A new lawsuit, issued by a former Uber driver, is blaming an app called Snapchat for the traumatic brain injuries he suffered in a car crash.
Wentworth Maynard was driving a gray Mitsubishi near Atlanta, Georgia and was merging onto a highway when his car was hit so hard by another car, being driven by Christal McGee, that Maynard’s car flew across to the other side of the road.
According to the lawsuit, McGee was allegedly using her cell phone at the time of the accident, and was using the Snapchat app to try to post a picture of herself traveling at a high rate of speed. With Snapchat a person can post a picture of himself driving at a high rate of speed by taking a selfie using the “speed filter” option. A passenger in McGee’s car said she had managed to reach 113mph before the crash. Despite being in a 55 mph zone, McGee was traveling at approximately 107 mph when she struck Maynard’s vehicle.
Given that she was distracted McGee did not notice Maynard who, along with his wife, is now suing both McGee and Snapchat after having spent five weeks in an Intensive Care Unit with severe brain injury. Maynard is reportedly now unable to walk or work as a result of the accident.
The lawsuit alleges that Snapchat is well aware of other accidents which have occurred while people were using this very dangerous feature of the app, which offers no warnings about the dangers of accidents, and no safeguards at all.
Snapchat argues that it does warn users not to use the app to take a photographs or a video while actually driving. However, an additional complaint among critics of Snapchat is that the nature of the app – videos and photos disappear only seconds after being viewed – causes users to dedicate 100% of their attention to the app to the exclusion of all else – even driving.
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