Car accidents, many involving city of Atlanta employees driving work vehicles, have cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal settlements for personal injuries and damages to property.
Since the beginning of 2008, the wrecks have cost the city more than $3.27 million to settle, according to records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News. There were nearly 730 claims settled in that time, averaging a settlement every two and a half days on average. The payouts ranged from $405,000 to $16.26, averaging about $4,500.
Three departments — police, watershed and public works — accounted for the vast majority of the settlements, according to city documents.
“In a city this size, it’s going to be an ongoing issue,” said Michael Julian Bond, chair of the City Council’s public safety committee. “Even with the best-trained, best-equipped workforce, there are still going to be a certain number of accidents. But we want to make sure we minimize those risks to the best of our ability.”
In one incident in January 2009, a woman riding in the back seat of a vehicle said she suffered severe spinal, facial and rib injuries when an Atlanta police officer crashed into her on a Buckhead street. Atlanta paid $405,000 to settle her claim.
But not all the wrecks involved city employees. In a case resolved last year, a driver said he crashed because the city failed to maintain a fire hydrant and adjacent water lines, allowing water to leak into the roadway and form a patch of ice. Claiming “extensive personal injury and property damage,” the man received $85,000 in a settlement.
Several city departments told the AJC they have enacted new training and risk-management procedures to keep residents and employees safe while protecting taxpayers’ money.
The Department of Watershed Management, for example, requires defensive driving courses for employees whose jobs requires them to drive city vehicles. Last year, an accident review board started looking over all preventable accidents to determine if employees need remedial training.
That has led to a steady decrease in vehicle accidents. In Watershed Management, for example, the number of accidents dropped from about 130 per year in 2008 and 2009 to about 80 per year in 2010 and 2011. So far in 2012, there have been 68 accidents involving Watershed vehicles.
“We are improving our numbers there,” said Watershed commissioner Jo Ann Macrina.
The police department accounted for about 40 percent of Atlanta’s crash settlements by number of cases and more than half by dollar value.
About a year ago, Atlanta’s police department parked a wrecked cruiser outside the police academy to pound the message of safe driving into new recruits. The department also added three instructors to teach emergency vehicle courses and tacked on 16 hours of additional training in emergency vehicles.
Last year, APD concentrated on officers who had more than one accident in which they were at fault. Fifteen such officers were given both classroom and practical driving training. This year, the department trained every sworn officer on the city’s policy on high-speed pursuits. Instructors showed “shock videos” of officers involved in accidents.
The Atlanta police department also is equipping patrol vehicles with GPS devices that will capture their speed and alert a supervisor if they go above a pre-determined speed.
Some of Atlanta’s neighbors have also had to shell out substantial sums to settle lawsuits filed after wrecks. Gwinnett County has settled 527 claims for about $2.21 million since 2008, and Cobb County has paid out $1.59 million for 497 claims in that span.
DeKalb County has paid nearly $5.7 million for crashes involving city employees since 2008. City records showed that there were more than 1,300 crashes involving DeKalb employees during that period.
To limit the number of accidents, Cobb requires all employees to take defensive driving training every three years, with public safety personnel getting annual training, said spokesman Robert Quigley.
In Atlanta, the Department of Public Works is updating its safety manual for next year and has plans for a safety review committee for preventable accidents.
“We are tracking our performance in safety so we can make sure we are headed on the right track,” said Richard Mendoza, public works commissioner. “We’re promoting the necessary training.”
Two months ago, Atlanta’s City Council approved an ordinance to prohibit city employees from talking on cell phones while driving city vehicles. Employees could be fired if they are responsible for causing a crash while texting or talking on the phone.
The legislation was aimed at minimizing distractions while driving, improving safety and reducing the city’s potential legal liability
City officials cited a study that indicated using a cell phone while driving has similar effects to having a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent.
“We were seeing, just a lot of lawsuits,” said City Councilman Lamar Willis, who sponsored the legislation. “Not all of them very big, but it was a lot. I felt like there had to be a way to address this concern.”
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