For instance, if you ride a motorcycle in the State of California, you probably know that it is perfectly legal in the State to ride in between lanes of traffic. Drivers not in the know will shake their fists at you, thinking you are taking advantage of the diminutive dimensions of your vehicle when compared to yours'. They would accuse you of being reckless, that you are taking advantage.
But according to State law, it is perfectly legal for motorcycle riders to do this, primarily in an effort to keep the air-cooled engine from overheating in stalled traffic.
And yet, a whopping 80 per cent of motorcycle injuries in California are caused by motor vehicle drivers, most of whom are not conversant with the rules of the road where it pertains to motorcycles.Is this negligence on the part of the motor vehicle driver? You bet. He needs to be conversant with all laws that relate to driving on California highways, and the responsibility that comes with it.
And sometimes, you can be injured due to negligence in ways, you would never, ever expect.
Take the tragic mix-up that occurred when four seniors from Laguna Woods, on a road trip to visit family, were killed when their vehicle suddenly swerved into the path of an 18-wheel transport truck along Interstate 40 in Henderson County, Tennessee on Boxing Day. The crash was described as horrific, and all four occupants were killed instantly.
However, beyond dealing with the grief of losing loved ones so tragically just a day after Christmas, two of the grieving families suffered emotional injuries as a result of a mix-up some blame on medical, or mortuary officials in Tennessee.
In sum, the wrong body was put into the wrong grave.
As the four who died were lifelong friends, it is a tragic irony that all four died together. If there was any comfort in that fact for the grieving families, that comfort was abruptly cancelled when it was discovered that the remains lowered into the grave beside Bruce Kanter, who died in 1992, were not those of his late wife Rheta, but those of Judith Stele, whose remains were supposed to be buried at Harbor Lawn-Mt. Olive Memorial Park in Costa Mesa.
All four bodies were flown to California from Tennessee. It is there, according to the mortuary involved, that the mix-up occurred, resulting in the remains of Judith Stele becoming mistaken for those of Rheta Kanter.
The mix-up was discovered after Kanter's funeral, when a bag of belongings and jewelry believed to have belonged to Kanter was returned to Kanter's family. Finding nothing inside they recognized as having belonged to Rheta, the families consulted with one another and determined that the contents of the personal effects container were those of Judith Stele—whose remains were now buried beside those of Bruce Kanter.
Not only did the Stele family have to go through the horror and indignity of the exhumation of their loved one's remains at the end of a bulldozer, but Kanter's family was originally told it would not be possible, or appropriate to identify Rheta Kanter's remains, in that her body was not intact.
READ MORE LEGAL NEWS
A spokesperson for Service Corp. International, which owns Pacific View and Harbor Lawn cemeteries, notes that the remains were identified and tagged in Tennessee. The four doomed occupants of the car were initially sent to Henderson County Community Hospital. Reed's Chapel, located in Lexington Tennessee, was reportedly contracted to ship the remains to California.
Once the mix-up was discovered, the two cemeteries in California expedited the switch.
However, that was of little solace to the grieving families involved.