Get Answers to Your Highest Priority South Dakota Legal Questions

South Dakota has a series of speed limits depending on your location.

• The speed limit on Interstate 29 and Interstate 90 is 75 mph for cars or trucks, day or night, with a minimum speed of 40 mph.
• All South Dakota secondary highways are 65 mph, unless otherwise posted.
• South Dakota's school zones and obstructed intersections are 15 mph.
• City streets in South Dakota are 25 mph, unless otherwise posted.

Of course, all vehicles traveling in South Dakota are required to operate in a reasonable and prudent manner based on the existing driving conditions.

If you were involved in an car accident in South Dakota and would like a copy of the accident report, visit the South Dakota Office of Accident Records website or call 605-773-3868.

In South Dakota, a solid yellow line on the right side of the centerline and a no passing sign on the left edge of the roadway indicates a no passing zones.

First, you need to contact an experienced wrongful death lawyer in South Dakota.  Wrongful death claims are complicated and they require time and resources to pursue. 

Second, you should contact the attorney promptly so that attorney can begin an investigation.

 

You are right to be concerned.  Even though many young drivers think they can safely text while driving, statistics show they really cannot. According to the United States Department of Transportation, there are a few statistics that may help your teenager see how dangerous her behavior is:

• In 2010, over 3000 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver.  An estimated 416,000 people were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver.
• Eighteen percent of injury crashes in 2010 were considered to be distraction-affected crashes.
• Eleven percent of all drivers under the age of 20 involved in fatal crashes were considered to be distracted at the time of the crash. This age group has the largest proportion of drivers who were distracted at the time of an accident.
• Forty percent of American teenagers say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put others in danger.
• Sending or receiving a text takes a driver's eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds. If a car were traveling at 55 mph, the driver would drive the length of an entire football field, blind.
• Driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37%.

Seek treatment immediately.

Our law firm often handles tragic child accidents.  The most important thing you can do for both your physical and financial health is to get the proper medical treatment for your child's injuries.  You need to go to your family physician or to the emergency room to make sure that your child gets the treatment necessary to recover from the injuries in the accident.

 

Yes. In South Dakota, if your insurance company refuses to honor its contract and pay a valid claim, you have the right to bring a legal action for damages against the insurance company.  In addition to bringing a legal action for "breach of contract," you might be able to bring a "tort claim" asking for damages based upon the insurance company's "bad faith" handling of the claim.

How do you start a wrongful death lawsuit?

In South Dakota, a wrongful death case can only be brought by the Personal Representative of the deceased person's estate.  Therefore, the first step is for a South Dakota court to appoint the Personal  Representative.  A surviving family member or close relative of the deceased usually acts as the estate's Personal Representative. 

Negligence is the legal term for any careless behavior that causes, or contributes to, an accident.  For example, a person is negligent if he neglected to stop at a stop sign and, as a result, hit your car as you were coming through the intersection.

A person can be considered negligent whenever he or she had a duty to act carefully and failed to do so. (Generally, we all have an obligation to act with ordinary and reasonable care in any given situation -- that is, in a manner that will not foreseeably injure those around us).  For example, a person who drove at night wearing sunglasses would be negligent, because any reasonable driver would know that doing so would increase the chances of causing a traffic accident.

For most types of accidents, a person must be found negligent in order to be held legally responsible for another person's injuries. If a person behaves negligently and that behavior causes you harm, you can most likely recover compensation for your injuries.

Determining who is at fault in a traffic accident is a matter of deciding who was careless.  For South Dakota vehicle accidents, there is a set of official written rules telling people how they are supposed to drive and providing guidelines by which liability may be measured.  These "rules of the road" are the traffic laws everyone must learn to pass the driver's license test.  Complete rules are contained in South Dakota's vehicle code, and they apply not only to automobiles but also to motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians.

Sometimes a violation of one of these traffic rules is obvious and was clearly the cause of an accident -- for example, when one driver runs a stop sign and crashes into another.

In other situations, whether or not there was a violation will be less obvious -- a common example is a crash that occurs when drivers both merge into a single lane of traffic.  These cases may be governed by the law of negligence. A driver, pedestrian, or cyclist who is "negligent" (that is, behaved in a thoughtless or careless manner) will be found at least partially at fault for causing the accident.