Has a CenterPoint Energy Driver Injured You? We Can Help.

CenterPoint Energy is a Houston-based electric and natural gas utility service company. They serve Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas and rely on their service vehicles to reach their customers throughout each state. Unfortunately, CenterPoint has also been the source of several car, truck, and pedestrian accidents as well.

At CenterPoint Energy, they have a pattern of enforcing their drivers to use a cell phone with a Bluetooth connection while driving. This violates their own written policy for cell phone use while driving. While it is against their own policy, they encourage this behavior because their employees are more productive for the company if they can work on the phone while driving.

This has increased distracted driving and led to several accidents, which CenterPoint Energy does not properly attribute to the correct cause. CenterPoint Energy has a pattern of covering up and hiding key facts when they investigate their accidents. For example, if their driver was in fact on the phone using Bluetooth, the company has intentionally omitted that crucial information from their reports and blamed other irrelevant sources as the cause of the accident. This is illegal and it demonstrates to their drivers that they are enabling this type of behavior.

At VB Attorneys, our motor vehicle accident lawyers have successfully handled several cases against CenterPoint Energy to bring justice to innocent victims. We have been able to prove that CenterPoint Energy drivers injured innocent people because the drivers are encouraged to have phone conversations to multitask while driving. CenterPoint Energy is only focused on efficiency and not the safety of others.

Driving While Using a Bluetooth Device is Still Distracted Driving

While vision is understandably the most important sense for safe driving, it is critical for drivers to reduce distractions completely. Distracted drivers experience what researchers call inattention blindness, similar to tunnel vision, when they are trying to drive and complete other tasks such as talking on the phone- even if it is with a Bluetooth device. Drivers may be looking at the road, but they are not processing everything in the roadway environment that they need to in order to drive safely and efficiently. While driving, drivers are required to effectively assess their surroundings while seeking potential hazards in order to respond to unexpected situations. If a driver is distracted in the slightest, it will reduce their ability to safely respond to a hazard and potentially cause harm to themselves and to others.

Hands-free Bluetooth devices are often seen as a solution to distracted driving because a driver is not visually or manually distracted. The driver can still keep their eyes on the road and their hands available for steering. The driver is, however, cognitively distracted. Most people do not typically realize that they are cognitively distracted, so they allow themselves to expose themselves to risk much longer. It is much more obvious for drivers to realize when they are visually or manually distracted because it is straightforward, but being cognitively distracted still exposes the driver to risk longer because of their lack of awareness.

CenterPoint Energy should not be allowing or encouraging their employees to participate in any act of distracted driving and the fact that they are trying to hide their actions further exposes how wrong their actions are. Drivers should be able to trust that other drivers, especially drivers who are driving as professional employees of a company, are driving to the best of their ability.

Contact VB Attorneys. We are here to help.

At VB Attorneys, we have extensive experience helping innocent people who were the victims of negligence. Our motor vehicle accident lawyers have helped innocent people who were injured by CenterPoint Energy drivers and were denied proper coverage and compensation.

Unfortunately, no one is going to fight for your best interest. Let us take that on. If you were involved in a motor vehicle accident, contact our experienced car accident lawyers for help today. We will fight for your rights.