SLIDING ON ICE IN PITTSBURGH, PA AND DISCOVERY
I am sure you can relate to this. You have seen it a hundred times. This morning I was driving to work, coming down I-279 South towards Pittsburgh. A car about a hundred yards in front of me in the slow lane, was approaching a bridge. You know what happened next. The car started to slide out of control. Doesn’t it seem like everything is in slow motion at that point? I remember white-knuckling the steering wheel and saying, “Oh …..!”. The other car did slide out of control and went from the slow lane to the passing lane and then back to the slow lane. Amazingly, he was able to regain control without striking any other vehicles. I say it is amazing because there were cars all around him when it happened. Thank God!!
Everyone knows that driving in Pittsburgh, Butler, Greensburg and Washington County can be treacherous in the winter. Cars slide out of control and people are injured. Passengers are hurt, sometimes severely.
The question becomes can you establish responsibility on the driver in this type of situation. Often times it is an easy thing to do because the driver was speeding. However, in the example I mentioned from this morning, the driver was not speeding. The driver was not even going the speed limit. The driver was in the slow lane on I-279 South. How do you establish negligence in this situation?
That is what discovery is all about. That is the opportunity to question the driver in an auto accident case about what was happening inside the car when he skidded out of control. For example, was he using his cell phone? Was he drinking coffee? Was he looking at the passenger and not paying attention to the road?
Was he distracted in any way?
This brief example points out some of the issues involved in pursuing an auto accident injury case, based on a driver losing control and skidding on ice on the highway.