Never Fight With Police

Certain highway safety media reports lead me to name the driver as someone who should never be able to drive again. I usually find one or two of these drivers per year and 2010 has been one of those years that lead me to think that I might not find one. Well, it ain’t going to happen.

In an article on the web site of WRCB TV in Chattanooga I found my man, a 70-year-old doper who decided that it was a good idea to fight with police who had pulled him over for not wearing his seat belt. Not wearing his seat belt while driving along a public street was his first mistake, his second was having a bog of pot and seven rocks of crack in his shirt pocket and his third mistake was trying to fight with the officer.

The man is now recovering in a local hospital as the result of injuries he received when police officers subdued him. I mean, hide the dope you dope, don’t keep it in your shirt pocket. I doubt whether the police would have conducted a full car search on a 70-year-old man on seat belt beef, but then, as Forrest Gump said, “…stupid is as stupid does.”

The lesson for the rest of us is don’t use dope and drive, better yet don’t use dope at all. If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile accident caused by a driver under the influence of drugs contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation with a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer to find out about your rights and remedies.

Alcohol and Speed Combine to Kill

Local Johnson City, Tennessee news media reported that one woman was killed and four others were seriously injured in a two-vehicle intersection crash on Saturday night. The wreck occurred at 10:30 p.m. Saturday and involved a green Dodge Caravan carrying four people, including an infant, and a Ford F-250 truck.

The driver of the truck crossed the centerline and struck the driver’s side of the Dodge Caravan, which was traveling south on the same road. The truck went on for some distance down the road before losing control and hitting a tree. The deceased, a 56-year-old woman, was a passenger in the Dodge. The other passengers were treated and released along with the pickup driver. Investigators say that speed and alcohol were contributing factors in the crash and charges will be filed pending the completion of the investigation.

Drunk driving is one of America’s deadliest crimes. In Tennessee in 2008, 327 people were killed in crashes where the driver or motorcyclist had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher. That is down from 377 people killed in 2007 with a BAC of .08 or higher.

Add speeding to the mix and the outcome is usually not a pretty sight. Speeding is one of the most prevalent factors contributing to Tennessee traffic crashes. Speeding was a contributing factor in 31 percent of all fatal crashes, and 13,040 lives were lost in speeding-related crashes

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Nashville automobile accident by a drunk driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation so that you can get a complete picture of your rights and remedies.

Stay At Home To Smoke Your Crack

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney I think I tell you with some authority that it is never a good idea to smoke a couple of rocks of crack and engage in a fist fight with another person while you are driving a car. Something bad is likely to happen. That’s exactly what happened to a Nashville man yesterday and the result was that he rammed, at high speed, into a building in an apartment complex. Luckily no one died.

A resident of the apartment was sitting in a lawn chair outside when he saw the car speeding toward him, at the last minute he had to dive out of the way to avoid being hit. His apartment didn’t fair as well.

The principal concern regarding drugged driving is that driving under the influence of any drug that acts on the brain will impair one’s motor skills, reaction time, and judgment. Drugged driving is a public health concern because it puts not only the driver at risk, but also passengers and others who share the road.

Despite these acknowledged concerns, drugged driving laws have lagged behind alcohol legislation, in part because of limitations in the current technology for determining drug levels, and resulting impairment. For alcohol, detection of its blood concentration (BAC) is relatively simple and concentrations greater than .08% have been shown to impair driving performance. Thus, 0.08% is the legal limit in this country. For illicit drugs, there is no agreed upon limit for which impairment has been reliably demonstrated. And determining current drug levels can be difficult, since some drugs linger in the body for a period of days or weeks after initial ingestion.

Some states (Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin), have passed “per se” laws—in which it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle if there is any detectable level of a prohibited drug, or its metabolites, in the driver’s blood. Other state laws define “drugged driving” as driving when a drug “renders the driver incapable of driving safely” or “causes the driver to be impaired.”

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee car crash caused by a drugged driver you owe it to yourself to contact the experienced Tennessee automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation to find out about your rights and remedies.

He Was Only 20-Years-Old

I hate to sound like a broken record but the Tennessee roadway departure crashes just keep on coming. Is anyone in our political leadership paying attention? It doesn’t appear that they are. A 20-year-old man was killed early this morning when the car he was driving caught on fire after the vehicle left a Tipton County road and hit a culvert.

The accident occurred about 4 AM when the driver lost control of his vehicle, left the roadway, went into a ditch, slammed into a driveway culvert, burst into flames and burned to death. A horrible way to die. My prayers go out to the family and friends of this young man. I hope they find the answers to the many questions they will have.

Many questions arise; why did he leave the roadway? Was he distracted, did he fall asleep, was he speeding, did he consume alcohol or drugs, was he talking or texting on his cell phone? Investigators may or may not be able to determine the cause, an autopsy will answer several of the questions and his cell phone records will answer others.

One question this investigation won’t answer, and question is, when are the political leadership of this state going to step up and do something about this deadly epidemic of roadway departure crashes? Is anyone listening out there?

If you or a loved is injured or killed in a Tennessee roadway departure crash you owe it to your self to contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation to find out about your rights and remedies.

Teen Drinking And Driving

To any one paying attention these days it comes as no surprise that Nashville teenagers have no trouble getting their hands on alcoholic beverages. Fake identification, adults willing to buy and stores willing to sell to youth they know are not 21 are at the heart of the problem.

A recent study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety takes an interesting look at teen driving fatalities. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens, accounting for more than one in three deaths in this age group. In 2008, about 3,500 teens in the United States aged 15–19 were killed and  more than 350,000 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor-vehicle crashes. Young people ages 15-24 represent only 14% of the U.S. population. However, they account for 30% ($19 billion) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries among males and 28% ($7 billion) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries among females.

What can be done to further reduce teenage drinking and driving? States and communities need to make it more difficult for teenagers to purchase alcohol. This experienced Nashville automobile accident has seen the carnage caused by teen drivers under the influence and I’m, quit frankly, sick and tired of the carnage.

I suggest two things that will work. The first is to be relentless and shut down stores that don’t follow the law. Towns and cities can simply revoke the merchants license to sell anything. The second, and most effective, is to educate the teens on the zero-tolerance rules and make it clear to them that if they are caught driving under the influence, which, for our purposes should .04, they will lose their drivers license until they reach the age of 22. If we don’t play hardball, and play it now,  we are just going to soon be burying our children on a daily basis.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Nashville automobile accident caused by a drunken teen driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates and take advantage of a free consultation to learn about your rights and remedies.

Reduce The BAC Level

A question to members of the Tennessee General Assembly, what would you do in order to reduce motor vehicle fatalities by 6 to 18 percent? Would you be willing to reduce the legal limit (Blood Alcohol Content) to .05? According to the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) their studies show that if we would reduce the limit we could expect such a decrease. What happened when states went down to .08? Approximately 20 scholarly studies have found strong evidence lives were saved. The median study found that, thanks to the .08 limit, fatal crashes involving alcohol dropped by about 7 percent.

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney I doubt it could be done in Tennessee. I can see the liquor lobbyists coming out of the woodwork on this one.  Are thousands of lives a year worth this sacrifice? They would argue that it would cost the state valuable tax dollars and jobs, thousands of jobs. One could certainly make the case that the answer is “no,” given these arguments.  But cutting the limit to .05 would be far from unprecedented. At least 52 nations have done it, including Brazil, China, India, Russia, the Nordic countries, Argentina, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey.

Until then, if you or a loved one are injured or killed in a Nashville automobile accident contact the experienced Nashville auto accident lawyers at Phillip Miller &  Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

Teen Drinking

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyer I’m often asked at social functions whether  alcohol is a significant factor in teenagers’ crashes and my answer is a resounding, Yes.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway safety underage drivers are less likely than adults to drive after drinking alcohol, but their crash risk is substantially higher when they do. This is especially true at low and moderate blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) and is thought to result from teenagers’ relative inexperience with drinking, with driving, and with combining the two.

In 2008, 28 percent of 16-20 year-old passenger vehicle drivers fatally injured in crashes had BACs of 0.08 percent or higher. The percentage of fatally injured 16-20 year-old drivers with high BACs was much lower among females (16 percent) than among males (33 percent), and also was lower among 16-17 year-old drivers (16 percent) than among 18-19 year-old (29 percent) or 20 year-old (36 percent) drivers.

Drivers ages 16-20 with BACs of 0.05-0.08 percent are far more likely than sober teenage drivers to be killed in single-vehicle crashes — 17 times more likely for males, 7 times more likely for females. At BACs of 0.08-0.10, fatality risks are even higher, at 52 times for males and 15 times for females.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Nashville automobile accident caused by a teen driver under the influence of alcohol you owe it to yourself to take advantage of a free consultation with the experienced Nashville auto accident lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

Teen Drinking and Driving

Are minimum purchasing age laws and zero tolerance penalties effective in reducing drinking and driving among teenagers?

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety the answer is yes. When many states lowered the minimum alcohol purchasing age in the 1960s and early 1970s, Institute research indicated an increase in the number of drivers younger than 21 involved in nighttime fatal crashes. When a number of states restored higher purchasing age laws as a result of this and other studies, Institute researchers in 1981 evaluated this development in 9 states, finding that nighttime fatal crashes among young drivers were reduced by 28 percent. A subsequent study in 26 states that raised minimum purchasing ages during 1975-84 estimated a 13 percent reduction in nighttime driver fatal crash involvement. Numerous other studies have confirmed that raising the minimum legal drinking age to 21 reduced teenage crashes.

Studies of zero tolerance laws for retail outlets that sell alcohol indicate they reduce crashes among drivers younger than 21. A study of 12 states that passed zero tolerance laws reported a 20 percent reduction in the proportion of fatal crashes that were single-vehicle nighttime events (crashes likely to involve alcohol impairment) among drivers ages 15-20.

As an experienced Tennessee automobile accident attorney I thought I had seen it all. Alcohol abuse has become a main contributor to Tennessee automobile fatalities but the usual scenario is that the drunk driver is behind the wheel and hits something or someone. In a recent article on a local media web site alcohol took the life of a man who had stopped his car, got out vomited and then laid down in the highway and passed out. You guessed it, another vehicle came along and ran over him.

As an experienced Nashville car accident lawyer I want to remind you that driving with a BAC of .08 or higher is illegal in every state. If you follow my blog you will see that in Tennessee we continue to see a tragic number of people with debilitating injuries and deaths as a result of impaired driving. This careless disregard for human life must stop.

Drunk driving is one of America’s deadliest crimes. In Tennessee in 2008, 327 people were killed in crashes where the driver or motorcyclist had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher. That is down from 377 people killed in 2007 with a BAC of .08 or higher. Over the 2008 Labor Day holiday, 12 people were killed in 10 fatal crashes on Tennessee roadways, down from 17 people killed on Tennessee roadways in 2007.

If you or someone you love has been hurt in a serious Tennessee car accident due to somebody else’s negligence, then you may be feeling angry, frightened, or even alone in your suffering.

There is no reason for you to bear your burden alone.  The experience of a Tennessee auto accident is traumatic enough and your recovery will bring its own challenges.  You don’t need the added stress of worrying about who will pay for the medical care you need, how your car will be repaired, and if the individuals responsible for your suffering will be brought to justice.  This is the time to call Phillip Miller & Associates, the law firm of local TennesseeTennessee attorneys and staff who for the past 25 years have dedicated their lives to protecting the rights of injured men, women, and children in .

He Was Alive, He Drank, He sped, He Died

It was a small article, the end of a young man’s life should take more words, more things should be said, but it was all neatly summed up in a seven-word headline on the web site of a local media outlet. “Drinking and Driving Leads to Teen Death”. The Tennessee Trooper who investigated the wreck said that the 18-year-old was drinking and driving too fast when he tried to exit I-24, lost control, left the road and crashed. His passenger was injured. My prayers go out to the family and friends of this young

Younger drivers, according to the Governor’s Highway Safety Association (GHSA), the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), have the highest crash risk of any age group. I also share some sobering statistics. Traffic crashes are the leading cause of teen fatalities, accounting for 38% of all teen deaths in the United States.

In 2008, about 3,500 teens in the United States aged 15–19 were killed and more than 350,000 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor-vehicle crashes. Young people ages 15-24 represent only 14% of the U.S. population. However, they account for 30% ($19 billion) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries among males and 28% ($7 billion) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries among females.

Most Americans typically learn to drive during the teen years, when the brain is not fully mature yet. Recent research is beginning to give us insight why many teens have difficulty regulating risk-taking behavior:

* The area of the brain that weighs consequences, suppresses impulses and organizes thoughts does not fully mature until about age 25.

* Hormones are more active in teens, which influence the brain’s neuro-chemicals that regulate excitability and mood. The result can be thrill-seeking behavior and experiences that create intense feelings. Add alcohol to this mix and the odds of an accident rise exponentially.

If you or a loved one is injured in a Tennessee automobile accident caused by a drunk driver you owe it to yourself to contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation to find out about your rights and remedies.