A wrong way accident in the greater Los Angeles area left two people, a mother and her daughter, dead. Additionally, another man is in the hospital recovering from injuries that authorities describes as major.
The person who caused this fatal auto accident also was admitted in to the hospital and will be formally charged for crimes related to drunk driving upon release from the hospital. Police arrested this driver at the scene of the accident.
The accident happened in Riverside in the early morning hours on a freeway. Apparently, the driver of the vehicle, perhaps because he was under the influence, somehow managed to get in to the lanes of oncoming traffic and then crashed his vehicle in to another passenger car, killing the two women and seriously injuring a man. Not surprisingly, photos from the scene show that both of the vehicles involved were completely destroyed.
In this case, it seems pretty clear that the driver who was traveling the wrong way, allegedly while drunk, is responsible for this accident. However, this does not mean that the family of the mother and daughter who died will find it easy to get the compensation they deserve on account of the tragic deaths of their loved ones.
After all, sometimes insurance companies, even in situations like this, will have questions about how much compensation they should have to pay. They may, for instance, question the true value of these victims’ lost income, and they almost certainly will fight claims for non-economic damages like pain and suffering. Whether punitive damages should be awarded may also be an issue.
ES