Don't text and drive
Virtually everyone has seen it at some point … and many have done it: sending a text message (or reading an e-mail through a mobile phone) while driving a vehicle.
It doesn’t take an attorney or judge to figure out the consequences of such an action. Reading and typing messages through a phone require several seconds of visual concentration on the phone … which automatically means that those seconds are being spent focused on something other than the road and the vehicles driving on it, or pedestrians walking nearby and crossing the road.
This past spring, a 24-year-old man took it one step further, when he admitted to text-messaging his girlfriend while operating a Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) train seconds before a train accident that left more than 60 people injured. Aiden Quinn has entered a plea of not guilty in Suffolk Superior Court, but faces up to three years in prison and up to a $5,000 fine if found guilty of “gross negligence by a person in control of a train” … a little-known statute that rarely, if ever, has been brought into play in Massachusetts courts. Two of the victims brought individual civil lawsuits against Quinn and the MBTA.
Train accidents are fairly rare, meaning a train accident lawyer is a highly specialized professional who understands the specifics of the industry and the relevant laws more than other attorneys without train accident-specific experience and training would. In the case of Quinn, his attorney said the case is being prosecuted under the wrong statute, because the current statute is an antiquated law that was written during an entirely different era of transit with completely different responsibilities and challenges facing drivers. A Suffolk District Attorney spokesman said the statute, which was enacted in 1784, “is clearly every bit as relevant as today" as it was when the law was written.
Following the accident, the MBTA implemented what is considered perhaps the most rigid mobile phone policy in the country, a rule that prohibits its drivers from even carrying any electronic device on a bus or train. Two employees have been fired, and a third disciplined, for violating the policy.
The case is expected to prove costly, both in terms of trying the case and also in damages if Quinn is found guilty. If that happens, it wouldn’t be surprising to see numerous other transit authorities around the country adopting similar no-mobile phone policies, if they haven’t already. But the case also involves certain rail-specific statutes, underscoring the need for train accident attorneys for representation on either side of the case.
