Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Posts Tagged ‘austin’

Police are seeking witnesses and information about a driver who fled after’ hitting a bicycle pedicab early Nov. 15 in the 500 block of West Fifth Street.

The operator of the pedicab and two passengers suffered injuries that were not life-threatening but required hospitalization at University Medical Center Brackenridge. The pedicab was eastbound on West Fifth when it was struck from behind by a white, early-1990s model Ford Bronco, according to police. The three victims were, thrown from the pedicab, and the driver of the Bronco fled south on Guadalupe Street, police said.

Anyone with information that would aid in the investigation of the collision is asked to call the Vehicular Homicide Unit at 974-5520.

An 18-year-old was arrested and charged with criminally negligent homicide after a fatal wreck in Lakeway on Saturday left another man dead. The charge is a state jail felony, which carries a maximum penalty of  two years if he is convicted.

Siji Alfredo Moreno was driving a Chevy pickup South on RM 620 about 8:30 a.m. when, witnesses told Lakeway police, Moreno’s pickup drifted across the center turn lane and into the northbound lane, according to an affidavit. Moreno’s truck struck a four-door Toyota Corolla that John Gregory was riding in, the affidavit said.

Gregory and his wife Carolyn, who was driving, were  flown to University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin; Moreno was taken in an ambulance, the affidavit says. John Gregory died from his injuries later that day. Carolyn Gregory was in intensive care Tuesday night. A passenger in the truck did not suffer serious injuries, the affidavit said.

Moreno was in the Travis County. Jail with bail set at $250,000. Lakeway police said the investigation into the wreck is ongoing.

An 18-wheeler struck and killed a pedestrian Tuesday morning on RM 620 near Quinlan Park Road.

The identity of the victim, who appeared to be about 30 years old, was not released, Travis County sheriff’s Capt. Art Cardenas said.

Witnesses told investigators they saw the man walking on the side of the road about 8 a.m., and the victim’s car was found parked nearby. It appears the man stepped into the roadway, where he was struck at highway speed by a westbound 18-wheeler, Cardenas said.

The truck driver stopped and notified authorities, he said, and no charges were filed in connection with the incident.

Austin City Council unanimously passed a ban last week on text messaging while driving, though a few speakers raised concerns that the ban  is too broad and urged council members to spend more time refining it.

The ban was supposed to take effect November 2; instead, it will take effect January 1. Council Member Mike Martinez suggested the delay, saying it will give the public and city commissions more time to review and suggest tweaks to the ordinance. He also asked city staffers to use the time to conduct an educational campaign about the ban.

Drivers will still be able to text when their vehicle is stopped. The ordinance will prohibit writing, sending or viewing electronic messages on a cell phone, BlackBerry, iPhone or any wireless communication device while driving. Electronic messages include text messages, e-mails, posts on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and “a command or request to access an Internet site.”

The ordinance exempts placing a phone call, using a navigation system or a wireless device permanently installed in a vehicle and texting in emergency situations. It also exempts public safety personnel who use wireless, devices while on duty. Drivers could still use a voice-activated mode on their wireless devices to send messages.

Violations will be Class C misdemeanors, which carry a fine of up to $500 and can be appealed in Municipal Court. The penalty could be increased if a driver is caught engaging in another dangerous driving behavior, such as speeding.

Debbie Russell of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union questioned why public safety employees would be exempt, saying texting while driving poses the same risks for them. She added that the ban could be tough to enforce and may lead to intrusive searches of wireless devices as police or prosecutors gather evidence against violators.

Roel Castillo, 42, died about 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning when Michael Filius, 50, ran a red light at the intersection of U.S. 183 and Lakeline Boulevard.

Filius is charged with intoxicated manslaughter in the accident with bail set at $250,000 in Williamson County.

Filius was driving a red Ford pickup heading west on Lakeline when he ran the red light and hit the white Plymouth sedan on the driver’s side.

It was the 52nd traffic fatality in Austin this year.

Austin City Council members will vote next week on an ordinance that would prohibit text messaging while driving. If approved, it might be the first such citywide texting ban in Texas, officials said.

Drivers could still text while a vehicle is stopped. But the ordinance would ban writing, sending or viewing electronic messages on a cell phone, BlackBerry, iPhone or any other wireless communication device while driving. Electronic messages would include text messages, e-mails, posts on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and “a command or request to access an Internet site,” according to a draft of the ordinance.

The ban would exempt the use of navigational systems or wireless devices permanently installed in a vehicle; texting because a life is in danger or to report a traffic accident or a medical emergency or to prevent a crime; and police officers, firefighters and paramedics who use wireless devices on duty.

A report released in July by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that when truck drivers texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater.

A violation would be a Class C misdemeanor, which carries a fine of up to $500 and can be appealed in Municipal Court. That penalty could increase if a driver is texting and committing other traffic violations, such as speeding.

The council unanimously approved the idea of a ban in August, but city staffers needed time to write actual rules. If council members pass the ordinance Oct. 22, it would take effect about a month later.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have texting-while-driving bans. A state law that took effect in Texas last month prohibits cell phone use in school zones. Austin and several other area cities, including Pflugerville, Round Rock and San Marcos, have erected signs and are enforcing that law, though some other cities have questioned whether they must enforce it.

The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said a texting ban would be redundant because laws already exist that prohibit dangerous driving behaviors. A public awareness campaign about the risks of texting while driving would be more effective, said Debbie Russell, president of the Central Texas chapter of the ACLU of Texas. The ban could also be tough to enforce, she said.

Donald Baker, commander of the Austin Police Department’s highway enforcement division, said officers will use common sense to enforce the law and look for drivers who are obviously texting. Whether a driver was texting because of an emergency will be up to the officer’s discretion, he said.

Officers already have the authority to ticket drivers for a variety of dangerous behaviors, from speeding to aggressively changing lanes to following a vehicle too closely, Baker said. In some cases, those behaviors are caused by drivers absorbed in texting, he said.

Another safety-related ordinance up for a vote Oct. 22 would require a three-foot distance between vehicles and “vulnerable road users,” such as cyclists, pedestrians and people in wheelchairs. An existing state law requires
safe driving distance between vehicles and bicycles but does not specify how far apart they must be.

City Council members voted Thursday to settle for $250,000 a lawsuit brought by two men who were struck in 2006 by an Austin police officer’s car while they were changing a flat tire.

The money will be used to cover medical expenses and be divided between Marvin Clayborne and Stephan Center, both of whom were injured when officer David Martin’s car hit their car, city officials said.

Clayborne, who suffered a leg injury and had to have a hip replaced, will get $150,000, said Anne Morgan, chief of litigation for the city. Center had a broken ankle and a head injury and will get $100,000 for his injuries and lost wages.

“I think it is a fair settlement,” Morgan said. “It was an accident, and we are sorry that it happened.”

According to a lawsuit that the men filed in April 2008, Clayborne had gone to help his son change a flat tire on a ramp connecting Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and U.S. 183.

Clayborne and Center, his nephew, remained with the car while his son went to get a spare tire from a nearby apartment.

The men stood beside the rear of the car, which had its hazard lights flashing, and waved their arms to get the attention of passing motorists, the lawsuit said.

“Most of the vehicles slowed down as they approached,” the suit said.
The suit said that Martin drove at a high rate of speed without a siren and without his emergency lights, and that Clayborne and Center were unable to get his attention. Martin was distracted by the on-board computer in his patrol car and failed to show adequate attention, according to the suit.

Martin was not disciplined in the incident.

Morgan said that such six-figure settlements are rare but that, the city rarely has such claims against it in personal injury cases.

The Texas Medical Board sanctioned six Austin-area doctors, including a Marble Falls psychiatrist who the board said had a sexual relationship with a recent patient with a history of childhood sexual abuse and then violated the patient’s confidentiality by telling his fiancee. The fiancée called the patient and insulted her, according to the board’s order.

Dr. Barlow Smith, 79, of Marble Falls was among the 131 doctors the board sanctioned in August, a record number exceeding the previous high of 99 sanctions in August 2006, board spokeswoman Jill Wiggins said. She attributed the rise to an increase in complaints.

Smith’s lawyer, Nina Willis, said Smith was not disciplined for sexual misconduct but only for breaching patient confidentiality. She said he should be praised for a stellar 45-year career and not be written about because of a “minor disciplinary action.”

Wiggins said the board reprimanded Smith for two violations: the confidentiality breach and unprofessional conduct for having sex with a recent patient. Doctors have more power in sexual relationships with patients, which is a reason such involvement is forbidden, Wiggins said. Although the patient had stopped seeing Smith, she was in his care recently enough that the board found a violation of its rules and the health and safety code, Wiggins said.

In addition to the reprimand, the board fined Smith $3,000 and ordered him to take a professional boundaries course.

The board also ordered that:

• Psychiatrist Sergio H. Luna of Austin be monitored by another doctor for a year and take courses in record keeping, child psychiatry and prescribing. The order said he failed to document sufficiently the justification for medications he prescribed to a 7-year-old boy. Neither Luna nor his lawyer returned a call.
• Family practice doctor Chad F. Babcock of Austin pay a $2,000 fine and take courses in ethics and professional boundaries after determining that he treated and prescribed drugs to a friend without keeping adequate records or establishing a professional relationship. Lawyer Tony Cobos said Babcock acted out of compassion to help an uninsured friend and did no harm.
• Family practice doctor Scott Patterson Liggett of Marble Falls take courses in record keeping, diabetes treatment and communicating for not checking a diabetic patient’s blood sugar while at the office. The patient went to the emergency room the next day and was hospitalized for two days, an outcome that might have occurred anyway, the order said. Neither Liggett nor his lawyer returned calls.
• San Marcos psychiatrist Theodore Dake Jr. take a record-keeping course for failing to keep adequate records on a patient. “This was a very minor infraction, and I had to hire an attorney and an expert witness that cost me nearly $25,000,” he said.
• Internal medicine doctor David Weeks of Austin take a record-keeping course because he failed to sufficiently document justification for billing a patient for services that went beyond preventative care. Weeks, who declined to comment, refunded the charges.

A 23-year-old Austin man who was charged with murder after a fatal wreck Monday had been convicted in three drunken driving cases and had gotten his license back just over a month ago, according to his arrest affidavit and court documents.

Jaime Bonilla Alvarado, who also goes by Donnie Noel Bonilla, was charged with first-degree murder in the fatal wreck.

His three previous drunken driving offenses occurred in 2006 and 2007 in Travis County and were resolved at the same time.

Alvarado received a sentence of 80 days in jail for the three offenses and lost his driver’s license for one year. According to court documents, he was to receive his license back July 22.

A little more than a month later, Alvarado caused a collision that killed 64- year-old Robert Joel Benn, according to the arrest affidavit.

Leading up to the crash Monday night, a police officer saw Alvarado driving dangerously in his Lincoln Navigator in East Austin. While following him, the officer reported that Alvarado ran several red lights and threw two glass bottles with liquid in them out of the window.

At the intersection of Airport Boulevard and Bolm Road, police said, Alvarado ran a red light and struck Benn’s vehicle. Benn had just arrived in Austin from Tennessee on business.

Alvarado faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Karen Housewright, the state director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said that after three drunken driving offenses, Alvarado had proven himself to be irresponsible and that more should have been done to prevent him from driving.

“Here’s a guy who shouldn’t have been on the road,” Housewright said.

Under state law, a person’s third drunken driving conviction makes the offense a third-degree felony, punishable by two to 10 years in prison.

After the second offense, state law calls for a breath-analyzing device to be installed in a person’s vehicle to inhibit the engine from starting if the person has been drinking. It was unclear whether Alvarado’s vehicle had such a device, which is usually required for a year once the driver’s license is reinstated.

“We’ll never know what we could have done to prevent this fatality from occurring,” Housewright said. “It’s just so appalling that somebody with three prior (convictions) was driving at all.”

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said Alvarado is an example of why the department has taken an aggressive stance against drunken driving.
“The death of Mr. Benn — a man who on the day his grandchild was born his life was violently taken away,” Acevedo said. “That family needs justice, and we need to ensure that this defendant, who has continued to put people in this city and county at risk, is locked away.”

Alvarado was being held in the Travis County Jail on Thursday evening, with bail set at $760,000. He also has been charged with evading arrest or detention with a vehicle, a state jail felony, and also was being held on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer.

Austin police have filed murder charges against a 23-year-old man in connection with a fatal collision Monday at Airport Boulevard and Bohn Road.

Jaime Bonilla Alvarado could face up to life in prison if convicted on the first-degree felony charges.

Robert Joel Benn, 64, who had come to Austin from Tennessee on business, died after his rental car was struck by a “Lincoln Navigator. Police said officers were attempting to pull over the Navigator on suspicion that the driver was intoxicated, but the driver accelerated and ran a red light, striking Benn’s vehicle.