My thirty years of experience representing people who have been hurt in auto, big truck, and bus accidents has imprinted in my mind the major causes of these accidents. Most injuries and deaths can be avoided if people are aware of the driving behavior that repeatedly maims and kills on our roads. Reckless or erratic behavior kills eighteen hundred people a year.
On the mild side, I'm talking about tailgating that has resulted in an epidemic of rear end collisions and weaving in and out of traffic that causes loss of control. At its worst, it is driving drunk, steering down the wrong side of a road, exceeding the speed limit by a large margin and driving at 80 and above. Speed kills. In the hundred miles from Panama City to Tallahassee or Pensacola, you save only 6 minutes by going 70 instead of 65 mph. And every 5 miles an hour over the speed limit increases the energy of a crash exponentially so that even the best designed vehicles cannot absorb the energy of the impact as they crush. The result is that the body takes the brunt of the crash.
Another huge cause of wrecks is running red lights. Seventy five percent of city collisions are caused by people running lights either intentionally to save an average of one minute driving time or because they are inattentive. Hitting the gas instead of the brake when a light turns to orange or red is disastrous in too many cases. NHTSA statistics for 2007 inform us that fifty-four percent of the 41,059 deaths happened in cars that had frontal damage. When a light is run, one of the cars in the collision will have frontal damage. The other will be hit in the side which is the other of the two most dangerous scenarios in highway or street collisions.
Failure to wear seat belts remains a deadly mistake for too many drivers and passengers. The damage is done when the person strikes the interior of the vehicle with huge force. It is impossible in anything over about an 8 mph collision for a person to brace with his or her arms to prevent striking interior components like the dashboard and windshield. Even worse, a huge percentage of unrestrained occupants are ejected through windows, even those that are closed, and, then, are brain damaged from hitting the pavement or coming into contact with the other vehicle or objects like culverts and trees. Often, when people are ejected, their own vehicle rolls over on them, producing death.
Cell phones are both wonderful and terrible. Inattentive driving, which can lead to the red light running I mentioned a minute ago, killed 4,704 people in 2007 according to NHTSA. While cell phone usage is only one bad idea when on the road (others being adjusting the radio, lighting cigarettes, and text messaging), it's become dangerously prevalent. An estimated one million people are on our roads at any given time driving and talking on cell phones. Avoid these commonly occurring scenarios, and your summer vacation is likely to be a happy and safe one.
Failure to wear seat belts remains a deadly mistake for too many drivers and passengers. The damage is done when the person strikes the interior of the vehicle with huge force. It is impossible in anything over about an 8 mph collision for a person to brace with his or her arms to prevent striking interior components like the dashboard and windshield. Even worse, a huge percentage of unrestrained occupants are ejected through windows, even those that are closed, and, then, are brain damaged from hitting the pavement or coming into contact with the other vehicle or objects like culverts and trees. Often, when people are ejected, their own vehicle rolls over on them, producing death.
Cell phones are both wonderful and terrible. Inattentive driving, which can lead to the red light running I mentioned a minute ago, killed 4,704 people in 2007 according to NHTSA. While cell phone usage is only one bad idea when on the road (others being adjusting the radio, lighting cigarettes, and text messaging), it's become dangerously prevalent. An estimated one million people are on our roads at any given time driving and talking on cell phones. Avoid these commonly occurring scenarios, and your summer vacation is likely to be a happy and safe one.
Wes Pittman has been practicing law for over 30 years in the Panama City area. He appears weekly on the WJHG-TV Channel 7 during the noon news.
