Las Vegas Taxi Cab Accident Attorney
As a city that thrives on tourism, Las Vegas has more than its share of taxis, ferrying visitors from the airport to the strip, around town, and back to the airport at the end of their vacation.
Making a living driving a cab, by its very nature, predisposes the driver to risky behaviors. The more passengers taxi drivers manage to get, the faster they deliver them to their destination, and the sooner they pick up a new fare, the more money cab drivers can make. Consequently, cab drivers are always in a hurry, and being in a hurry can lead to negligent driving, which, in turn, may cause an accident resulting in injuries or death.
The Numbers
Las Vegas taxis are involved in about 2,500 accidents a year on the average, and roughly 3,000 citations per year are issues to cabbies for driving offenses. Considering the how many visitors to the city rely on cabs, these numbers should come as no surprise. Las Vegas cab drivers carried 46,432,053 fares in 2013, according to Nevada Taxicab Authority statistics!
Types of Taxi Cab Accidents
Although companies and individual owners owe their riders a duty to keep their vehicles in good working order and to drive them safely and to observe traffic laws and regulations, taxi accidents are all too common in this busy city, and sometimes owner or driver negligence causes accidents with serious injuries and wrongful deaths.
These are some of the more common reasons taxicab accidents occur:
- Brake failure due to poor or faulty maintenance
- Careless driving
- Aggressive weaving through traffic
- Speeding
- Stopping abruptly, causing passengers to be thrown against the taxi’s partition, resulting in injuries to the head and neck.
- Crush, knockdown, or rolling into or over just released passengers or others waiting for a taxi as a cab races to pick up another fare.
The Responsibility for Maintenance and Safety
Owners and operators have a legal responsibility to maintain their vehicles properly and to drive them safely, taking care to keep their passengers from harm. Failing to do so can result in liability for damages that result when an accident occurs from lack of maintenance, whether from worn out tires, malfunctioning signals, faulty brakes, or any other maintenance-related matter.
Your Right to Recover Compensation
When you hail a cab, you trust that its driver is a professional who should be able to deliver you to your destination unscathed. If an accident occurs because of the driver’s negligence, you have the right to institute a claim to recover damages. If you’ve been injured in a taxi collision, it’s essential that you seek out competent and experienced legal advice in order to protect your rights to recover damages. The person to help you recover the compensation you’re entitled to in Las Vegas is attorney Eric H. Woods, a highly skilled personal injury attorney with more than thirty years of experience in recovering money for tourists and residents of the city who have suffered injury or death because of someone else’s negligence, carelessness, or deliberate wrongdoing.
The Right Legal Representation Makes All the Difference
Contact a skilled and respected auto accident attorney as soon as you have seen a doctor. It is important to begin the investigation right away. Some cabs record data inside the cab using video, and most carry “black boxes” that record speed, velocity, and time of impact. However, this information is not shared automatically and has to be requested in order to preserve it. If too much time elapses, video tapes can be recorded over, destroying evidence. To protect the evidence needed to prove your case, you need the help of an experienced taxicab accident lawyer who will conduct a thorough investigation to identify the proof needed to recover the greatest possible amount of compensation for your injury, and who knows how to deal with the insurance company that covers the cab.
What to Do When You’ve Been in a Taxi Collision
Taking the right steps immediately following a taxi crash can help your lawyer make your case when dealing with the insurance company to obtain you a compensation award. You should get the driver’s name, license number, address, and phone number, as well as the name and phone number of the cab company that owns the vehicle and the taxi’s registration and plate numbers. Get names and contact information of any witnesses to the accident. Call the police, and get the responding officer’s name and badge number and the accident report number.
If you can, take photos at the scene of the accident. If don’t have a regular camera, you can generally use your cell phone camera.
Get the medical attention you need first. You may need to have the police dispatcher call an ambulance. Then contact the Woods law offices as soon as possible. If he takes your case, Eric Woods will immediately begin his investigation into the circumstances of the accident and will obtain taxi driver records such as complaints, licensing, and driving records, and maintenance logs of the vehicles along with the cab’s black box data recording. This must be done quickly to preserve evidence, which might be lost or destroyed. He will then negotiate on your behalf with the insurance company. Most cases settle out of court, but Eric will always be willing to take your case to a jury if necessary.
Free Consultation with Attorney Eric Woods
Your initial consultation with Eric Woods is free, and you never pay costs or legal fees until the day you receive your compensation award, because injury cases are signed on a contingency agreement. In the very unlikely event you don’t win, you owe absolutely nothing, so claiming the compensation you deserve is a risk-free proposition. Justice is within the reach of everyone, regardless of financial means, at the Las Vegas law office of Eric Woods. Call (702) 737-0000 today.
