Pikeville, with a population of more than 6,900 in the 2010 U.S. Census and an estimated population of more than 6,500 in 2019, is the county seat of Pike County. Located in the extreme eastern tip of Kentucky, Pike County shares much of its eastern border with West Virginia. Nestled in a valley in the Appalachian Mountains at a bend of the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River, Pikeville is a thriving city, and home to University of Pikeville.
Interestingly, as many Kentucky residents are aware, Pikeville was the home of the patriarch of the McCoy family, made famous by the feud between the Hatfields of West Virginia and the McCoys of Pikeville, Pike County, and elsewhere in eastern Kentucky. To this day, tourists come from all over to see historic sites associated with the feud, with many taking the self-guided Pikeville Hatfields & McCoys Feud Historic Driving Tour, as many sites related to the feud are in or near Pikeville.
Those events of nearly 150 years ago are long over, and the two families no longer shoot it out in the hills of Pikeville, Pike County, and neighboring West Virginia. On the other hand, certain aspects of modern life nonetheless present threats to local residents. Every day, Pikeville residents and students of UPike suffer personal injuries in all kinds of accidents- many resulting from the negligence of a negligent party. If you have been injured in an accident of any kind, you should contact our Pikeville personal injury lawyers at Maze Law Offices for a free consultation and to explore your options to recover compensation for your damages.
Pikeville does not have a great deal of traffic congestion compared to other major cities, but that does not mean that car wrecks do not happen every day here. Where there are cars, there are car accidents, and those accidents often result in deaths or serious injuries. The federal government attributes the majority of traffic accidents to human error, such as distracted driving, driver inattention, and failing to drive in accordance with weather and traffic conditions. Industry sources do not simplify the top causes of accidents quite so much. They also cite causes that seem rooted in human error, such as speeding, driving drunk, distracted driving, driving through red lights, and driving while fatigued.
Texting while driving has been the flavor of the month for a while among all causes of distracted driving, and legislative actions in recent years reflect that. Kentucky law prohibits any drivers from texting while driving, while also banning drivers who are not yet 18 from any cell phone use while behind the wheel. That legislative focus does not mean that cell phone use is the only reason drivers are distracted. Distracted driving is any activity that takes a driver’s attention away from the task at hand. This includes activities that probably go back to the days of the first automobiles, including eating, drinking, or talking to passengers in your vehicle, but also encompasses more modern distractions, such as finding another station on your radio, adjusting climate controls, or fiddling with your navigation system.
Kentucky has a no-fault system for auto insurance, but that is not as ironclad as it sounds. Normally, under no-fault insurance, you cannot sue the other driver regardless of who was at fault in an accident. As in other no-fault states, Kentucky’s no-fault laws require that your damages, such as medical expenses, lost wages and other expenses related to your accident, are covered by your own auto insurance policy. Further, you are not permitted to collect pain and suffering or other emotional damages from your own policy under Kentucky’s no-fault system. However, Kentucky no-fault law allows you to sue the at-fault driver under certain circumstances. For instance, if your medical expenses are more than $1,000, you suffer a broken bone or permanent injury or disfigurement, or if there is a wrongful death as a result of the wreck, you are free to sue the at-fault driver. These exceptions essentially almost always allow you to sue the at-fault driver in all but the most minor accidents. If an accident involves injuries, the cost of modern medical care is almost always going to exceed the legal threshold.
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About 80% of the time, a collision involving a motorcycle and another vehicle results in the motorcyclist being killed or injured. By contrast, the occupants of other vehicles involved in the accident often are not injured or suffer only minor injuries. About 5,000 motorcycle riders were killed in traffic accidents in 2018, while 89,000 riders were injured. Motorcyclists every year are at least 28 times as likely to die in a traffic accident than are people in passenger vehicles.
Published in the early 1980s, The Hurt Report still stands as the most comprehensive and authoritative examination of motorcycle accidents and what causes them. Based on years of data and research, the report determined that about three-fourths of fatal motorcycle accidents were the result of a collision with another vehicle, a conclusion still supported by federal statistics. Further, the top cause of fatal two-vehicle motorcycle accidents cited by The Hurt Report in the early 1980s still is the top cause today — crashes at intersections caused by a passenger vehicle turning left in front of an oncoming motorcycle.
While Americans tend to love pets in general, it is pretty clear that they have a special soft spot for dogs as the pet of choice. More than two-thirds of all households in the U.S. have at least one dog as a pet, including nearly half of Kentucky households. Nationwide, Americans keep more than 78 million dogs as pets. While the vast majority of those pet dogs do not bite anyone, a substantial number of dogs do so each year. Dogs bite about 4.7 million people every year nationwide. About 800,000 of those people end up requiring at least some professional medical treatment. Although fatalities as a result of dog bites are rare, 59 people died from dog bites across the U.S. in 2019, with two of those deaths taking place in Kentucky. Dog-bite injuries can be both serious and expensive. In 2019, insurance claims related to dog bites totaled $797 million, an average of more than $44,000 per claim.
When large commercial trucks get involved in accidents with passenger vehicles, the results usually are pretty one-sided. There were about 531,000 large commercial trucks, such as tractor-trailers, involved in traffic accidents in the U.S. in 2018. Those accidents caused almost 5,000 deaths and injured an additional 151,000 people. Almost three-quarters of people killed and injured were in the passenger vehicles involved in those accidents. More than 70% of the fatalities occurred among occupants of passenger vehicles, and 72% of the injuries likewise were suffered by the people in the passenger vehicles involved in the accidents. It is easy to understand the disparity. The legal limit on how much an 18-wheeler can weigh, truck and trailer combined, is 80,000 pounds. Most tractor-trailer rigs clock in at about 60,000 pounds or so. On the other hand, passenger vehicles weigh an average of 4,000 pounds. They can weigh as little as 2,500 pounds.
No matter what kind of accident you might be injured in, there are several personal injuries that people incur. Whether in a fall, a traffic accident, or some other kind of accident, there are common injuries that can prove costly in terms of medical bills as well as in their impact on your life, both short- and long-term. They include:
If you have suffered a personal injury in Pike County and believe another person might have been at fault, you should seek advice from a local attorney to help find out what options you may have. It is possible there are provisions within a liability insurance policy that may be able to pay for your injuries and other damages, depending upon the circumstances of how you were hurt. The best Pikeville personal injury lawyers can help you get the compensation you deserve for your injuries and other damages. The attorneys of Maze Law Offices can help you. Unlike many larger attorney offices you may see on TV, we live here and know this area, its people, and its laws. Contact us today to schedule a free, no obligation consultation.
