Distracted Driving
by Jeffrey J. Kroll
We don’t want any other family to go through what we’ve gone through,” said Jamie Bolognone, following the death of her fiancé Gerardo Marciales from a bicycle accident on DuSable Lake Shore Drive on February 28th of this year. The happy couple who lived in Lincoln Park, met prior to the pandemic. They were due to marry September 3rd, but their dreams were dashed when a driver blew through a red light and proceeded straight into a turning lane at an intersection where he admitted pedestrians and bicyclists did not have enough time to cross. The driver, a 26-year-old man, was cited for disobeying lane markings, police said.
Ever the devoted family man, Marciales had moved to Chicago from Venezuela in 2019 but continued sending money back to the family in his home country.
“This type of incident is far too common on the streets of Chicago,” says Jeffrey Kroll, partner with Kaveny + Kroll Trial Attorneys, located in Chicago. “So many young people (Marciales was 41) are robbed of the prime of their life by inadequate safety laws and driver misconduct.” Jeffrey Kroll won a verdict for $5.25 million when a 25-year-old Divvy bike rider was struck and killed in a Chicago area intersection when she was sideswiped by a truck, the first shared bike accident in North America. “These stories are the public ones, but the truth is, far too many innocent bicyclists are injured or killed by motorists not abiding by the laws,” says Kroll. “We need to call for safer streets, tougher laws and a stronger system for fighting those incidents that go awry.