Car Accident Death in Raleigh, Doctor Charged

Raleigh, NCA car accident is something you can't plan for, can't anticipate and often can't avoid—especially if another driver causes the auto accident. An auto accident injury, sadly, is often not the worst result.

In this case Ellen Shapiro, of North Carolina, could not have known that within seconds she would become the latest Raleigh traffic statistic. The only thing she might have done wrong that resulted in the sealing of her fate was to simply be at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

That's because unbeknownst to Shapiro, who was entering the roadway at a reported 20 miles per hour at the intersection of Lead Mine and Strickland Roads in Raleigh, a medical doctor was driving his Mercedes Benz at speeds reaching 85 miles per hour when he entered the same intersection Shapiro was pulling into and struck the victim.

Shapiro died from her injuries.

According to the NE North Carolina HS Injury Law Blog dated September 16th, the Raleigh police department initially charged the driver of the Mercedes, Dr. Raymond Cook, with driving while impaired, failure to reduce speed, reckless driving and death by a motor vehicle.

However, following an initial court appearance Cook's charge was raised to second-degree murder.

Regardless of whether the topic is texting while driving, just learning to drive or the perils of driving while intoxicated or even while suffering the effects of exhaustion (a form of impairment), the message is always the same: a motor vehicle quickly morphs into a weapon when in the wrong hands.

The Injury Law Blog reports that drunken driving-related car accidents are increasing in North Carolina. Recent statistics showed that of the motor vehicular fatalities in Fayetteville, North Carolina (which are on the rise), the vast majority of those accidents involved an incident of driving while impaired. The figure released was 85 percent.

However the bigger picture, as noted above, involves impairment from other sources while driving. Impairment is anything that reduces one's capacity to operate a vehicle safely through altered judgment, reduction of a driver's reflexes, or any distraction that takes the focus away from the task at hand. Falling asleep at the wheel is a form of impairment. Fiddling with a complex sound system, or GPS is impairment. Reading, composing or sending a text message is impairment.

Impairments that prevent a driver from adequately controlling the dynamics of a projectile under his control.

Given the myriad of modern-day distractions that can factor into a car accident of this nature, the qualifications of auto accident attorneys are just that much more valuable.