The other day I received a phone call from a potential client who was in the process of getting his feet back on the ground after being in a coma.  He had been turned away from another law firm because there was not another car involved and he was told that firm only handled “two-car” cases.  The potential client was driving his car at night and in the rain.  He hydroplaned and lost control of his vehicle.  His damages certainly required more than a brush-off and I was willing to see if there may be a case for him to at least begin to pay back his medical bills and receive the rehabilitation he so desperately needed.  I talked to him about the road conditions and told him I wanted to investigate the scene of the accident.  I wanted to see if there were any factors that could have put water in the road where not expected, such as from construction runoff or other man-made structures.

What I did next was truly revolutionary and is just now available in Atlanta.  I always make it a point in all my car accident cases to obtain overhead satellite images using Google Maps.  This gives me a bird’s-eye view of the street conditions and the general area.  But now Atlanta has Google street view available.  In the comfort of my office, I was able to literally drive the street where the accident occurred by using a 360 degree panoramic view of the roadway.  I could see the road, the structures beside the road, and the property extending back from the shoulders.

It turns out that I was unable to identify any contributing factors to the accident.  But the moral of the story is there is now more than ever no excuse for personal injury attorneys not to do an accident scene inspection straight away (while sitting at their desk!).  You would be surprised how many attorneys do not perform this most fundamental investigation.