Last night in Kingsport Tennessee, a driver drove BACKWARDS into a Wal-Mart store, drove BETWEEN bollards installed too far apart to do any good, and slammed into a family of four who was exiting the store. All four -- mother, father and two young children, were rushed to the hospital.
There is a great piece of reporting including an on-scene stand-up that explains the layout and the situation quite well (no video of the accident itself, so no horror scenes.) Video from local station WJHL HERE
Goal post bollards -- we have written about them before. Costco, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, and many others have had accidents where bollards or safety barriers are installed NOT to prevent head-on crashes into storefronts but instead intended to keep vehicles from pulling up parallel to the sidewalk to load and unload. Millions and millions of shoppers and pedestrians are able to pass between bollards and other safety barriers just fine -- with their carts -- so this phenomenon of "unsafety barriers" has no rationale that makes sense.
Final irony; this accident occurred on the same day that a jury in Massachusetts found convenience store chain Cumberland Farms liable in the death of Kimmy Dubuque when she was killed in a storefront crash in 2010. The jury awarded her family $32 million in damages -- due in part to evidence presented that Cumberland Farms had recorded hundreds of storefront crashes in years previous and dragged its feet on an announced program to protect patrons and employees at all of their stores.
I am sure we will hear a great deal about this Wal-Mart case and about this family in the days and weeks to come. This sort of accident is foreseeable, predictable, and preventable. A family of four has been injured in an accident that is WAY too much like so many others. It didn't have to be this way.
There is a great piece of reporting including an on-scene stand-up that explains the layout and the situation quite well (no video of the accident itself, so no horror scenes.) Video from local station WJHL HERE
Goal post bollards -- we have written about them before. Costco, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, and many others have had accidents where bollards or safety barriers are installed NOT to prevent head-on crashes into storefronts but instead intended to keep vehicles from pulling up parallel to the sidewalk to load and unload. Millions and millions of shoppers and pedestrians are able to pass between bollards and other safety barriers just fine -- with their carts -- so this phenomenon of "unsafety barriers" has no rationale that makes sense.
Final irony; this accident occurred on the same day that a jury in Massachusetts found convenience store chain Cumberland Farms liable in the death of Kimmy Dubuque when she was killed in a storefront crash in 2010. The jury awarded her family $32 million in damages -- due in part to evidence presented that Cumberland Farms had recorded hundreds of storefront crashes in years previous and dragged its feet on an announced program to protect patrons and employees at all of their stores.
I am sure we will hear a great deal about this Wal-Mart case and about this family in the days and weeks to come. This sort of accident is foreseeable, predictable, and preventable. A family of four has been injured in an accident that is WAY too much like so many others. It didn't have to be this way.
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