Suburbia often pays the price for Miami’s thriving nightlife. Drunk driving accidents on high-speed roadways such as I-75 often cause serious and fatal injuries to innocent residents of Pembroke Pines.
Even traveling down Pines Boulevard at night can result in devastating crashes as buzzed drivers leave local restaurants.
Because driving under the influence of alcohol is a criminal offense in Florida, obtaining personal injury damages in DUI accident cases requires the help of a dedicated attorney from Garnes Injury Law.
Drunk driving crashes often involve criminal charges, hit-and-runs, and complicated criminal and civil legal proceedings. If a drunk driver injured you in Pembroke Pines, schedule a free and confidential case analysis with our dedicated personal injury team today by calling (954) 905-2683 or connecting with us online.
Table of Contents
- Defining Driving Under the Influence (DUI) in Florida
- Common Pembroke Pines Drunk Driving Accidents
- Understanding Florida’s Serious Injury Threshold
- Damages Potentially Available in Drunk Driving Injury Cases
- Options for Recovering Compensation after Florida DUI Accidents
- Criminal v. Civil Cases Against Drunk Drivers in Pembroke Pines
- Understanding Contingency Fees in Personal Injury Cases
- Retain a Compassionate Pembroke Pines Drunk Driving Accident Attorney Immediately
Defining Driving Under the Influence (DUI) in Florida
Florida law defines driving under the influence as being in actual physical control of a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or another controlled substance if the substance impairs the driver’s normal faculties. If the driver had a blood- or breath-alcohol level of 0.08 or more grams, the law assumes they were driving while intoxicated.
However, Florida drivers might drive under the influence regardless of their blood-alcohol level if drinking impaired their ability to safely operate a motor vehicle.
Evidence of impairment includes:
- Swerving/drifting between lanes
- Stopping short for no reason
- Repeatably hitting the brakes
- Speeding or driving too slowly
- Driving on the wrong side of the road
- Hitting curbs
- Slurring words
Impairment doesn’t always mean alcohol impairment. Combining one glass of wine with a prescription pain pill might be enough to diminish the driver’s ability to operate a vehicle.
An experienced drunk driving accident lawyer at Garnes Injury Law might review video evidence, black box data, and witness testimonies to prove the driver was legally impaired when the collision occurred. You may need this if police do not arrive in time to obtain an accurate breath-alcohol reading.
Common Pembroke Pines Drunk Driving Accidents
Alcohol reduces brain function and impairs drivers’ thinking, reasoning, and muscle coordination. It also drastically reduces reaction time, as it takes the brain longer to process visual information.
A drunk driver may clearly see your vehicle pulling onto the highway but fail to process that they must slow down until it’s too late. Buzzed drivers are also unpredictable. As such, they often cause devastating multi-vehicle crashes due to speeding, drifting, and overcompensation.
Impaired drivers with high blood-alcohol levels might even use the wrong entrance ramp onto 1-75 and drive directly into oncoming traffic.
Accidents commonly caused by drunk drivers include:
- Head-On Collisions: Drunk drivers often cause serious head-on collisions in South Florida when they turn into oncoming traffic or use the wrong highway entrance/exit ramp. These front-end crashes can result in devastating brain injuries and fatalities.
- Rear-End Crashes: Inebriated drivers have delayed reaction times and reduced muscle coordination, often preventing them from stopping or slowing their vehicles when you slow down.
- T-Bone Accidents: Drunk drivers might fail to process basic traffic information, such as the meaning of stop signs and red lights. When impaired drivers unexpectedly run red lights or blow through stop signs, it often results in serious intersection accidents.
- Overcompensation/Loss of Control: These dangerous accidents can occur in buzzed driving cases when the driver catches themselves drifting but overcompensates in their panic. This overcompensation might cause the driver to lose control of the vehicle, triggering devastating chain-reaction crashes on major highways.
- Off-Road: Alcohol is a depressant, and many drunk driving accidents occur at night. Intoxicated drivers may fall asleep at the wheel and run off the road into homes, pedestrian areas, or businesses. You might recover property and personal injury damages from the drunk driver’s auto insurance policy in such cases.
- Crosswalk: It’s harder for inebriated drivers to recognize and respond to pedestrians or cyclists in crosswalks. Drunk drivers cause many fatal pedestrian accidents in Pembroke Pines and often flee the scene of the crash.
Because numerous DUI accidents occur on high-speed roadways, drunk drivers might cause serious pile-up crashes and significant injuries to multiple victims. However, insurance compensation is limited in these cases.
Contact a lawyer from Garnes Injury Law immediately if you suffered an injury in a multi-car drunk driving accident to obtain your fair share of available compensation.
Understanding Florida’s Serious Injury Threshold
Because Florida is a no-fault state, victims of drunk driving collisions might only sue liable drivers if they suffered from a serious injury, including one of the following:
Paralysis/Spinal Cord Damage
High-speed drunk driving accidents often cause significant spinal cord injuries. The force of highway accidents often damages spinal nerves and discs, resulting in painful back and neck trauma. Injuries to the central nervous system might result in paralysis below the damaged area.
Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs)
Driving under the influence often results in fatal diffuse axonal injuries or other severe head trauma. Traumatic brain injuries can impact the victim’s ability to think, speak, emote, and process information.
Our drunk driving accident lawyers can file claims on behalf of your loved one who sustained a disabling brain injury.
Permanent Organ Damage
Loss of control accidents due to drunk driving might cause your vehicle to flip or otherwise trap you in a crushed car. In such cases, victims might suffer from severe organ damage and internal bleeding. Organ damage more commonly occurs in motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents.
Our personal injury attorneys can recover damages if you’re suffering from lost bowel control, reproductive difficulties, or serious breathing, heart, and digestive issues after being hit by a drunk driver in Pembroke Pines.
Third-Degree Burns
Drunk driving accidents on major highways may trigger serious car fires, resulting in permanent scarring and disfigurement. With the help of an attorney, you might recover direct damages, such as the cost of skin graft surgeries, and compensation for your emotional pain and suffering after a car fire.
Fractures and Amputations
Florida considers most broken bones threshold injuries, especially if they necessitate surgery or an emergency amputation. You might claim damages for medical equipment and household modifications if you suffered from a life-altering fracture or lost a limb after a drunk driver struck you.
Death
Every day, 37 people are killed in drunk driving accidents. Many deaths are instantaneous, but some victims succumb to their injuries months or even years after the crash.
Our dedicated wrongful death lawyers can help eligible family members obtain substantial compensation if a drunk driver kills their loved one in Pembroke Pines.
Damages Potentially Available in Drunk Driving Injury Cases
Drunk driving is reckless driving in Florida.
This means innocent claimants injured in traffic accidents involving intoxicated drivers might demand:
- Past and future medical expenses
- Lost income and earning capacity
- Lost workplace benefits
- Pain and suffering
- Loss of consortium (spousal comfort)
- Restitution
- Punitive damages
The criminal nature of DUI accidents means our lawyers might help victims recover restitution, such as compensation for medical bills, during criminal proceedings. We might also demand punitive damages from the driver due to their extremely reckless and criminal conduct.
Options for Recovering Compensation after Florida DUI Accidents
The experienced lawyers at Garnes Injury Law will fight to maximize available financial compensation for clients injured by drunk drivers in Pembroke Pines. This means exploring all of the following options for recovering damages:
No-Fault Insurance
You might immediately claim no-fault benefits from your insurance company to cover minor medical expenses and lost income after being injured by a drunk driver.
These benefits kick in regardless of fault and can obtain needed compensation while our drunk driving accident attorneys fight for your right to claim additional damages.
Liable Driver’s Auto Insurance
If you suffered from a serious injury, our drunk driving accident lawyers might immediately demand the value of the driver’s auto liability policy. Because police often respond to DUI crashes, we can request the police report to prove instant liability in such cases. This might result in quick policy payouts and trigger your right to demand underinsured motorist benefits.
Uninsured/Uninsured Motorist Insurance (UM/UIM)
Many drunk drivers immediately flee the scene of a devastating accident, especially involving pedestrians, to avoid police detection.
In such cases, legal counsel might file a claim for uninsured motorist benefits. They might also obtain damages from your UIM policy if you suffered financial losses beyond those covered by the drunk driver’s liability insurance.
Drunk Drivers, Vehicle Owners, and Employers
Although drunk drivers are primarily responsible for traffic accidents, they seldom have the financial resources necessary to compensate victims for devastating injuries.
Suing them often means risking bankruptcy proceedings, which can invalidate a personal injury award. However, our lawyers may sue wealthy drunk drivers and vehicle owners directly for punitive damages or other compensation.
We might also hold the driver’s employer liable if the accident occurred while the driver was working, such as delivering pizza or providing rideshare services.
Liquor Stores, Bars, and Restaurants
In Florida, an experienced drunk driving accident lawyer might hold a person or entity liable for serving alcohol to the drunk driver immediately before the accident. Florida law allows attorneys to sue anyone who serves alcohol to (1) someone under 21 or (2) a known alcoholic who injures you.
Restitution from Criminal Cases
Our drunk driving accident attorneys might fight for your right to demand restitution in criminal DUI cases. These damages often overlap with claims paid by no-fault or liability insurers, but demanding restitution can hold drunk drivers fully accountable for their actions.
Personal Injury Litigation
Not all Pembroke Pines car accidents involving alcohol result in criminal charges. In some cases, the driver’s blood-alcohol might not reach the legal limit, or another technicality might prevent criminal prosecution.
If you only have circumstantial evidence of impaired driving, such as drifting between lanes before the crash, our dedicated personal injury litigators might sue the drunk driver in civil court. Just because the police didn’t fight for you doesn’t mean we won’t.
Criminal v. Civil Cases Against Drunk Drivers in Pembroke Pines
If law enforcement arrested and charged the drunk driver with a DUI, experienced personal injury attorneys might wait to litigate until after criminal proceedings.
Many drivers plead guilty, which can automatically prove fault in your personal injury case.
Our lawyers might use criminal DUI convictions and evidence from state investigations – such as police reports, witness testimonies, and video footage – to obtain accelerated negligence judgments and financial awards in your case.
Even if prosecutors drop DUI charges, different legal standards apply in civil and criminal cases. The state must prove a DUI charge beyond a reasonable doubt, but personal injury attorneys only need to provide evidence that the driver was most likely intoxicated.
This lower legal threshold can allow our Pembroke Pines drunk driving accident litigators to obtain civil judgment in your favor without associated criminal proceedings. Even if Florida prosecutions did not press charges, contact us immediately if you suspect an impaired driver caused your car accident injuries.
Understanding Contingency Fees in Personal Injury Cases
Drunk drivers cause life-changing and often disabling accident injuries in South Florida. Our compassionate litigators understand that most DUI victims do not have the financial means to retain legal counsel. That’s why we accept cases on a contingency fee basis.
Contingency fee arrangements mean that we don’t get paid unless we recover compensation for you. We might even cover the initial investigation fees and court costs to build a strong case on behalf of clients unjustly injured in drunk driving accidents.
Retain a Compassionate Pembroke Pines Drunk Driving Accident Attorney Immediately
At Garnes Injury Law, our dedicated personal injury team might fight for your right to substantial compensation if a drunk driver injures you in Pembroke Pines. This might include holding the driver and restaurants liable for your injuries and fighting to maximize the value of your insurance claims.
Reach out to legal counsel immediately if you suspect that alcohol impaired the liable driver. There’s no risk associated with a free and confidential case analysis with our dedicated drunk driving accident lawyers today by calling (954) 905-2683 or connecting with us online.
Garnes Injury Law – Pembroke Pines Office Location
Address: 10796 Pines Blvd Suite 206,
Pembroke Pines, FL 33026
Phone: (954) 905-2683
