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Articles Posted in Pedestrian Accident

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No personal injury case is ever the same.

Some may be similar; or may share similar characteristics. But, no two personal injury cases are never the same.

There are so many variables which can change a personal injury case. These variables are seemingly infinite. Here are a few which personal injury lawyers and Courts have to consider:

  • The age of the Plaintiff. This impacts his/her future income calculation, future care, and life expectancy
  • The way the accident happened
  • The policy limits relating to the accident
  • The availability of collateral benefits to a Plaintiff
  • How much the Plaintiff was earning (or not), in the years before the accident
  • The Plaintiff’s pre-accident and post accident health, along with what they did (or didn’t do) to get better
  • How the Plaintiff, and/or Defendant presented at Examination for Discovery
  • If any surveillance has been taken of the Plaintiff; and if so; what that surveillance showed, or didn’t show
  • The status of a Plaintiff’s accident benefit case (where available)
  • What the Defence Medical Reports say vs. what the Plaintiff’s expert reports say
  • The information contained in the clinical notes and records
  • Is the family doctor supportive (or not) to the Plaintiff’s case
  • Are there any causation issues with respect to the accident related injuries
  • Are the injuries subjective or objective. If the injuries are subjective, is the Plaintiff credible, believable and/or likeable
  • Will the case be proceeding by way of Judge alone, or in front of a Jury
  • Special considerations when it comes to liability (i.e. suing a government, municipality vs. suing a private citizen)
  • In the case of a motor vehicle accident; are the threshold and deductible live issues for the case

And the list goes on and on.

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Changes in seasons means changes in behaviour and patterns. Now that we are experiencing some “warmer” weather; we are seeing more people out and about. And I use the term “warmer” rather loosely. We aren’t seeing negative temperatures anymore and there isn’t any snow, ice, or slush on the ground. Here are a few of the trends that we see in personal injury law as the temperatures begin to heat up.

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We aren’t tone deaf at the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog.

Back to School is around the corner. But Back to School 2021 in the midst of a looming 4th wave during the Global Pandemic brings a new unprecedented set of worries and anxieties for parents, teachers and students. The large boogey man in the room is the COVID-19 Delta variant which is more transmissible than it’s predecessors.

Children under the age of 11 aren’t vaccinated; so what do you do?

You can keep the kids at home and continue with online learning at the risk of isolating kids, hurting not only their education but also their mental health.

Or, you can send the kids back to school and hope for the best.

Whatever option you select is your decision to make. Nobody can tell you that it’s right, or wrong. These are unprecedented times which we aren’t accustomed to. No matter how much we try to tell ourselves that “this is the new normal“; there’s certainly nothing normal about it.

Now that the COVID-19 Delta variant is out of the way, we can talk about what to expect the first day after Labour Day once schools open up.

For starters you will see an increase in pedestrian, bike and vehicle traffic on the roads. More cars, more buses, more mini vans, more people taking kids to and from school. This means we all need to be a little bit more careful getting to where we need to go. That stands for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists alike.

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A bad police report and a poor police investigation can be very harmful to an injured Plaintiff in personal injury cases.

In order for a Plaintiff’s personal injury case to succeed, the Plaintiff must establish that the Defendant was negligent (at fault) for the accident in question.

No fault against the other driver? No tort claim.

Regardless of how seriously injured the Plaintiff is; if the Plaintiff cannot establish fault against the other driver, they won’t have a successful tort claim. That’s not to say that they won’t have a successful accident benefit claim. Accident benefit claims are not subject to same the fault rules which we see in tort cases.

All too often, our office has seen police investigations in Ontario which frankly aren’t done properly. That’s not to say that all police investigations into motor vehicle accidents fall short. One bad apple (or a few bad apples) can certainly spoil the bunch.

There is no doubt that police resources are spread thin. Large jurisdictions like Toronto have a lot of ground to cover. Other more rural jurisdictions may not have ample resources. But the consequences of not getting the job done properly, or at all, can be devastating to a personal injury case.

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September means back to school time. It can also mean back to work time for many adults who have take a summer vacation. That means our commutes are more crowded on the roads. Increased volumes of motorists, pedestrians and cyclists are imminent.

The City of Toronto is in the midst of its Vision Zero comprehensive safety plan to reduce the number of fatality claims and serious injury claims on Toronto streets to ZERO. This is a bold objective. Starting in 2017 and lasting until 2021, Vision Zero believes that serious accident claims are preventable and ought to be totally eliminated.

I’ve not seen very much on Toronto streets when it comes to eliminating pedestrian/bike/car accidents on city streets. Attempts at segregated bike lanes ebb and flow depending on which way City Counsel is feeling that day. Increasing or decreasing speed limits, adding more (or less) red light cameras, better sequencing of traffic lights has been discussed and implemented to some form or extent.

But I would like to share with you a recent observation from right around the block from our Toronto Office near the busy corner of Yonge and Sheppard.

Directly across the street from Goldfinger Injury Lawyers’ Toronto Office is the Catholic District School Board. It’s a busy place, rumbling with students, parents, teachers, administrators etc. Within walking distance are a number of Catholic, Public and Private Schools as well. Right across the street are twin buildings which play host to the Small Claims Courts, Family Courts, OHIP Offices, ODSP Offices, Landlord Tenant Tribunal, accounting offices, law firms, and other professional offices. Across the street in the other direction are 4 high rise condominiums, the entrance to the Yonge/Sheppard Subway, a bustling mall with shops and a food court, along with other professional offices.

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If you’ve been involved in a serious car accident, the police will generally come out to investigate the accident and lay charges on the at fault driver, if necessary.

At the scene of the car accident, police officers are required to take notes. Some officers notes are more detailed (and legible) than others. The police officers may also prepare an accident report at the scene of the collision, or back at the station. Those officers may (or may not) give you a copy of the accident report on the scene. Or, it may be provided to you at a later date (at a charge).

The motor vehicle accident report, or the police report as it’s commonly called, is the building block for proving liability in any personal injury car accident case.

This is the starting point for personal injury lawyers, insurers, defence lawyers and judges to understand how the accident happened.

The police report provides what’s supposed to be an objective synopsis of what happened.

Let me be perfectly clear. Sometimes the police don’t get it right. Their intentions are in the right place, but we are all human and we make errors. It happens.

Unfortunately, when these errors in reporting the collision happen, it can have a significant impact on the personal injury case.

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It’s that time of year again. Halloween! I loved Halloween as a kid, and still do! The idea of going door to door and getting free candy still astonishes me. It can bring a community/neighbourhood closer together.

Each year I put out a blog post regarding Halloween safety tips, and this year is no exception. The only caveat is that I’m getting out this installment of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog out a bit later than I would have liked; but emergencies have a tendency of popping up and ruining well intentioned plans.

One of the common threads of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog around this time, is that my law firm sees a spike in calls post Halloween related to pedestrian/car accidents (essentially trick or treating accidents).

I had no scientific data to back up my claims other than the internal call tallies we keep at my law firm regarding the nature and circumstances of the calls coming in year after year around this time.

But UBC issued a proper scientific road study finding a 43 per cent higher risk of pedestrian deaths on Halloween night than on other nights near that date. Kids aged 4 to 8 faced the highest risks in the new study: There were 55 Halloween deaths in this age range compared with just 11 on control days. Deaths peaked near dusk, around 6 p.m.

The study was based on four decades of U.S. traffic data, including 608 pedestrian deaths on 42 Halloweens. I found this study in the Owen Sound Sun Times through the Associated Press. A link to the Owen Sound Sun Times article can be found here. More on Owen Sound a bit later, but very quickly, thanks for all of the calls coming in from Owen Sound and Bruce-Grey County. We are enthusiastic to enter the market and look forward to serving the community as best we can.

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An Ontario MPP’s private member’s bill proposed that pedestrians not paying attention to where or how they are walking, could be fined up to $50 for distracted walking.

It’s called the “Phones Down, Heads Up Act” and was tabled by Toronto MPP Yves Baker of Etobicoke Centre.

Baker’s bill would ban people from looking at their phones or electronic devices when crossing roads, with an initial $50 fine for the first offence, $75 for the second and up to $125 for the third. Exceptions would include pedestrians making an emergency call or if they began speaking on the phone before stepping into the crosswalk (this would be difficult to prove).

In Ontario, the OPP attributed 65 deaths in 2016 to distracted driving, which is more than impaired driving, speeding or not wearing a seat belt. While this is not distracted walking, it’s certainly along the same lines. In 2016, 42 pedestrians were killed on Toronto’s streets, the most since 2002.

Here are Goldfinger Injury Lawyers, we applaud the “Phones Down, Heads Up Act” as too often, we see people taking those so called “zombie walks” without paying attention to where they are going, or what they’re doing.

But, we have a lot of questions about the new Act, which are explored in greater detail below.

Please keep in mind that distracted walking does not only involve accidents involving pedestrians, and cars, bikes or other motorized vehicles.

People walk in to pot holes or cracks or lose their footing on account of not paying attention to where they are walking .

People walk in to lamp posts, doors, walls, guard rails, other pedestrians, parked cars and fall down stairs because they are not paying attention to where they are walking.

People slip on ice or other slick surfaces because they aren’t paying attention to where they’re walking.

You have all seen the YouTube clips before of ridiculous distracted walking incidents. Our personal injury lawyers field some of those calls.

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Happy New Year to all of the readers of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog! We hope that the upcoming new year brings you  health, happiness and prosperity. We also want to thank all of our readers for their excellent comments, likes and shares. 2015 was a banner year for Goldfinger Injury Lawyers and the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog and we hope to build upon that success in 2016.

What’s new for 2016? Well, Ontario has a set of laws which have just kicked in pursuant to the aptly named “Making Ontario’s Roads Safer Act“. As an aside, Ontario along with other jurisdictions have a tendency of giving grandiose names to acts which make the public think that they are not only AMAZING, but also do what they say they do. The reality is that within these incredibly named acts, there are sometimes provisions which have little or nothing to do with the name of the Act as well. Sometimes, it’s a way for legislature to pass laws under the rug, without the public or media catching on. We often see this with car insurance and the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule and the Insurance Act.

In any event, the Making Ontario’s Roads Safer Act is a fantastic name for a set of laws. Whether or not it will do what it purports to do is still up in the air.

Here’s what you need to know:

There are increased fines for violations at crosswalks, school crossings, and pedestrian crossings. Those fines are DOUBLED in Community Safety zones. Drivers will be fined $150-$500 along with 3 demerit points for such offences.

Staring January 1, 2016, drivers and CYCLISTS must STOP and yield the entire road to pedestrians at pedestrian crossovers, and at school crossings where  there is a crossing guard displaying a school crossing stop sign. These pedestrian crossovers are identified with specific signs, road markings and lights. The new rules do NOT apply to pedestrian crosswalks at intersections with stop signs or traffic signals, unless a school guard is present.

The Making Ontario’s Roads Safer Act also gives municipalities the power to install new types of pedestrian crossings on low speed, low volume roads in addition to existing crossovers (think more speed bump crossings in a sub-division).

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Around this time of the year, our law firm receives a noticeable spike in pedestrian collision claims. These are the sort of cases where somebody is trying to cross the street (on foot), and they get hit by a car, or some other sort of motor vehicle (even a bike).

What explains the spike is anybody’s guess. But, it would make sense that near the end of October we get less daylight, making visibility more difficult for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike. We also have some worse weather which can lead to visibility issues as well. And who can forget the Halloween Holiday, whereby residential streets are flooded with trick or treaters in full blown costume.

At the time of preparing the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog Post, at least 12 pedestrians were hit by cars around the General Toronto Area during the commuting periods. Some new outlets have the number as high as 16 pedestrian collisions throughout the course of the day. That’ a lot! Police are attributing this spike to poor visibility on account of decreased daylight and bad weather. This was one of the first days of the fall where the weather was rather cold, damp and dark.

Scary because Halloween is right around the corner and you get the sneaking suspicion that people can’t drive safely anymore? Scary because you get the feeling that motorists don’t have respect for other motorists, cyclists or pedestrians? I know the feeling. Adding insult to injury is that the penalties handed out by our Courts following a breach of the Highway Traffic Act are akin to slaps on the wrist. A few demerit points, a license suspension, a fine. None of these penalties are proportional to the devastating impact a serious car accident can have on an innocent accident victim and their family.

There are a lot of young parents who read the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog. Having a young family of my own, I want to share with you some of Goldfinger Injury Lawyers’s top tips on how to keep Halloween safe when you’re outside trick or treating this holiday season. If the recent trend of motorists colliding with pedestrians continues, I’m certain you can use these tips. I’ll do my best to give you some out of the box tips you may not have even thought of aside from the usual ones you may see in other media online.

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