Articles Posted in Car Accidents

While Boston car accidents remain a significant threat to motorists, a new study suggests that drivers may actually be at increased risk of an accident while traveling in more rural areas of Massachusetts.

The USA Today reports that safety advocates are concerned that a false sense of security by rural drivers, combined with the lack of emphasis on rural driving safety, could be contributing to the safety risks.

The Center for Excellence in Rural Safety at the University of Minnesota reports that 57 percent of all highway deaths occur in rural areas, despite the fact that only 23 percent of the American population lives outside urban areas.

The center reports that 84 percent of study respondents feel safe on rural interstates, compared to 79 percent on rural highways and 69 percent on urban freeways. Safety advocates are concerned that those who feel safer are more likely to engage in dangerous behavior, including drunk driving and distracted driving.

“People seem to feel more comfortable on those roads, even though the facts show that it’s more dangerous,” says Lee Munnich, director of the center. “They feel more relaxed and, as a result, they are engaging in behavior that is riskier.”

Only speeders reported feeling safer on large urban highways, by a factor of 47 percent to 33 percent.

Rural motorists are at significantly greater risk for being involved in a fatal singe-vehicle accident, usually as a result of the driver crashing into a tree, utility pole or other stationary object.

The study appears to reveal an overconfidence people feel in their own abilities and an underestimation of the risks. “The more people perceive they have control, the less they perceive a situation as being risky,” said Peter Kissinger, president and CEO of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

The study was funded by the Federal Highway Administration and could raise awareness about the need to focus on traffic safety in more rural areas.

“The transportation community has tended to underemphasize rural road safety,” Kissinger said. “There’s a long history of underinvestment in rural road safety in this country.”
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The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced the second-annual distracted driving summit will be held on Sept. 21 in Washington, D.C., as authorities continue to push cell phone and text messaging bans as a way to combat car accidents in Massachusetts and serious and fatal traffic accidents nationwide.

As we reported earlier this summer on our Boston Car Accident Lawyer Blog, Massachusetts is finally moving to ban text messaging by all drivers and to prevent young drivers from using cell phones while behind the wheel.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is pushing for all states to enact such measures. The federal government estimates that 6,000 motorists are killed and more than 500,000 are injured each year in accidents caused by distracted driving.

“Working together, we can put an end to the thousands of needless deaths and injuries caused by distracted driving each year,” said Secretary LaHood. “By getting the best minds together, I believe we can figure out how to get people to put down their phones and pay attention to the road.”

Following the inaugural summit last year, President Obama issued an Executive Order banning text messaging by all 4 million federal employees. The order applies to any employee operating a government vehicle.

The government credits the first summit with raising awareness about the dangers of cell phone use and text messaging while drivers. Thirty states currently ban text messaging while driving — 11 of those measures have been enacted so far in 2010.
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The Massachusetts Highway Patrol has announced an enforcement blitz will be rolled out in an effort to reduce the number of serious and fatal Massachusetts car accidents through the remainder of summer. The blitz will be conducted each Friday and Saturday night and will search for drunk drivers and other traffic violators.

Dubbed Operation Lightning, the effort will include 20 extra troopers on the roads each Friday and Saturday night. During the last two weekends, the operation has resulted in the arrest of 24 motorists on drunk driving charges, as well as 15 other arrests. The extra patrols also issued 263 citations.

In addition to the increased enforcement, the patrol is also launching a “Click it or Ticket” campaign, which will use federal funding through the National Highway Transportation Administration to pay for an additional 460 four-hour patrol shifts through July 31. In August, a “Drunk Driving — Over the Limit — Under Arrest” grant will be used to provide a similar increase in patrols and enforcement.

The patrol also announced plans to run two or three sobriety checkpoints each weekend through the remainder of the year. Last weekend, checkpoints in Quincy and Auburn netted 12 drunk driver arrests. A previous weekend resulted in 16 OUI arrests in Haverhill and Springfield.

Troopers will also be looking for speeders, aggressive drivers and distracted drivers.

So far this year, the patrol reports 145 fatal accidents on Massachusetts roads — fewer than the 184 deaths recorded during the same period last year.
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A Boston dump truck accident left motorists plenty frustrated this morning as a landscaper’s truck flipped on the highway south of downtown, causing long delays, the Globe reported.

The accident scattered dirt across the road at about 6:30 a.m. on the southbound side of I-93 near the Dorchester Yacht Club. The crash slowed traffic clear through the city and north to Montvale Avenue.

Fortunately, there were no reports of serious injuries as a result of the crash. However, dump trucks pose the threat of serious or fatal injuries in the event of an accident with other motorists. While smaller than a semi, a dump truck may be just as heavy. And the shifting weight of earth or debris in a dump truck can make steering difficult. Additionally, a truck may make numerous trips to and from a dump site each day and may react differently depending on the weight of its current load. A loaded dump truck may also require a significant length of time to come to a stop.

Twenty people were killed Massachusetts trucking accidents in 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Nationwide, one in every nine traffic fatalities involves a collision with a large truck. In 2008, an astounding 380,000 semis and large trucks were involved in accidents. A total of 4,229 people were killed and more than 90,000 were injured.

A Boston injury lawyer should always be consulted when a motorist is injured or killed in an accident with a large commercial truck. Out-of-state trucking companies and insurance companies can complicate trucking accident cases. And whether or not a truck and its driver were in compliance with numerous state and federal trucking regulations can have a major impact on a trucking accident case.
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The state has passed a law banning text messaging while behind the wheel in an effort to reduce the risk of serious or fatal Massachusetts car accidents. But it is just part of a national patchwork of distracted driving laws motorists will have to navigate while on summer vacation.

As our Boston Car Accident Lawyer Blog reported earlier this month, state leaders have reached agreement on a new law that will ban texting while driving. After six-years of debate, the law will also ban drivers under the age of 18 from using a cell phone while driving and will require drivers over the age of 75 to have their vision tested in person when renewing their driver’s license.

The Governor’s Highway Safety Association reports that eight states prohibit all drivers from using hand-held cell phones — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Thirty states ban text messaging while driving.

And a number of cities, including Chicago, ban the use of hand-held cell phones in a state where they are otherwise legal for use by drivers outside the city limits. As MSNBC reported motorists are responsible for knowing and obeying the laws, wherever they are traveling.

What’s a traveling motorist to do this summer? Fines range from $20 to $150 and can put a real ding in your vacation budget. In some states, a motorist may only be cited if they are texting or using a phone while committing a separate traffic infraction. In other states, merely using a phone is enough to be pulled over and cited.

While AAA discourages the use of cell phones while driving, the organization offers a list of the laws in each state on its website.

“Drivers are still responsible for knowing the cell phone laws that apply to each state,” said AAA spokesperson Nancy White.

Our Boston injury lawyers urge you to leave the map searching, texting, talking and GPS devices and other distractions to a passenger. The best way to ensure safe travel this summer is for the driver to do nothing but concentrate on the road.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that more than 6,000 motorists are killed each year in distracted driving accidents, primarily as a result of using cell phones while driving. Another 600,000 are injured.
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Our Boston injury lawyers read with interest an item published recently in the Hartford Courant, which detailed results of a study that found the effectiveness of airbags and seat belts can depend on the sex and weight of the motorist.

Wearing your seat belt is required by law in Massachusetts. What authorities downplay in the quest to get motorists to buckle up (Click it or Ticket, et al.) is that there are accident scenes in which a motorist would have been better off had he or she not been wearing a seat belt. And there are circumstances where an accident impacts two motorists differently — one survives while the other is seriously injured or killed.

The University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, which conducted the study, found that additional technology is needed to protect the largest and smallest of occupants. Of course, we already know and understand that on a most basic level; it’s why we require small children to utilize booster seats and other devices to augment their safety.

But we largely ignore the difference in a crash’s impact on a 100 pound woman or a 300 pound man.

“Based on these results, we know the current system is not optimal,” said Michael Sivak, a research professor who worked on the study.

The study looked at 297,000 crashes from 1998 to 2008, in which at least one occupant was killed. The driver was killed in about half of the crashes and survived in the other half. Researchers then used information about the size of the driver to determine body Mass Index (BMI), which is based on relationship of a driver’s weight to his or her height.

Men with a BMI of 35 to 50 are considered to be seriously obese; a 6-foot man with a BMI of 35 would weigh 258 pounds. With a BMI of 50, he would weigh 369 pounds. Researchers found that obese men wearing seat belts were about 14 percent less likely to die than men of average weight.

However, obese men who were not wearing their belts were about 5 percent more likely to die, apparently because the extra weight forced its way through the airbag, which made airbags less effective.

Researchers found no reliable trends for unbelted women, but found overweight women were more likely to be killed in a crash, as were women who were underweight.

Women lighter than 110 pounds were about 8 percent more likely to be killed in a crash.

Air bags continue to evolve, and beginning in 2007 front airbags are required to take into account the size and weight of the seat occupant under new requirements by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

So far, studies of those devices have not found them to be any safer.
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