2 Single-Vehicle Accidents Injure 9 Over Weekend

The standard scenario when it comes to personal injury lawsuits stemming from auto accidents is as follows: Driver A hits Driver B, Driver B gets injured, Driver B sues Driver A. But not all auto accident cases follow that pattern. In fact, some personal injury lawsuits arise from crashes that only involve one driver.

Two of these single-vehicle wrecks took place over the weekend in different parts of Illinois. The first occurred Friday night in Stephenson County about a mile west of downtown Eleroy. According to authorities, the vehicle was traveling east on Mound Road just before Schlegel Road shortly after 10:30pm when it crested a hill and encountered an icy patch of roadway. The vehicle reportedly slid across the road into a ditch and then into a field, where it rolled over several times. The driver and the four passengers, all of whom were teenagers, were rushed to nearby hospitals. (Three of the teens had been ejected from the vehicle.)

A few hours later, another single-vehicle accident occurred on the Dan Ryan Expressway on the South Side of Chicago. Early Saturday morning about 1:00am, a vehicle crashed near 76th Street and drove off onto an embankment. A total of four people (including the driver had to be taken to area hospitals because of serious but non-life threatening injuries. There's no word on what exactly caused that crash.

From the information given, it appears that the drivers of both vehicles are responsible for the auto accidents and will therefore be held liable for the injuries of their respective passengers. Because the victims in the Eleroy crash are minors, their parents might choose to file personal injury lawsuits against the parents of the teenaged driver in order to recoup medical expenses they have incurred from their children's injuries (although it appears that one of the passengers is the driver's brother). Similarly, the three victims in the Chicago crash (assuming they aren't related to the driver) can also file personal injury lawsuits against the person driving that vehicle - unless an investigation determines that another vehicle somehow caused the accident and fled the scene.