Delano Personal Injury Attorney

When Delano’s engineers studied five years of crash data for the city’s 2022 Local Road Safety Plan, they found that roughly one-twentieth of the street grid produced 71% of the deaths and severe injuries (City of Delano LRSP). Cecil Avenue, High Street and Garces Highway lead that network, along with a handful of other corridors and intersections. A Delano personal injury attorney starts a case from the same facts the city used, and from a short directory of local offices: the police on High Street, two hospitals 30 miles apart, City Hall, the bus system and the county court. The tables below set out what each one holds and when it matters.

Local offices that hold your records

Sources: DPD, EMSA, Wikipedia, Kern court.

High Street police headquarters

Delano keeps a city police force with its own traffic officers, based at 2330 High Street (Delano PD). A broadside at Cecil and Albany or a pedestrian strike on Main Street is that department’s report. Keep the number on the officer’s card; the department will ask for it when you request a copy of the traffic collision report.

Highway 99 is the exception inside city limits. As a state freeway it falls to the CHP, and the city’s safety plan excluded SR-99 crashes from its counts for that reason.

Two hospitals, one highway apart

Adventist Health Delano is the city’s hospital. A patient with life-threatening injuries can be stabilized there and sent south on Highway 99 to Kern Medical in Bakersfield, the nearest Level II trauma center on the state’s list (EMSA). The trip is about 30 miles, and it leaves a patient with two charts, two sets of imaging and an ambulance invoice, all of which go into the damages.

City Hall and the engineering department

The city’s engineering page posts the June 2022 safety plan, which set out eight safety projects and seven emphasis areas, and a 2026 Safe Routes to School master plan (City of Delano). A claim that an intersection’s design, a dead signal or a worn crosswalk contributed to an injury is made against the City of Delano itself, and the government claim has to be presented in writing within six months.

The county court

A Delano lawsuit goes to the Kern County Superior Court (court website), and which of its courthouses takes a north-county case is a detail a Kern County personal injury attorney settles before drafting the complaint.

Delano’s high-injury streets

Ten corridors and eleven intersections make up the city’s high-injury network. Over the 2015 to 2019 study period, those locations accounted for 25 crashes that killed or severely injured someone and 98 more with lesser injuries (LRSP).

KSI means killed or seriously injured.

Cecil Avenue led the corridor list, and unsafe speed figured in 13 of its 36 collisions. The Cecil and Albany intersection earned the highest score of any in Delano, with 9 of its 17 crashes being broadsides. Out on the city’s edge, County Line Road prompted more public comment than any other street during the plan’s outreach, and three of the four crashes at Hiett Avenue were fatal or severe.

None of this decides who was at fault on a particular afternoon. What it does establish is that the city had studied the location, which becomes relevant when signal timing, sight lines or a missing crosswalk on that corridor helped cause a crash.

Fog, farm trucks and ranked intersections

Cecil and Albany is on the city’s list. Does that help my case?

Only if the road itself contributed. The plan proves the city knew the location carried risk; whether a signal, a sight line or a missing crosswalk helped cause your crash is a separate question, and a claim against Delano has a six-month window.

Fog on Highway 99 caused a chain collision. Is anyone to blame?

The drivers who could not stop in the distance they could see. Tule fog is predictable in winter, and the CHP report together with weather data for that morning shows what each driver faced.

Why would my case be heard in Kern County rather than closer to home?

Delano is in Kern County, so that is where a lawsuit over a Delano crash belongs. Which courthouse within the county is a matter of the court’s rules, and we confirm it.

A grape truck pulled out in front of me. Is the farm responsible?

The farm or labor contractor that employed the driver is generally responsible for a crash during work, and a Delano truck accident lawyer will look first at its commercial policy, which is usually larger than a personal one.

What the city’s crash study found

The plan reviewed 2,852 collisions on Delano streets from 2015 to 2019, leaving out Highway 99. Annual totals fell from 641 in 2015 to 416 in 2018. Thirty-five of those crashes killed or seriously injured someone, 13 fatal and 22 severe, with a peak of nine in 2019.

The pattern in those 35 is clear:

1. Thirty took place at intersections rather than mid-block.
2. Broadsides made up 65%.
3. Four in ten happened after dark.
4. One in four involved a pedestrian.
5. Speeding appears in 14% of them, alcohol or drugs in 11%.

The single busiest hour across all collisions was 3 to 4 p.m., which held 9% of the total. Shift changes at North Kern and Kern Valley state prisons, two of the city’s largest employers, add their own commute traffic to Delano’s roads (Wikipedia).

Watch out: In winter, tule fog settles over this part of the San Joaquin Valley, and the table-grape harvest brings slow farm equipment onto rural roads at the city’s edge. A driver who keeps up highway speed in fog, or who pulls out in front of a tractor at County Line Road, is still responsible for that choice.

The OTS comparison for 2023

OTS 2023, Group C

For every row but the last, a smaller rank number means a worse record; in the DUI row it means fewer arrests relative to population (OTS). Fleeing drivers are where Delano compares worst: 18 hit-and-run crashes with injuries placed it 22nd. Most of those victims will look to their own uninsured motorist coverage. Report the hit-and-run to Delano police the same day.

A records checklist for Delano crashes

• Delano PD report number, or the CHP’s for Highway 99
• Adventist Health Delano chart
• Kern Medical chart, if transferred
• Ambulance invoice for the Bakersfield trip
• Photos of the signal, sight lines and lighting
• Missed-shift records from the vineyard, the prison or another employer

When claims are due

Against a private motorist, such as one who ran the red at Cecil and Albany, the statute of limitations is two years (CCP §335.1). Anything involving City Hall, a DART bus or another public body moves on a far shorter track: under Government Code section 911.2, the written claim to that agency is generally due six months after the injury.

Picture a pedestrian crossing Garces Highway outside the crosswalk at night. Under comparative fault, if a jury put a quarter of the blame on her, she would still collect three-quarters of what she proved (CACI 405).

Our Delano practice

We represent Delano families, farmworkers and corrections employees who are hurt on Cecil Avenue, High Street, Garces Highway, County Line Road and Highway 99. On a new Delano matter we order the High Street police report and the Adventist Health or Kern Medical chart, then compare the crash location against the city’s high-injury network.

Broadside collisions at city intersections lead the local data, so the work of an auto accident lawyer in Delano centers on car and auto accident claims. Beyond those, a Delano pedestrian accident lawyer at our firm handles cases for pedestrians struck on Main and 10th, and we also represent:

• Hit-and-run victims relying on their own coverage
• Drivers hit by grape and freight trucks
• Riders on motorcycles and bicycles
• DART passengers
• Shoppers hurt in falls
• Families pursuing wrongful death claims

There is no charge to meet, and the meeting can happen at your kitchen table near Cecil Avenue or in a Bakersfield hospital room. Cost should not keep a Delano family from calling: our fee comes only out of money we recover, and there is no fee if the case is lost. Families who want a free consultation with a Delano car accident attorney can call (888) 952-2952. Our online form takes the details in writing, and the firm’s Spanish site serves Spanish-speaking families.

Delano’s safety plan, local offices and California’s filing rules are described here only in general terms, and nothing on the page is legal advice.

Sources

1. Delano LRSP — City of Delano
2. Engineering documents — City of Delano
3. Delano PD on High Street — City of Delano
4. Grape strike history, prisons, Adventist Health Delano and tule fog — Wikipedia
5. EMSA PDF — California EMSA
6. Superior Court of Kern County — Kern County Superior Court
7. Delano, 2023 — OTS
8. Section 911.2 — California Legislative Information
9. Section 335.1 — California Legislative Information
10. CACI No. 405 — Justia