Senate Unsafe driving

Now most of us don't drive drunk. But we all know someone who has or worse. My concern though is this type of behavior I so bad yet when you drive drunk you can still sue everyone. If anyone has followed General Motors situation recently they had several deaths from a bad ignition switch. Yet most of the deaths occurred while people were drunk. Most didn't even have seat belts on. Yet they get the families who are older and don't even live with them get to reap millions of dollars cause their family member got drunk in a GM. We all pay for their behavior. My question is should you or your relatives be able to benefit from your bad behavior? Should your unsafe driving be rewarded with money cause you got hurt. Should parents whose kids are over the age of 18 be able to sue because they are a relative. Even though the parents no longer support the child.

 

Uh, according to its own internal memos GM was making faulty vehicles. They're not free of blame just because people are stupid enough to drive drunk or without seatbelts (I really have no idea if you're correct about that part).

 

Oh no there are many reasons why airbags don't deploy. In GMs case it was the ignition switch getting pushed into the accessory position at the very last minute. But with or without airbags, seat belts save lives. Trust me it burns me up to see customers come in with the seat belt already locked because they refuse to put one on. They lock them and then sit in front to make a cop think they have it on. Unsafe speed can kill anyone. Just recently there was a pair from NYC speeding in the Catskills and slid off the road and hit a tree and caught fire. Who was responsible, not Ferrari but the driver. Yet I am sure the lawyers will blame Ferrari cause they make more money that way.

 

I've walked home drunk before; don't know how fast I was going.

 

What beezel. What.

 

Beezel, it is good of you to support personal responsibility by complaining how General Motors should have been allowed to blame someone else for their mistakes.

 

You can't design around stupidity. Ever seen a car split in two cause of drunk driving. Seen it a few times after they hit a tree so hard it rips the vehicle in two. GM might be liable but drunk driving put them there in the first place. No one should benefit from it. I bet it might save a few lives if people knew that bad decisions get them nothing. No matter who is at fault.

 

Um.... are you drunk right now?

 

So you're saying it should be legal to intentionally make vehicles more unsafe in the hopes that some people who die as a result will "learn a lesson" about bad choices? Where does that logic stop? I bet some people would drive more slowly and carefully if they knew cars didn't have seat belts, and they'd go flying through the windshield in the event of an accident. Should we do that, too?

 

Uhh ... what?

 

Beezel, I'm not familalr with the GM cases you are talking about but generally when it comes to liability there is always a concept of 'contributory negligence' which has to be considered and also proportionate liability where the ultimate cause of the loss or damage has multiple sources. So in the case of a drunk driver who gets killed because he crashes the car, you have to look at what was the effective cause of the death, not necessarily the crash. If the effective cause was the failure of the airbags to deploy then clearly GM will be liable for the death because 'but for' the failure of the airbags to deploy, the death would not have occurred. The measure of damages would most likely be reduced to take into account the contributory negligence on the part of the drunk driver, but at the end of the day, the car was defective and so GM is liable.

 

It should be illegal for emergency rooms to treat heart attacks because then people would smoke less, exercise more, and eat more healthy.

 

Shut up LOH. Nobody asked for your legal expertise. Someone's having a drunken everyman rant about something they barely understand and you have to ruin it with your LEARNIN' and your FACTS. Is this not 'Murica? Does not beezelbub have a right to free speech without some goddam communist Islam Eurotrash freedom hater interrupting with facts, nuance, and understanding?

 

Beezel logic. Don't try to understand, you'll just get a migraine.

 

googoo car will fix this. you could be passed out in the front seat, vomit all over the front of your shirt with liquor bottles rolling all around the floor and googoo car will get you to where you need to be, safely!

 

What. What do you want.

 

In these specific cases, there is also the added fact that when the government accepted GM's bankruptcy and reorganization 4 years ago, all of GM's liability was discharged. So, with any example of defective parts installed prior to that time, GM is immune. I don't think anyone could craft a law which applied to the period before the reorganization, but I'm not positive. I suppose it would require some sort of Supreme Court ruling to undo.

 

I don't know the specifics Mr44. I would find it hard to believe that any reorganization could preclude liability for defects which would result in zero avenues of compensation for a consumer who died or suffered catastrophic injuries as a result of a defect. I can imagine immunity from certain debts and financial obligations (which would screw creditors) but wiping out liability for defects which killed or injured consumers? There would have to be recourse somewhere surely.

 

Don't make me pull out my "insurance person" hat here and do an "Obi-Wan" (lecture).

Short version: GM doesn't get out of liability if they sold unsafe cars, assuming the unsafe condition contributed to or caused the accident. Should a drunk driver fall asleep while driving a vehicle an attorney might argue in court (cuz that's where a lot of cases end up) that the driver caused the accident, but the unsafe condition of the car made an "accident" a "fatality accident."

Disclaimer: not a lawyer, some states go with contributory negligence and some via other methods.

fun anecdote, not sure if true or not: unnamed insurance company has been "infamous" in the industry for some time as trying the "sure, we ran a red light, but in doing so, you entered that same intersection and hit us and so it's your fault."

 

I drive all the time and I see people do the dumbest things on the road.

Prius drivers are the worst.

 

This...although it has been suggested that the higher prevalence of heart disease and obesity in Western society is precisely because we've gotten a lot better at saving people from death by heart attack. People (ir?)rationally reason that medical science is likely to save their lives if they do suffer an ischaemic event, so they have less economic incentive to stop the unhealthy habits that lead to it.

 

It was part of the reorganization. The defective ignition parts DG was referring to were all installed prior to the reorganization. When the government approved GM's Chpt 11 (and this is neither here nor there because I know you don't care, but this was signed by the current administration, so the previous Prez can't be blamed), any pre-existing product liability was wiped out. Now, this wouldn't apply to any parts installed after 2010, but it was something that Mary Barra (GM's CEO) brought up during the hearings that took place not too long ago.

 

Don't get me wrong, GM screwed up. Well Gregorio did, that was the engineer that approved of the part and the part revision in the first place. But no person should fully benefit from unsafe driving. What if one of those vehicles affected went off the road into a bridge into the water. No one would have questioned anything because the victims would have drowned. If you think what GM did was bad I have seen worse. In fact in 03 in the city I used to live in, two detectives supposedly went to a strip club while on the job to go undercover. Both got massively drunk and the pair drove home together. They drove off the road and both were killed. The widows sued the city. They won. Why cause it was on the job accident and no one should have told them not to drive drunk. These were police officers on the job. Yet if they drink on the job there relatives can get all sorts of money cause they made poor decisions.
Honestly, any decision where a product failed should have a decision on the responsibility of the individual injured. If they drove drunk and the airbags failed to deploy then half of the decision should go against the driver. Therefore his relatives should receive half the money. In fact they should have to pay their own attorney's fees since they were responsible for the accident in the first place. If someone was driving in the snow and they hit a patch of ice, ok its not their fault and no blame should be placed on them.

Proper blame must be placed and therefore the windfall relatives get from a product defect should be minimalized so that people can understand that drunk driving will affect them in other ways as well. The percentage of the money that is the responsibility of the drunk driver should go to the public as a means to ensure the company is liable for their product defect and that the public benefits from it. Not a bunch of whiney money grubbing relatives.
Honestly the decision of responsibility should be made by the state. If at the time of the death the coroner rules that the person was legally drunk and went off the road and the accident killed them then they should be held responsible. That way any settlement offer or judgment will be correctly dispersed. It gives people who decide to do perform unsafe driving one more reason to not do it.

So if a company is held 2 million for a product defect and a person is drunk, 50 percent liability goes to the drunk person and fifty percent to the company.
That means that the victims relative's will get 1 million and the public gets 1 million. Perhaps the money can go to special non profits to fight drunk driving or some other non profits.

 

I suggest a non-profit for victims of brain damage.