DUI Lawyers,,DUI Laws,Penalties

Archive for the ‘Personal Injury’ Category

Improving the services

When reviewing some of the websites that provide personal injury claim services, I happened to land on the Minnesota listing. Many of the services they were providing were excellent and they covered a wide range of personal injuries resulting from motorcycle or airplane accidents contact Minnesota motorcycle accident attorney & Minnesota airplane accident attorney respectively. What struck me as quite positive was the fact that some companies were providing some peripheral services beyond the basic role of a lawyer.

Where clients can receive free perks from their lawyer such as free tea or coffee, it makes life easier for those who are trying to make personal injury claims. Parking can be at a premium if you are visiting an office in Minnesota personal injury attorney. Therefore if your personal injury lawyers can provide you with free packing, then you will be reducing the costs that you have to pay when you make your personal injury claim.

Consultation fees can be charged legally in Minnesota but there are certain lawyer firms which provide this service for free. It is best not to ignore the offers that are being made because they all contribute to reducing the overall costs of the personal injury claim. Motorcycle and airplane accidents can greatly increase costs to the personal injury claim, so any help from the lawyer is most welcome.

Learn about DUI Laws and Court with a DUI Lawyer

After reading some weekly updates to learn more about different areas of DUI law, you might have some questions about how particular headlines could relate to your DUI case. Learn more about DUI laws in your state and the next steps to take in your case with a local DUI lawyer.

Our DUI attorneys at Beauchamp Law Office will provide you with first-rate legal representation that will allow you to go on living your day to day life, just as you were before your DUI or DWI arrest.

Every state has drunk driving laws. Most states refer to drunk driving as DUI; some states refer to drunk driving as DWI; still others refer to drunk driving as OUI, OWI, DUII, DWAI, OUIL or OMVI. But no matter what you call it, the consequences are potentially severe: jail, fines, loss of driver’s license, required ignition interlock devices, attendance at alcohol education programs, lectures given by MADD, SADD, or RADD, community service or freeway cleanup, increased car insurance rates, a criminal conviction, and more.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have per se laws defining it as a crime to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at or above a proscribed level, 0.08 percent. Forty-five states permit some offenders to drive only if their vehicles have been equipped with ignition interlocks. These devices analyze a driver’s breath and disable the ignition if the driver has been drinking. In 30 states, multiple offenders may forfeit vehicles that are driven while impaired by alcohol.

Each year, states enact stronger DUI laws and more severe drunk driving penalties. You could lose your driver’s license, be placed in jail and fined substantial fees. Your car insurance rates may rise and you could end up with a criminal conviction on your record that could impact your future and your employment opportunities.

Using a DUI attorney or DUI Lawyer who focuses on drunken driving defense could make a difference in the outcome of your case. This is why it is important to use arizonadui.com to locate a qualified DUI Lawyer in your area.

Arizonadui.com is a national directory of drunken driving defense attorneys. Have you been arrested for driving under the influence in Arizona? Contact our DUI attorneys today!

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A Yuba City, California driver can expect to be charged in connection with a drunk driving accident in which two of his close friends were killed.

The accident that occurred on Highway 99 near Live Oak, California on November 16th, is just one more reminder of the needless risks we take with the lives of those closest to us when we drink and drive. The driver in this car crash, 20-year-old Abdul Umar Hay, was returning from an all-night party with his friend Rafael Courtland Walker and Matthew Stephen Fair. Initial reports say that Hay must have dozed off at the wheel, causing the car to zip though a stop sign. A short while later, it was broadsided by a Ford Explorer. The impact of the crash caused Hay’s car to be pushed over into a nearby orchard. Both Walker and Fair were declared dead at the scene of the car accident. Both were 20-years-old.

Hay was the only survivor, and was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. He can now expect to be charged with felony vehicular manslaughter and felony driving under the influence causing injury. He doesn’t have a previous criminal record, but could be looking at a minimum of 6 months in prison, if found guilty.

The reactions of Walker’s and Fair’s parents were a study in contrast. Fair’s father remains indignant at the thought of a six-month sentence for the man he holds responsible for killing his son, while Walker’s mother, who is a member of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), insists that prison time is not an appropriate sentence. Last Friday, the families of the two victims took part in a memorial service that celebrated their lives.

You have to understand Richard Fair’s anger. Matthew was his only son and whether the two victims in the car had also consumed alcohol or not, the fact is that only Hay was in charge of driving them home. At 20, Hay is looking at an irredeemable stain on his record. This young man has a lifetime ahead of him, and has voluntarily cast a pall over his ambitions and his future through his negligent actions. Hay will have to deal with a lifetime of guilt for the deaths of his two friends.

Underage drinking continues to be a problem, and is cited as a factor in too many California drunk driving accidents for us to take any debate on lowering the drinking age seriously, as proposed by many college deans. What’s needed to tackle the problem is not lowering the drinking age, and giving every 18-year-old in California carte blanche with alcohol, but a joint effort by parents, college administrators as well as the community. In Yuba City, for instance, many parents including Walker’s mother, Jean Hammonds, believes that the area just doesn’t offer enough recreation opportunities for the young to let off steam. The result is underage drinking binges like the one that took place here, and the tragic drunk driving accidents that result from these.

 For far too long, drunk driving in South Africa has largely been ignored by the authorities and has claimed literally thousands of lives of both drivers and pedestrians over the years. This season, however, the powers-to-be have beefed up their presence on the roads with positively resounding results – the casualties on South African roads have virtually halved.

 

With new innovative technology that has the ability to trace not only the amount of alcohol consumed but the use of illegal drugs as well, it should only be a matter of time together with concerted efforts by all concerned before the statistics plummet even further.

 

Fifty percent of dead drivers are over the limit

 

Although road users are clearly delighted at the zero tolerance approach to drunk driving, startling statistics reveal that as many as 50% of drivers who die on our roads are indeed above the legal limit (0.05 grams per 100 ml).

 

Figures posted by the Arrive Alive campaign for 2002 and 2003 indicate a marked increase of drivers driving while under the influence of alcohol – from 1.80% to 3.10%. In 2002, it was the North West Province that had the most culprits with as many as 4% driving drunk, but in 2003 Mpumalanga had the dubious honour of topping the list with 4.68%.

 

Road users in South Africa are far more vulnerable to drunk driving at night and the statistics for 2002 and 2003 make a drastic leap between the hours of 18h00 to 24h00 when as many as 5.50% of all drivers were found to be driving drunk in ’02 and 5.08% in 2003.

 

Sadly, the death toll has increased exponentially over the years with its only beneficiaries being the overworked car accident attorneys. A study conducted by the Medical Research Council of South Africa in 2004 indicated that more than half of the 570 drivers killed in accidents were over the legal limit, an unacceptable figure by anyone’s standards.

 

A drunk driver or pedestrian is killed every 2 hours on SA roads

 

To put things into sharp perspective, a drunk driver or pedestrian is killed on South African roads every two hours (figures for 2004 – 2006), with the most victims claimed in the Gauteng province, closely followed by KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.

 

A good car accident lawyer will advise you to avoid the local taxis, especially at night, and for very good reason. In 2005 the taxi industry cracked all records by becoming the most dangerous transportation sector, with 7.70% of drivers driving drunk at night. Interestingly enough, the drivers who are least likely to drive while inebriated are truck drivers.

 

An El Cajon, California man will stand trial in a drunk driving accident case that occurred in July of this year. 35-year-old Shannon Shimp is charged with two counts each of murder, as well as gross vehicular manslaughter in the deaths of Ian Kinney and Joseph Warren Edwards.

The accident took place on Highway 78 on July 22nd. 19-year-old Tessa Medearis was in a Lexus with her boyfriend, 19-year-old Ian Kinney. A pickup driven by Shimp attempting to pass three vehicles skidded out of control, and into the westbound lanes. It crashed into the Lexus, which was also westbound, ending up on top of the car. Ian was killed instantly. Also killed was Shimp’s passenger, 58-year-old Joseph Warren Edwards. Both men died at the scene. Ian left behind his parents, while Edwards is survived by his wife.

Tessa suffered moderate injuries, and had to be extricated from the wreckage. After the accident, Shimp, who had suffered injuries in the car accident, was taken to the hospital for treatment of his injuries, and then arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. He was found to have been driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.19 when tests were conducted two hours after the car accident.

On Wednesday, Tessa appeared in court to testify about the car accident that killed her boyfriend. The Superior Court Judge ruled that there were grounds for a trial. There will be a hearing on December 3rd to decide on a date for the trial.

For the two families that lost the most in this tragedy, it seems like justice gets nearer every day. They have had to face the pain of losing their loved ones though no fault of their own.

California has a multi-pronged approach to dealing with the DUI menace. Not only does it have some of the most severe drunk driving laws in the country, but it has also had a significant amount of success in bringing down accident rates in the state, through better awareness programs for motorists, stronger checks and monitoring of drivers, as well as graduated licensing programs for teens that encourage them to be fully educated before they are allowed to drive on their own. The stringency of these laws has led to criticism from groups who believe that license suspensions and the focus on passing breath tests, are unfair. When we continue to have drivers like Shimp who think nothing of tanking up with alcohol that’s more than twice over the legal limit, it’s clear that these criticisms are baseless.

As an update to a story we carried last month in our California drunk driving accident lawyers blog, a former Stockton police trainee has been arraigned in an accident case that killed one of his passengers.

According to the Modesto Bee, 27-year-old Ryan Honnette has been arraigned on charges including driving with a blood alcohol percentage of 0.08 percent or more, driving under the influence of alcohol causing injury, and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. The accident that he has been charged in relation to took place on October 18th. Honnette was driving a Ford Excursion with four passengers inside. As he approached the Highway 132-Lake Junction, Honnette seems to have lost control of the vehicle. He tried to get the vehicle back on track, and over-corrected. The SUV rolled over. 25-year-old Matthew Miller, who was sitting in the back seat, was thrown out of the SUV. He suffered severe injuries, and was taken to the hospital where he died a while later. The other passengers in the car escaped with minor injuries. Honnette walked away without any injuries.

Honnette was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. His blood alcohol level was apparently 0.15 percent. He was just a few months away from finishing his police officer training, and was placed on paid leave as a result of the drunk driving accident. He is currently looking at a sentence of more than 10 years, if convicted.

This is a classic example of a man throwing his life and career away in one instant of lunacy. You would expect Honnette to be more aware of the dangers of drunk driving. As a police officer in training, he likely had access to DUI offenders who were looking at punishments ranging from license suspension to prison time. Yet, he chose to get behind the wheel too drunk to drive anyway. His blood alcohol levels were almost twice the legal limit, which makes you wonder what exactly he took home from his police training program.

This sort of behavior would be intolerable from an average motorist – from a man of the law, it’s completely unacceptable. Honnette deserves the strictest punishment he can get for his negligent behavior.