California Summer Travel Safety Guide After an Injury
California Summer Travel Safety Guide: Road Trips, Rideshares, Hotels and What To Do After an Injury?
Summer is here, and it’s time for fun!
Now that you’re off school, off work, or on holiday, you may want to enjoy one of the best activities of all: traveling.
Traveling comes with risks, including crashes involving cars, bikes, recreational vehicles, and more. Even if your flight goes smoothly, transportation to your hotel, hotel hazards, or slip-and-fall accidents can still affect your trip.Car or rideshare crashes:
Under California Vehicle Code sections 22350, 21700, and 21701 as drivers we have a duty to:
- Drive with caution; at a careful and prudent speed, having due regard to traffic.
- Be focus, distractions are the worst driver’s enemy. A diligent driver is the one that has the focus 100% in the road and surroundings of the road. No in the radio, no in the telephone, no in a conversation that might distract your 100% attention from the road.
When driving to your final destination, it is always a good idea to check your tires, brakes, lights, insurance coverage, and emergency kit, and to plan rest stops before long drives. This proactive compliance can be used to demonstrate standards that may rebut a presumption of negligence, reduce the driver’s comparative fault, and strengthen the defense in the event of litigation.
If, after being diligent, you are still involved in a car, truck, or motorcycle accident, California Vehicle Code section 21809 requires you to slow down and move over. Get medical help and report the incident. If possible, take photos and videos, save receipts for expenses, get witness information, and avoid making rushed statements to insurance companies.
What about an accident while renting a bike or scooter for fun?
California has new compliance requirements for electric bikes and powered mobility devices. The law mandates battery certification, testing, and labeling standards.
When you rent an e-bike or e-scooter, before you ride, you have the right to request and review the vehicle’s safety information, including helmet-use requirements and whether the battery has been tested and has a certification label.
Remember that the minimum rider age is 16. Riding sober, watching for cars, and avoiding sidewalks are safety measures that may help you in the event of an accident while renting these devices.
If I have an accident at the accommodation where I am enjoying my vacation:
Accidents can happen at your accommodation, ranging from a slip and fall to electrocution caused by an electronic device.
California Civil Code section 1714(a) establishes the foundational rule of tort liability. This general duty applies to the exercise of ordinary care in the management of property and extends to hotels’ duties to their guests. Hotels must maintain their premises in a reasonably safe condition and exercise reasonable care to protect guests from personal injury.
It is important to emphasize that hotels and other accommodations are not insurers of guest safety and are not strictly liable for defects on their premises. Instead, liability is based on negligence. A guest seeking to recover for injuries sustained at an inn or hotel must establish the traditional elements of negligence: duty, breach, causation, and damages. In most cases, the critical issue is whether the hotel had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition.
Innkeepers and guest-property proprietors have a special relationship with their guests, which gives rise to a duty to protect them against unreasonable risks of physical harm, including risks involving windows, balconies, and outdoor spaces.
Hotels must exercise reasonable care under the circumstances, but a hotel is not liable where it neither knew nor should have known of the unreasonable risk.
Slip and Fall Accidents
Slip-and-fall cases against hotels in California turn heavily on the issue of notice. Hotel guests can reasonably expect that the hotel owner will be “reasonably diligent in inspecting its rooms for defects and correcting them upon discovery.” However, guests “cannot reasonably expect that the owner will correct defects of which the owner is unaware and that cannot be discerned by a reasonable inspection.” Actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition is required.
Defective Equipment, Electronic Devices, and Other In-Room Hazards
When a guest is injured by defective equipment, whether an electronic device, in-room appliance, or fixture, the negligence analysis is fact-specific, and strict liability may apply against the manufacturer of the device.
Another important thing to consider is that if the guest is partly responsible for the harm, for example, by using the premises in an unreasonable, unexpected, or unforeseeable manner, this may reduce the guest’s recovery but will not necessarily bar recovery entirely.