Atlanta, GA — Over the weekend, a firefighter with the Atlanta Fire Department was critically injured after an off-duty accident. Police said that Zach Kimbrough was badly hurt after his pickup truck was in a wreck with an armored Brinks truck on Saturday morning, October 4.
This happened along Marietta Boulevard, near Queens Street. Kimbrough was driving his Ford F-250 pickup truck along Marietta Boulevard that morning, headed home from his shift, when an armored Brinks truck suddenly pulled into his path.
The two trucks collided, police said, and Kimbrough’s truck suffered an impact to the driver’s side. He was critically injured by the accident and taken to Atlantic Medical Center. As of Monday, he was in a non life-threatening condition, but was still hospitalized.
The Brinks truck overturned during Saturday’s wreck, and the driver & passenger were both hospitalized in Grady for their injuries. So far, it’s not clear how serious their injuries were.
Police were supposed to investigate this further and there’s been no word on whether charges will be filed or not.
Approximate Location of the Accident
Commentary:
Being that this firefighter worked for the city, I’m sure their health benefits and medical care will be more than adequate. After all, someone who spends their life taking care of others had better receive some of the best care available when it’s him on the other side of things.
But I’d like to talk about this armored truck for a moment. Is there a reason this driver decided to pull out into traffic? If the news reports are accurate, then it seems the armored truck pulled out of a parking lot and then crashed into the firefighter’s pickup. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a “failure to yield” kind of situation. Now, I say this all the time to my readers, but you can’t get too confident in situations like this where the “fault” seems obvious.
Even if you have a police report stating that the other driver was at fault, that doesn’t guarantee that when you ask the armored truck’s insurance company to pay for your injuries, lost wages, etc, that they’ll acquiesce without a fight. On the contrary, an insurance company always tries to fight your claim when the stakes are high enough. After all, what’s to lose? Again, I’ve mentioned this kind of thing on my blog before because a lot of people assume that the insurance company for the at-fault driver is going to do the right thing and pay for all the damages caused, but that’s rarely been my experience in the past.
— Grossman Law Offices
