A police officer ran a stop sign while typing on his in-dash computer keyboard, hitting motorcyclist Louis Olivier, now 75 years old, leading to roughly half a million in medical bills, as PoliceOne reports. Olivier has had four skin grafts since the motorcycle accident.
After bringing a lawsuit against the relevant police department, Olivier settled his case for $250,000, or about half of what he needs to be compensated so that he can pay for his medical treatment.
According to PoliceOne, now Olivier has brought a second lawsuit – this time against the makers of the computer the police officer was using when he ran the stop sign. Olivier’s injury lawyer said, “From the beginning we never really blamed the city. This lawsuit has always been about the product manufacturers who enable vehicles to turn into mobile offices.”
When it comes down to it, this is a case of distracted driving, no different than texting while driving, and Olivier would like to change the way these police car “mobile offices” operate.
When police officers are actually driving their vehicles, Olivier asserts, the computer should come equipped with safety technology that would disable use. In turn, this would prevent the kind of distracted driving accident that happened to Olivier.
The two defendants named in the lawsuit are Tritech and Versaterm, according to PoliceOne.
The motorcycle accident occurred about one year ago. Of his injuries, Olivier says, “I would say five months I went through pain 24-hours a day,” as Jim Bergamo reports for KVUE News.
Sources:
- PoliceOne, “Motorcyclist hit by police blames software for accident,” 06/14/11
- KVUE News, “Motorcyclist hit by APD suing two software companies,” by Jim Bergamo, 06/07/11