In California, Defendants often argue that a Plaintiff was comparatively at fault for the accident occurring. Oftentimes, the Defendant will allege that the Plaintiff could and should have been able to avoid the accident had they themselves not been negligent in their actions.

The video below was used in a case where our client was riding as a passenger in his brother’s pick up truck on their way to work early in the morning. They came upon a grape harvesting operation in which a gondola had been left partially on the roadway, with no warning lights or other safety precautions. Though Plaintiff and his brother were traveling within the speed limit for the roadway, the low visibility on that dark morning did not allow them sufficient time to avoid a devastating collision.

To recreate for a jury the conditions as they would have been the morning of the accident, the Scarlett Law Group went to great lengths to produce the following visibility study. This would allow the jury to be in the vehicle as it travelled down the roadway. They could clearly see that by failing to utilize proper warning lights and reflectors, Defendants put our client in an impossible situation. Because of the low visibility of the gondola, our client had no chance to avoid the accident.

The video has three segments. First, a test run is done at 55 miles per hour without a gondola present. Next, the actual accident conditions are recreated to show what our client and the driver of the vehicle would have seen the morning of the accident. Here it is clearly shown that with the weather conditions that morning, the driver had no opportunity to avoid the collision.

In the third segment of the video, the appropriate safety devices are in place and another test run is performed. It is clearly shown that with the use of these safety devices, our client would have had time to slow to a point where the collision could have easily been avoided and no injury would have occurred.

The fourth and final segment of the video displays a side by side comparison between the test run where the actual accident conditions existed and the test run where the proper safety precautions were present. This comparison clearly shows that if the Defendants had used the required safety precautions, the collision could have easily been avoided.

The visibility study assisted settlement with numerous defendants in this particular case.