Gainesville, Ocala, Lake City & Inverness, Florida Accident Attorney and Alachua County DUI Lawyer Blogs

Marion County has yet another serious car accident, this one with a fatality.

In Reddick, a Palm Harbor woman died on I-75  Saturday June 27th in the afternoon when the pickup she was riding in was struck by an SUV also northbound that crossed into it's lane.  According to the Gainesville Sun's report, the pickup truck was found on its roof and its driver, 44-year-old Karl M. Blagg, of Hudson, was transported to Shands at University of Florida in critical condition.

As a personal injury lawyer, my heart goes out to these victims and their families.  We often wonder if an accident like this could possibly have been avoided... by using turn signals, observing any blind spots before switching lanes, and avoiding distractions, however, the evidence is still under investigation and we may never know, but these are important things to be reminded of in this type of accident.

(Something else to note here as well is that the driver of the SUV was wearing a seatbelt and was not injured; however, officials did not know whether Blagg or his passenger were buckled up.)

Despite this tragedy, Marion County is actually one of the safer counties of its size in North Central Florida for motorists.

An analysis of the latest traffic accident statistics from Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles shows that with the exception of Lake County, Marion County has the lowest accident rate per person for those area counties with a population exceeding 200,000 people.

While there are about 11.95 accidents for every 1,000 people in Marion County, Alachua County leads the area with 17.59 accidents, using the latest U.S. Census population estimates.