Woman Charged in Fatal Accident on I-10 Bridge in Louisiana

The faster a vehicle is traveling, the less steering is required to change direction. Many people, however, tend to panic when something goes wrong and overcorrect at high speeds, which could easily lead to a serious or fatal accident. Louisiana State Police say that a woman was driving at an unsafe speed when her vehicle went over the side of the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge on Interstate 10.
The Louisiana State Police reports that the 24-year-old driver and her six passengers were traveling west on the Interstate when something not yet known caused the vehicle to move suddenly to the left. It was then that the vehicle hit the guardrail on the left side of the westbound lanes of the highway. The driver then overcorrected, causing the vehicle to flip onto its side. The vehicle’s momentum carried it across the highway, where the right side guardrail was not enough to keep the vehicle from launching off the bridge.
Of the six passengers in the vehicle, only one of them was an adult. A 25-year-old woman suffered fatal injuries in the crash, to which she succumbed at the scene. The rest were children between the ages of five and nine. It took the efforts of several agencies to retrieve the driver and five children. One child, age 7, suffered serious injuries, and the other four suffered moderate injuries.
The Florida woman driving the vehicle received medical attention for her injuries and was then taken into custody and transported to jail in Iberville Parish. She faces charges of careless operation, negligent homicide and negligent injury. She may also face a wrongful death claim from the family of the deceased woman, and personal injury claims from the families of the five children injured in this fatal accident. Under state law, certain damages may be recoverable if such claims are successful in proving negligence on the part of another.