and a motor, you should do your part to make the roads safer for everyone, not just motorcycles.

Bikers at High Risk

A few weeks back The Press-Enterprise published a lengthy piece on motorcycle safety and crash statistics in Southern California. The numbers aren’t pretty. Already through the first four months of 2017, eleven people had died in motorcycle crashes just in western Riverside County. Statewide last year, CHP estimates that 476 motorcyclists were killed and more than 14,000 injured in crashes.

While crash statistics consistently show that about half of all motorcycle crashes don’t involve another vehicle, the rest do. That means that others on the road—the drivers of cars, trucks, and other vehicles—cause about half of all fatal motorcycle crashes. But in some ways it doesn’t matter who causes a crash: Motorcyclists suffer injuries at five times the rate of all other drivers per vehicle mile travelled, and they’re killed on the road at a rate twenty-six times higher than that of other motorists.

Safety Month Hasn’t Been Entirely Safe

We always hope that campaigns like California’s Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month will have the intended effect and lead to improvements for everyone, but we often don’t see an immediate effect. By looking at the news coverage in Southern California, you might even think there’s been no effect at all.

Near the beginning of the month, a Palm Desert man who was later charged with DUI committed a hit-and-run crash on two motorcyclists, one of whom was moderately injured. In San Jacinto, a rider was injured when a car made a sudden left turn from a side street into the path of a motorcycle. (That is an all-too-common cause of motorcycle crashes: 42 percent of fatal crashes with another vehicle happened when the other vehicle took a left turn across a motorcyclist’s path.) Only last week, a woman was killed in San Jose when her motorcycle was struck by a driver who ran a red light.

Every incident like this is tragic, but if an awareness campaign like the one CHP sponsors can lead to fewer crashes, it will benefit every driver on our state’s roads. When drivers are more aware of motorcycles, it’s a safe bet that they’re more aware overall, and that’s good for everyone.

Orange County Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

When you’ve been the victim in a motorcycle crash, you need the help of an attorney who understands all the considerations in this type of accident. Kohan & Bablove, Injury Attorneys has worked on many motorcycle accident cases. We understand the causes, the types of injuries, and the other concerns that are important in motorcycle crashes.

Give us a call to schedule a free consultation to discuss your case. Our number is 1-844-404-2400 or you can contact us online through the form below to have someone reach out to you at your convenience.

All car crashes are potentially expensive in many ways, but Riverside County has recently seen some of the costliest kind, in terms of both the financial impact and the effect on people’s lives. We’re referring to wrong-way crashes, which are especially dangerous because the victims often have little or no warning. There have been two high-profile crashes caused by wrong-way drivers in our area already this year.

Corona Wrong-Way Injures Seven

One happened on the I-91 in Corona around 2:20 a.m. on March 19. A driver entered the eastbound lanes of the highway and drove west for around six miles before colliding head-on with another car. Four other vehicles were also struck. Six other motorists were injured and sent to area hospitals with minor to moderate injuries while the wrong-way driver was reported to have suffered major injuries. That driver is suspected of driving under the influence.

Three Hurt in 215 Wrong-Way Crash

Only one week later, on March 26, police received reports of a vehicle traveling the wrong way on the 215 in Riverside. Before they could respond, that vehicle struck another. The wrong-way driver was seriously injured, and two people in the car that was struck suffered critical injuries and could only be freed from the wreck using the Jaws of Life. It’s not known if drugs or alcohol were a factor in that crash, but the possibility is being investigated.

Ten Miles on the Wrong Side!

It was also in March that another wrong-way driver was arraigned for an incident last November that—fortunately—ended with no injuries. In that case, the driver travelled an astonishing ten miles southbound on the northbound side of the 215, ignoring Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies and CHP officers who tried to get him to stop. He may have briefly reached a speed of 100 mph during the pursuit and only stopped when he encountered construction barriers. He has pleaded not guilty to driving under the influence of drugs.

Uncommon, but Deadly

Wrong-way crashes are uncommon, relatively speaking: They make up only about 3 percent of all crashes. But an analysis last year by the Boston Globe collected some disturbing facts about wrong-way crashes. For one thing, they’re as much as twenty-seven times more likely to cause a fatality than other types of crashes.

They’re also more likely to happen in off hours (between midnight and 3 a.m., with most on weekends). Perhaps most worrisome of all, the drivers who cause them are more likely than those in other crashes to not be properly licensed, and in fatal crashes alcohol is involved at more than double the rate seen in other kinds of crashes.

The statistics are out of date, but a 2012 report from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found that between 300 and 400 people die each year in this type of crash.

Riverside Car Accident Lawyer

When you’ve been the victim of a crash caused by a wrong-way driver, or by any other careless or negligent driving, you could have serious expenses, from the replacement cost of your vehicle to lost wages and income to steep medical bills and expensive long-term treatment or rehabilitation.

Get in touch with a firm with experience in the practice of automobile accident law. Kohan & Bablove, Injury Attorneys has helped many clients recover the damages they’re entitled to. Give us a call today at 1-844-404-2400 or contact us online through the form below to find out if we can help. The consultation to discuss your case is always free—you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

You probably have a sense that some roads and intersections are more dangerous than others—maybe you go out of your way to avoid a particularly busy intersection, or you stay off some streets because you’re convinced they’re just not safe, either because of some issue with the road itself, or because of the drivers you encounter there. But are some streets themselves more dangerous? According to a number of sources, both strictly measured and unscientific, the answer is “yes!”

Danger No Matter How You Slice the Data

Last year, OC Weekly teamed with a local data analysis firm to identify the most dangerous intersections in the county. They mined CHP’s public database of accident reports and came up with a list of the thirteen worst street crossings based on the total number of collisions in the twelve months just passed. Be sure to check out the list as chances are that you know some of these locations. You might even drive through some every day.

Of course, the number of collisions is just one way to measure how dangerous an intersection is. Different criteria can come up with different results. A different analysis by a California law firm using much of the same source data but ranking intersections not only by collisions but also by injuries and fatalities came up with very different results: None of those pegged by OC Weekly even made the top 400 statewide.

Several years ago, The Orange County Register also looked at fatalities, and their list was completely different. There are a lot of reasons why there might be so little overlap, including using different measures at different times, but as a driver (or a pedestrian or a cyclist), it’s helpful to keep in mind that any intersection can be dangerous, so you should always be on your guard.

How They Make Us Feel

About a year before their scientific approach, OC Weekly also produced a list based on how their staff felt about different stretches of Orange County road. That was based purely on their personal opinions, and while there’s only a little overlap with the others, that list included photos that make it clear why some of these places are notorious.

One thing is clear, whether it’s the infamously deadly stretch where Santiago Canyon Road, Jamboree, and Chapman come together, or the thirty-four-crossing “Orange Crush” interchange (listed by Guinness as the world’s most complex), Orange County has some dangerous sections of road. In most years, the county sees about one hundred roadway fatalities and many more injuries.

Orange County Car Accident Lawyer

You can take every precaution behind the wheel, but even being the safest driver on the road and studying every list of dangerous streets won’t completely protect you. There are millions of other drivers on California’s highways, and hundreds of thousands of intersections—and they can align to cause a crash at any time.

If you‘ve been the victim of a serious crash, turn to Kohan & Bablove, Injury Attorneys. We have extensive experience with automobile accident law, and we offer a free consultation to every new client. Give us a call at 1-844-404-2400 or contact us online to schedule yours today.

There’s an old joke that “Dog Bites Man” isn’t news but that “Man Bites Dog” is. But we think that’s really getting it wrong: Dog bites have been on the rise in California for more than a decade, and that problem hasn’t gotten the news coverage it deserves. We only hear about dog bites in the most extreme cases, such as the December incident when a former police dog attacked and seriously injured two people in a town north of Los Angeles. One of the victims later died from his injuries.

Dog Bite Capital?

A report by the California Department of Public Health in 2014 found that dog bites had gone up sharply in the previous ten years, especially the most recent five years. Related follow-up data in 2015 showed that emergency room visits for dog bites had increased by more than 10 percent since 2010.

In fact, based on insurance claim data, California was the state with the highest dollar amount of claims paid out to settle dog bite injuries in 2013. Dog bites, which are usually settled against homeowner insurance policies, accounted for about one-third of all homeowner insurance payouts that year. By 2014, the average amount to settle a dog bite in California had reached more than $33,000.

Serious Injury Potential

Some people may try to shrug off bites by dogs and other animals as not very serious, and in some cases that may be true. But dog bites have the potential to cause extremely serious injury, even death. In a typical year, more than 4.5 million people are attacked and bitten by a dog; close to one in five of those bites becomes infected. Most bites don’t have fatal consequences, but these injuries can leave the victims with problems that last for years.

No Perfect Breed, No Typical Attack

While some breeds are portrayed as more dangerous than others, any dog can cause harm. Some small breeds actually bite more often, but the large breeds—because of their size and strength—cause the most serious injuries. Attacks happen in all sorts of circumstances, both on and off the dog owner’s property, with dogs that are properly restrained and with those that aren’t. Some attacks are unprovoked, some are triggered by something a person does. Victims come in all ages and genders, but small children are the most at risk.

Because of this unpredictability, dog owners should always be diligent about keeping their dogs on their property and keeping them properly restrained. Everyone should be careful around dogs, especially unfamiliar animals, and keep out of reach even of restrained dogs. When an animal is seen running loose, it should be reported to the proper authorities to reduce the chance of an incident happening.

Orange County Dog Bite Lawyer

If you’ve been bitten or otherwise injured by a dog, it’s important to get experienced help in your corner as you seek to recover damages for your injury. Those injuries and their lingering effects can be severe: a man bitten by a San Diego police dog in 2015, for example, was left with a permanent disability in one leg. It’s vital that your legal team has the ability to get your injuries properly evaluated so that your settlement adequately covers all care, rehabilitation, and other ongoing expenses.

Kohan & Bablove, Injury Attorneys has handled this type of case before and is ready to put our dog bite injury experience to work for you. Give us a call at 1-844-404-2400 or contact us online today to schedule a free consultation. The LiveChat feature on our website is also available to quickly answer many of your questions.

A still-unexplained bus crash last month left a motorist dead and more than two dozen people injured. Most of those hurt were aboard the bus, but two occupants of another vehicle were also hospitalized after firefighters cut them free from their mangled car. A California Highway Patrol team will continue to investigate the crash.

Midday, Dry Road Crash

The February 27 crash happened in Kramer, a small town about a two-hour drive north of Los Angeles. The bus was about halfway through a run from Fresno to Las Vegas when, for reasons still not clear, it drifted out of its lane and struck two cars moving in the opposite direction nearly head-on. Both cars were completely wrecked and one ended on its side. The bus itself, a small charter with twenty-six people on board, rolled and came to rest right-side-up. Nine of the twenty-six people transported to hospitals were reported to be in critical condition.

This happened around noon on a Monday on a relatively remote stretch of state highway, and there has been no word on possible contributing factors. But high winds prevented rescuers from transporting several of the victims by helicopter.

Safe but Not Risk-Free

Serious bus crashes are uncommon, but they often play out similarly to the Kramer crash. Although this was a smaller bus (actually a conversion van) and many of the passengers were injured because the vehicle rolled, it’s more common for those who are seriously injured or killed to be in another vehicle in the crash—not the bus.

In 2015, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which monitors the safety of large trucks and buses, recorded 295 fatalities in bus crashes. But most of those (246) were to people who weren’t on a bus—mainly occupants of other vehicles involved in a crash or pedestrians. Although bus passengers, just like passengers using any other mode of transportation, are at risk of injury or death in an accident, buses are a much safer method of travel overall. For regular commuters, the risk of being in a fatal accident is seventeen times greater for those in cars over those in buses, even with the same annual mileage.

Memory Still Fresh

It was only five months ago that an even more serious California bus crash grabbed headlines nationwide. Thirteen passengers were killed and thirty-one injured when a tour bus that hadn’t slowed crashed into the rear of a semi-truck in a construction zone near Palm Springs. An official determination of the cause of that crash hasn’t been made, but several of those injured and relatives of some of the deceased have already initiated negligence and wrongful death lawsuits against the bus company.

California Bus Accident Lawyer

When you have been harmed in a bus crash, whether as a bus passenger, a pedestrian, or an occupant of another vehicle, you want to be made whole again. It’s important to your recovery to collect damages from the responsible parties to cover your medical bills, lost wages or salary, and any other expenses that result from the accident.

The team at Kohan & Bablove,Injury Attorneys has been settling motor vehicle crash cases, including bus accident cases, for years. Get in touch with us to schedule a free consultation to go over the details of your case. Our phone number is 1-844-404-2400 or you can contact us online through the form below or by using the LiveChat feature of our website to begin the conversation immediately.

The death toll from the crash of a small plane near Riverside Municipal Airport has now risen to four. The most recent victim, a woman in her forties, had suffered serious burns over 90 percent of her body during the crash. She had remained in critical condition and been on a ventilator and feeding tube since the accident, and when a third round of surgery brought no improvement, her family chose to take her off life support. The remaining survivor has shown improvement and been moved to a hospital closer to her home.

A Tragedy for Passengers and Residents

The five people on board the plane, a Cessna 310, were beginning the return trip to San Jose after watching a cheerleading competition held at a Disney park when the plane crashed about one mile from the airport shortly after takeoff. Three of the victims died in the crash.

Initial reports had created confusion about the identity of the victims and the survivors, suggesting that some had been teens from the competition or residents on the ground. All were adults on the plane, however, ranging in age from twenty-two to eighty-three.

The plane came down in a residential neighborhood and damaged three homes with an explosion that felt to some residents like an earthquake. Two homes and at least one parked car were completely destroyed in the fire that followed the crash, but fortunately, there were no injuries or deaths on the ground, although at least one resident was in one of the houses at the time. This was the second crash of a small plane in the neighborhood in two years, which has some residents worried about their safety.

Investigation Underway

A witness at the airport has told investigators that the pilot had difficulty starting the aircraft’s engine, and that the group left in a hurry to take advantage of a break in the day’s rainy weather. There has been no official word on the cause of the crash, which is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The NTSB investigation will probably take more than a year to complete and will be as thorough as possible, looking into every detail of the crash, including weather, the state of the aircraft (the plane had been built in 1974), and pilot experience (it was unclear from reports if the lone survivor was the pilot or a passenger).

The NTSB has its hands full investigating this type of crash. A 2013 investigation found that there are as many as five small plane crashes every day in the United States, accounting for up to 97 percent of all aviation accidents and as many as 500 deaths each year.

California Plane Crash Lawyer

When you’ve been the victim of an accident involving an aircraft, it’s vitally important that you get experienced help as you take action to recover compensation for the property damage and injuries caused. The team at Kohan & Bablove,Injury Attorneys understands the practice of airplane accident law, and we offer each client a free consultation to go over the details of his or her unique case. Call us today at 1-844-404-2400 or contact us online through the form below to schedule an appointment.

When a motorist is injured by a distracted driver, it’s not unusual for legal action to follow as the victim seeks to recover compensation for the property damage and injuries caused in the auto crash. Sometimes others with potential involvement in the crash are included in the suit, and their specific responsibilities in causing the crash are described in the case.

A suit filed by a California man in January goes further, arguing that computer and device maker Apple, by refusing to implement lockout technology that it has already developed, is in part responsible for an epidemic of injuries and deaths caused by distracted driving crashes. The plaintiff, who was personally harmed when a distracted driver on an Apple iPhone rear-ended him at a traffic light, claims that the company’s inaction has enabled “massive carnage” on American roadways.

Class Action Requested

The suit has been filed as a class action, describing as possible plaintiffs “all California residents whose safety has been put at risk as a result of Apple’s failure to install ‘lockout devices’ on their iPhones.” If that sounds like a large number, it is. But the filing includes some math to justify this broad eligibility. Based on estimates for distracted driving crashes and their causes, as well as the market share of Apple’s iPhone, the suit claims that at least 52,000 accidents are caused by drivers using iPhones in California every year.

The Potential to Prevent

At the heart of the suit is the assertion that despite having a patent since 2014 on technology that would lock out texting and other risky functions when a cell phone is used in a car, Apple has made no moves to actually install this feature on its devices. It alleges that Apple is concerned about the possible loss of market share if it did this, and so it has sacrificed public safety for profit.

Features like a speed lockout are not unheard of. Some individual apps, such as Pokémon Go, already have them. That app essentially shuts down if the user tries to play while travelling faster than 30 mph. Other apps, such as Snapchat (which actually has a feature that some say encourages users to drive at high speed), have not taken steps to prevent their being used unsafely. Individuals have caused crashes because they were using the app and been prosecuted, but at least one attempt to hold Snapchat legally responsible has failed.

Serious Distraction

Distracted driving has become a major cause of auto accidents. Research suggests that more than 660,000 drivers are on their devices at any given moment. In 2014 more than 430,000 people were injured and nearly 3,200 were killed in crashes involving distracted drivers. In 13 percent of those crashes, one or both drivers were using cell phones. All indications are that these numbers will continue to rise.

Orange County Auto Accident Lawyer

No matter what caused the crash, when you’ve been the victim of a motor vehicle accident you need to pursue compensation for any damages and injuries you suffer. Turn to a firm with experience in automobile accident law. Kohan & Bablove, Injury Attorneys offers a free consultation to all clients to discuss their case and explain how we might be able to help. Call today at 1-844-404-2400 or contact us online through the form below to schedule your appointment.

Speak to an experience auto accident lawyer below:

Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys
Address: 20371 Irvine Ave Suite 110, Newport Beach, CA 92660
Phone: +1 (949) 271-7863

A Los Angeles grocery store chain found itself looking more like the Grinch than Santa Claus this winter when an ingredient it sold for a traditional holiday meal turned out to be rotten. Hundreds of customers demanded refunds, complaining that something was wrong with the masa they’d purchased from the Amapola market in Downey.

The problem, customers said, ruined numerous holiday meals and in some cases made customers or their family members sick. The company has said that it will give refunds to affected customers, but the rotten ingredient resulted in some families not having any food on the table at Christmas.

Bad Masa the Problem

The main ingredient in the affected people’s traditional Christmas tamales, masa, caused their tamales to turn out inedible. No one seems quite sure what happened, but the masa sold at Amapola’s Downey store two days before Christmas seems to have been the bad batch.

The company said it believes that particular masa was made from a batch of “defective corn” sold to it by a longtime supplier. Amapola has stated that it doesn’t believe there are any health risks from the bad masa, it’s just low-quality and tastes bad. A company executive issued an apology and promised that refunds would be made to all affected customers.

Sizeable Refunds

Due to both the festive nature and size of the holiday tamale meal, as well as the fact that some customers buy masa from Amapola for tamales that they make and sell on to others, many of the refunds are not pocket change.

A local reporter talked with customers who had spent between $150 and $400 on masa at the store, and at least one of these had gone on to lose important holiday business because the tamales she’d made could not be sold. Amapola, in fact, ran out of cash on the first day it was giving refunds.

Food Safety Always a Concern

Overall, the United States has a very safe food production and distribution system, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100 percent problem-free. In fact, it’s not uncommon for there to be more than one recall in a single day, although many of these aren’t because the food is contaminated, but instead because the ingredient labels are incomplete and might not show possible allergens. A situation with outright bad or spoiled food, such as the Amapola masa, is less common.

Sometimes the problem is bacterial contamination, as happened in a number of Chipotle restaurants in 2015. More than 500 people became ill in those incidents, and close to 100 received financial compensation from Chipotle. Similar to the Amapola case, many of those Chipotle customers remained loyal to the restaurant, despite the illness it caused them.

Orange County Personal Injury Lawyer

The Amapola masa case seems so far to have caused no serious or permanent harm. But other cases of bad food products don’t always end that way. Sometimes people are seriously injured or even die because of contaminated food products.

Businesses will often try to do the right thing when a customer is harmed by a spoiled or contaminated food product, but even so, it’s important to have help when you’re seeking a settlement that will cover the costs of restoring your health or correcting the damage done to your business.

If you’ve been harmed or made ill by a food product, give us a call. Kohan & Bablove, Injury Attorneys understands the practice of personal injury law, whether it involves a motor vehicle accident, a workplace injury, or a case of food poisoning. We consult free of charge with every new client to learn the details of every case. Contact us online through the form below or call 1-844-404-2400 today to schedule an appointment.