Baby dies in car accident/discrepancies on police report

My daughter let her friend drive her car and her friend lost control of the car causing them to end up disabled on the left lane of traffic.  The car was facing the same way traffic was flowing, not against it.  The accident happened at 9:30 PM and the car lost the tail lights.  The car however, also had a light in the middle of the back windshield, the windshield was not broken during this accident.  As far as my daugher and her freind new, the emergency lights were on and other cars avoided hitting the car. 

A man driving a 3500 Silverado hits them from behind.  There were no brake marks or swerve marks.  This man stated the car was accross the highway and there was no where to go.  The entire back of the car is practically pushed in, so the car looks like half a car.  Therefore, there is no way the car was 'perpendicular' (the word he used)..

There was no sobriety test done and later I found out that he had a DUI but it was 9 years ago, so the police tells me there was no probable cause to test him. One of the patrol videos recorded him immediately after and his behavior was questionable but of course by now, proves nothing. People who know this man have discribed him as a "crazy drunk".  He has been involved in 3 accidents in the last 3 years.

What I find ever more disturbing is that I requested an open records on a similar accident from a couple of years ago that I knew about because the girl that passed away in that accident, my daughter knew.  Since I knew the accident was similar in that the accident occured at night, I wanted to see the type of detail the report included.  My daughter's accident pales in comparison.  Data was collected and sent out to a collision specialist, both cars were taken to the police pound for pictures during the day for better lighting, to weigh the cars and measure.  They did this because there were no brake marks during this accident as in my daughter's accident, however, in my daughter's none of this was done.  The man in this accident was tested for alcohol and the reasons this officer gave for doing so was severity of the accident, did not follow directions (the man did not speak English), and did not look directly at the officer.  The officer that performed this sobriety test was the same officer that decided against performing one on the man that hit my daughter's car.  The man in my daughter's accident was allowed to take his truck that night. 

The man in my daughter's accident had an Onstar system, but they will not request for the record which would give speed at impact.  Police gives me dead end answers, first that the air bag had to deploy in order to record speed at impact. I checked that out with Onstar and tell me that is untrue, police are confusing this with the Air Bag Control Module.  I passed this information to the police, so now they tell me this man self actived the Onstar system so it did not record any information.  In order to record information it would have to automatically be activated by the impact.  The accident was so severe, there is no way the system was self activated.  I've had friends that have this service talk about how sensistive the system is and auto activates very easily.

Every question I have is a dead end answer.  Did I mention this happened in a small town?  I tried escalating my questionsbut it seems like officers in small towns govern themselves.  I was told though by the captain of police that the investigating officer closed the case when he shouldn't have.  The case was reopened about two months later but there is nothing new added.

The lawyer that is handling the case just tells my daughter to take the insurance money but her just as I have a problem with signing a paper saying she does not hold the man responsible.

On the report, the police give the fault on both accients to my daughter's friend.  The first one for losing control for unknown resons and the second one for putting the car in harms way.

The problem here is that a disabled car ON the highway at night can be difficult to see under the best of circumstances...and friend says emergency lights were on "to the best of her knowledge", which is not an affirmative answer.  Even if they were, one does not expect to come upon a stopped vehicle where traffic is otherwise flowing smoothly.  At night it is even tougher.

So far the fault lies with the bad driver who managed to disable the  vehicle; how did she manage to do that driving down the freeway?  Run into the median?

You would have to do a lot of "proving" to convince anybody this was due to someone else's drinking.  And if the cop smelled liquor, there would have been a test. 

FTR, police reports generally are not admissible as evidence in court as they are based upon hearsay.  The police officer did not actually see the accident occur.

If the physical evidence related to the accident does not support the other driver's version of how the accident occurred, that should be easy enough for experienced insure adjusters, etc., to figure out. 

I do agree that disabled vehicles can be hard to see at night.  I have had a few near misses myself in my time.  In daylight it is much easier to determine that a vehicle ahead of you is stopped than at night when all that you may see is that flashing light.  Judging distances at night is MUCH harder.  If you realize that your own vehicle is about to stop, for whatever reason, you or the driver should try to get it to the side of the road, if at all possible.  That statement especially applies when one is on a freeway.  Even if she blew a tire, if the vehicle was in motion, she probably could have coasted it to the side of the road before bringing it to a stop.  That also is a much safer place to be all things considered.

my grand baby died after getting hit by the truck.  My daughter was jumping to the back to get her and she saw cars going around but this truck did not.  After the first accident, a person pulled over to the right shoulder with their flashing lights and was going to help the disabled car but never got around to it.

As far as the other accident I mentioned, the report this police officer wrote stated he did not smell alcohol on this driver.  He felt the reason for it was because the airbag deployed so there is something in the airbag that masks the smell, so, no, the tell tale signs of intoxication were not present in this other accident.

My daughter's friend was tested for drugs and intoxication when she arrived at the hospital and she was negative.

I guess my problem is the little effort the police did.  I wish they would have reconstructed the accident by sending the information to a collission specialist, gotten the Onstar report to know for certain this man was not speeding.  On his account of that night, he states he drove a distance that would have normally taken 32 - 34 minutes, in 20 minutes.  Even if he was not intoxicated, I believe he had to be speeding to never see a car at least to slow down some.  If the accident was inevitable, I think the severity of it could have been prevented.

And if they did all the tests, then what? Would it really change anything?

I am not sure how to answer the last questions.. especially because of the obvious answer. If they would have tested the man and he would have been intoxicated, that would be manslaughter. If he was speeding, depending on how much over the speed limit, he could be charged there too but at the very least a ticket.

Now if they would have tested him or reconstructed the accident to determine he did nothing wrong, then I would not be on this blog pondering on the 'what if'.

Strange questions...

oscmarth:

Strange questions...

Not so strange; as said, there was an incredbily likely chance of this happening in the dark, ON the freeway STOPPED, whether another driver was intoxicated or not.  It's an accident waiting to happen.

But it won't bring the child back, will it?

In any event, the police made the choices they did at the time. There is no legal cause of action against the department for not doing wht you wish they had done.

I think the last message could use some editing, perhaps framed with some compassion.  The "in any event" after the first sentence really reads poorly.

Sharon

I'm sorry you feel that way. It was said with compassion.

We all have empathy for your situation, but no doubt it's likely SOMEBODY would have plowed into them at some point, drunk or not. 

Daughter's friend is the person at fault; still have not heard how a sober person could have caused such an accident out of nowhere...apparently she was not in control of the vehicle, whether it be lack of experience or lack of attention on the road.  No one could have done this if she hadn't stopped(!) the car on the freeway.

Sounds like you are giving the friend a pass, but driving is serious business!  A car is a deadly weapon, a responsibility NOT to be taken lightly, especially when other folks are in her "care".  This is what happens. Got a feeling she is far too immature to handle the responsiblity.

I referenced another accident because on that accident the police went above and beyon and had so much detail on the report.  In my daughter's accident, the investigation was so light weight and nobody was held accountable, not my daughter's friend not the driver of the truck.  I am not letting her lose either, I asked to check her phone to see if she was texting.  The accident investigator told me they were not going to do that because even if they did pull the phone records, they were not going to press charges.  Very matter of fact.

Anyone who has not lost a loved one will not be able to see how important closure is.  It is not a matter of making just anyone responsible, but you certainly do not expect so many ananswered questions when you you know they have the means to give you those answers. Even with that aside, if the information they did give us was reliable enough that would have made some difference too but when you have the accident investigator cont... saying in one paragraph the truck was driving on the right lane and switched over when it impacted the car, two pages later, the truck was driving on the left lane when it came upon the car...

Like I said earlier, unless you have lost someone tragically you could not for a second imagine how tough it is to have so many unanswered questions.

Don't assume others have not had a similar experience.