The woman, Jessica Howe, was charged today with criminal vehicular homicide in Anoka County.

A reconstruction of the accident determined that Howe was driving 55 miles per hour when the speed limit was 40. According to the accident report, Howe’s car left no skid marks, meaning she did not even try to stop, which makes sense since she said she was looking for her cell phone.

According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety:

Each year in Minnesota, distracted or inattentive driving is a factor in one in four crashes, resulting in at least 70 deaths and 9,000 serious injuries. The Office of Traffic Safety estimates these numbers are vastly underreported due to law enforcement’s challenge in determining distraction as a crash factor.

Talking on a cell phone while driving is an especially dangerous form of driver distraction. A few states have made it illegal to use a cell phone while driving.  In Minnesota, texting while driving is prohibited but talking on a cell phone while driving is still not illegal with a few exceptions.  It is time to ban cell phone use while driving.

For more information, please see “Accident Caused by a Cell Phone.”

Altura, Minnesota car accident: Three teenage girls died on County Rd. 27 on April 23 and a fourth was injured. The girls were found in a ditch where their pickup truck had overturned.  Authorities told local news sources that it did not seem as if the girls were wearing seat belts.

Onamia, Minnesota car accident: A teenage girl was killed at the intersection of Hwy 27 and Hwy 169 Saturday night when her vehicle crossed Highway 169 while she was traveling eastbound on 27. She had stopped at a stopsign and proceeded into the intersection when a Jeep Grand Cherokee struck her Chevrolet Lumina broadside.

Cambridge, Minnesota car accident: In the deadliest car wreck of the three-day period, six people died near County Road 70 on Highway 95 early Sunday morning. The driver, a 16-year-old girl who reportedly had just gotten her license weeks prior, was the only survivor. The four passengers in the Pontiac Grand Am were killed when the car struck an oncoming SUV head-on. The two men in the SUV were killed in the head-on collision. News sources report alcohol was involved.

Bloomington, Minnesota car accident: A 23-year-old Burnsville woman was killed when her Honda hit a bridge pillar at high speed near the intersection of Interstate 494 and Interstate 35W.

Minnesota car accident attorneys at Pritzker Olsen law firm investigate the circumstances surrounding fatal car accidents and car accident injuries on behalf of victims and their families. Our attorneys learn as much as they can about their clients’ cases so they can obtain the maximum car crash settlement possible. A car accident settlement in a fatal accident case could include:

• Funeral expenses
• Medical expenses
• Potential earnings
• Loss of advice, comfort, assistance, protection, counsel and society
• Punitive damages against the defendant if the defendants actions show deliberate disregard of others’ rights or safety.

News sources:

http://www.winonadailynews.com/news/local/article_31e11456-501a-11df-a00d-001cc4c002e0.html

http://www.brainerddispatch.com/stories/042610/new_20100426023.shtml

http://www.startribune.com/local/north/92041709.html?page=2&c=y

“Families are grieving today and looking for answers,” stated Attorney Fred Pritzker, who has won millions of dollars for families who lost loved ones in commercial truck accidents.  “When a semi truck crashes into another vehicle, the result is usually serious injury and death.  What we need to find out in this case is how fast the beer truck was going, whether the driver was distracted and how much sleep the driver had.  It can take a lot of digging to find the answers.”

Pritzker Olsen attorneys Fred Pritzker and Eric Hageman recently obtained a hard-fought $2,560,000 semi truck accident settlement for a husband and wife whose car was hit from behind by the semi.  To win the case, our Minneapolis, MN law firm hired an expert to make a video reconstruction of the accident.

“The video reconstruction of the accident was the winning element of our case,” stated Pritzker. “Because our law firm is successful, we have the money needed to take on trucking companies and win.  The video in this case cost $25,000, but we won over $2 million dollars.”

Attorney Fred Pritzker is listed in the current edition of The Best Lawyers in America.  To contact him, please call 1-888-377-8900 (TOLL FREE) or submit our online form for a free consultation.

Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, we all learned more about the accident.  Tomorrow the Minnesota State Patrol will probably post more names.  We have a few from news reports.  Names are important because they give a tragedy a face.  Names aren’t just statistics.

One of the passengers on the bus was Bill Kesler, who was related to almost half of the other passengers.  Here is what the Star Tribune wrote about him:

On the way home from an Iowa casino, Bill Kesler found out how lucky he really is.

The Rochester man walked away from a bus crash and rollover Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 90 near Austin. Two people aboard were killed, and the 21 others aboard were hurt, three of them critically.

Most of the passengers on board were older adults. Some were ejected as the bus rolled, a State Patrol spokesman said.

Kesler, 64, and his wife were part of a group of 10 coming back from the Diamond Jo Casino, off Interstate 35 near the Iowa-Minnesota border. With them: her four sisters and their husbands.

“We don’t even know what happened,” said Kesler. “It happened so fast. I was sitting toward the back, and the next thing I knew, the bus went over the median and flipped.”

Mr. Kesler walked away, but he has injuries, and they may be worse than he thinks.  Some brain injuries take days or weeks to manifest.

We have had clients tell us they did not realize how injured they were and would have settled for inadequate amounts if they had not come to us.

We have recently recovered money for families in several wrongful death cases involving elderly people.  Our experience has been that insurance companies place little value on the life of an older person.  Our job as attorneys is to prove that they are wrong and that every life has substantial value.

For those who would like a free consultation with one of our Minnesota bus accident lawyers about a Strain Tours lawsuit, we welcome you to call our law firm at 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our online consultation form.

If you would like to learn more about our lawyers, visit our “About Us” page on our main website, www.pritzkerlaw.com.  There is information about each attorney and links to even more information.

Both the driver and passenger were ejected from the Honda on impact, and at least one of them died.  The Minnesota State Patrol has listed this accident as fatal and has not yet provided more information.  Our law firm is representing families who lost loved ones in accidents, and in almost every case, the death was caused by an inattentive driver.

The Minnesota State Patrol report indicating that the driver of the Plymouth ran a stop sign and was at fault for the accident can be used as evidence in a lawsuit seeking compensation for injuries or wrongful death.

The primary issue in this case will be the amount of compensation.

If you would like to discuss how our law firm will fight for justice for you and your family by working to obtain the best possible compensation package for you, please call Attorney Fred Pritzker at 612-338-0202 or 1-888-377-8900 (toll free).  You may also submit our free consultation form.  We are not paid unless you win.

Attorneys Fred Pritzker, Elliot Olsen and Eric Hageman have once again been named “Super Lawyers” by Law & Politics magazine, a Minnesota legal journal.