Distracted driving deaths are sudden and unexpected. In 2015 more than 10 people died and more than a thousand were injured every day in the U.S. from distracted driving . These are the worst statistics since 2008. But of course, distracted driving statistics don’t capture how these deaths and life-altering injuries affect families. Family members are traumatized by these senseless and preventable tragedies. Often, it is our children who are killed. And the death of a child changes families forever. In many cases lawyers are retained to represent the grieving families. But are lawyers doing enough to help families? Is obtaining monetary compensation all that lawyers can do to help grieving families?
EndDD.org co-founder Joel Feldman raises these questions and others in a recent article published in The Legal Intelligencer, the nation’s oldest law journal. Joel has a unique perspective, having been a personal injury lawyer representing families for more than 35 years and the father of Casey Feldman, who was killed by a distracted driver in 2009. Joel looks back at cases he handled before Casey’s death and knows that he could have done more to help his grieving legal clients.
“While I had been sympathetic and compassionate, I had not been empathic,” says Joel.
Relying on his experiences as a trial lawyer, his masters in counseling and his personal journey of mourning the loss of his daughter , Joel explains how family members are traumatized by distracted driving deaths, how they search for answers for why their loved one died and how personal injury lawyers are uniquely positioned to help clients.
