Car Crashes into House and Kills Man, but Is It an Accident?
On behalf of Brown & Crouppen, P.C. posted in Motor Vehicle Accident on Monday, January 14, 2013
A full-size SUV crashed into the living room of a man’s house, outside of St. Louis, in Godfrey Sunday night, trapping him underneath the vehicle and killing him. Police had not released any details concerning the driver or the speed the vehicle was moving when it struck the house, but a photo on the Post-Dispatch website showed a hole in the front of the house large enough to drive a vehicle through.
Emergency personal noted the vehicle went over the porch, through the living room and into the bedroom where they found it when they arrived on the scene after a 911 call. The first responders indicated they were unsure at first if anyone had been in the house when it was struck by the car crash.
They found the man as the removed the debris and furniture from under the SUV. The driver was not in the vehicle when the sheriff arrived and he was later tracked down at a bar. A neighbor complained in the Post-Dispatch that the road curves near the house and “We’ve had people miss that turn before and wipe out and hit our car.”
People often think of crashes like this as “accidents,” just some random event that “happens.” What often happens is road use can gradually change over time and a city or county fails to properly respond to the change.
If vehicles regularly speed on the street and sometimes miss the curve, it becomes reasonably foreseeable that a crash will occur. At that point, it is no longer an accident, but instead, negligence.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Godfrey man dies when SUV smashes into his home,” Kim Bell, January 14, 2013