Personal Injury Lawyer Blog in West Palm Beach, FL

As you know, hurricane season brings heavy rain. And lots of rain adds to the wear and tear our highways and by-ways see on a daily basis, even when it’s dry. One of the results of this is the creation of potholes.

If you’ve ever driven over a pothole, you may wonder when it will be fixed, and whose job that is. Because the roads are the responsibility of different government agencies, it is up to them to fix them. However, you may notice that sometimes the potholes seem to take a long time to be fixed, especially if you drive over the same one every day. Now, imagine traveling down the road and hitting a pothole unexpectedly. If you are traveling at a high rate of speed, hitting a pothole can be dangerous and lead to an accident causing injury or death. Perhaps this pothole is new and the agency responsible for fixing it just didn’t know about it.

However, there are incidences of a record having been created where those responsible for fixing it were already aware and did nothing about it. Their failure or negligence to fix the road has now caused an accident where an individual has been injured or killed. Sometimes a defect in a roadway like this isn’t fixed until the agency responsible is forced to pay a penalty in court. But why should anyone have to go through something like this if a defect as innocuous as a pothole was already known about?

While this scenario uses potholes as an example, there are other defects that are just as serious. They include:

• Excessive oil and/or gravel
• Failure to post signals or warning signs
• Malfunctioning warning signs or signals
• Insufficient or inadequate notification of shoulder changes
• Shoulder drop-offs
• Insufficient or inadequate notification of construction zones, hazardous weather conditions, or merging traffic

Any of these defects has the potential to cause an accident that result in injury or death. If you believe that your accident was the result of a defect that could or should have been known about, please contact us for a case evaluation. You need to be aware that the problem, once known about, may be quickly remedied and any evidence removed. Act quickly so that you can receive the compensation you deserve.