Buckle Up Or Die

So, what do you think was going on when a 28-year-old woman who is driving along a US Highway when she left the road, sideswiped a guardrail, crossed to the other side of the roadway, hit another guardrail, flipped and rolled down a steep embankment? Another question her family and friends are going to be asking themselves is why didn’t she take a moment and secure her seat belt? She was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators said that an autopsy will be performed but the didn’t think that alcohol was a factor.

Distraction from the primary task of driving could present a serious and potentially deadly danger. In 2008, 5,870 people lost their lives and an estimated 515,000 people were injured in police-reported crashes in which at least one form of driver distraction was reported on the crash report.

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney we know that these crashes are referred to as “Roadway Departure Crashes” (RDCs). The Federal Highway Administration defines a RDC as a non-intersection crash that occurs when a vehicle crosses an edge line or a centerline, or otherwise leaves the traveled way.

According to the Federal Highway Administration roadway departure crashes are frequently severe and account for the majority of highway fatalities. In 2008, there were 19,794 fatal roadway departure crashes resulting in 22,080 fatalities, which was 53 percent of the fatal crashes in the United States.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee car crash by a distracted driver or a case like the present one that will require an experienced Tennessee automobile accident lawyer contact the lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates for a free consultation to learn about your rights and remedies.

Distracted By A Bee

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration driver inattention is the leading factor in most crashes. Nearly 80 percent of crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes involved some form of driver inattention within three seconds before the event.  Primary causes of driver inattention are distracting activities, such as cell phone use, and drowsiness.

Some distractions can be unavoidable, such as that with a recent tractor-trailer accident in Johnson City Tennessee. The driver was heading east on US Highway 11A when he was distracted by a bee in the cab of his truck. He attempted to swat the bee, lost control, left the road and rolled over in a ditch.

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney we know that these crashes are referred to as “Roadway Departure Crashes” (RDCs). The Federal Highway Administration defines a RDC as a non-intersection crash that occurs when a vehicle crosses an edge line or a centerline, or otherwise leaves the traveled way.

According to the Federal Highway Administration roadway departure crashes are frequently severe and account for the majority of highway fatalities. In 2008, there were 19,794 fatal roadway departure crashes resulting in 22,080 fatalities, which was 53 percent of the fatal crashes in the United States.

The lesson here for Nashville drivers is that you must keep all of your attention on the acting of driving and avoid distractions. You never know when another driver is going to fall asleep, have a medical emergency or get distracted and leave their lane and initiate a deadly collision.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee car crash by a distracted driver or a case like the present one that will require and experienced Tennessee automobile accident lawyer contact the lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates for a free consultation to learn about your rights and remedies.

Double Fatality

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyer I have learned over the many years and many Tennessee automobile accident cases that most people have a higher opinion of their ability to driver than they actually possess. This faulty opinion leads them to believe that the Tennessee Rules of The Road and especially the speed limits do not apply to them.

Reference a single car crash in Knoxville that took the lives of two people in a roadway departure crash. The wreck occurred at  4 AM on Saturday morning. The crash investigators believe that speed was the cause of the accident.

The speed at which you drive determines how much time you have to act or react and how long it takes to stop. The higher the speed, the less time drivers have to spot hazards. Judge the speed of other traffic, and react to avoid the mistakes of other drivers.

The Basic Speed Rule (BSR) is not a Tennessee law, but it is a general safety principle. The BSR does not set an exact speed limit; instead, it teaches that the speed you may drive is limited by current conditions. For example, if the posted speed limit is 65 mph and you are driving at night on a two-lane state highway and it’s raining or foggy, 65 mph is too fast for those conditions.

If you or a loved one are injured or killed in a Tennessee auto accident caused by a speeding driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

That grace period has expired and the embarrassed officials are now pulling out all of the stops. The city will use tire boots if an agent catches a heavy offender in the down town area, they will also use skip-tracers for those who have considerable debt, they will garnish wages and confiscate vehicle to hold for ransom until the offenders get right with Caesar.

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney I advise you to avoid citations but in the event you can’t do so, I suggest that you pay them post haste. If you are stopped for a violation or you are involved in n accident and a warrant has issued for failure to pay you fine, the officer has no choice but to take you down to the jail and book you. Your car will be confiscated and held in an impoundment yard until you make right on your debt.

When you hire an attorney from Phillip Miller & Associates, you’re getting the whole package.  You don’t just get an extremely qualified and dedicated lawyer, you also get a loyal Tennessee resident who cares about the quality of life in their community and who puts their time and money into standing up for causes and charities they believe in.  You can read about some of the causes we support on our home page, along with a summary of our professional qualifications.  Additional details about our attorneys and staff can be found by viewing our personal profiles, where you can get to know the men and women who will be looking out for your best interest.

Please contact Phillip Miller & Associates today and take your first step forward towards putting the frustration and horror of your auto accident experience behind you.

Side Impact Crashes Often Deadly

More than 100,000 crashes a year are caused by drivers running red lights, killing some 950 people and injuring 90,000 others, making it a leading cause of fatal crashes in metropolitan areas, according to the Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Worse, the numbers are on the rise: Fatal motor vehicle crashes at traffic signals increased 19 percent nationally between 1992 and 1998 (the last year for which FHWA had statistics); over the same period, all other types of fatal crashes increased just 6 percent. This is a situation where people are dying from something that’s 100 percent preventable.”

The high fatality rate associated with red-light-running crashes is partly attributable to the fact that they are usually “T-bone,” or side-impact, crashes involving high speeds (since drivers often accelerate to get through a red light quickly). Indeed, images of vehicles broadsided at intersections often show cars cut in two or with pulverized midsections. “Of all the injuries we see, these are some of the worst,” says Harry Teter, executive director of the 2,200-member American Trauma Society. “You’re hitting the most vulnerable part of the car.”

Moreover, 53 percent of drivers in a 2008 online poll said their cars were not equipped with head-protecting side-curtain air bags, even though these devices cut driver deaths in side-impact crashes by nearly half. (Last year the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a new regulation that mandates that new passenger cars have side air bags by 2012.)

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee red light running crash, you owe it to yourself and your family to contact an experienced Tennessee automobile accident lawyer like those that you will find at Phillip Miller & Associates. Call for a free consultation so that you can learn about your rights and remedies.

Motorcycle Wreck

An inexperienced driver, a high-powered motorcycle, high speeds and a windy road spell disaster for a Hendersonville couple. The good news is that neither of them died, the bad news is that they are both hospitalized in critical condition.

Reports in Nashville area media sources say that the male driver was speeding on a friends motorcycle and tried to negotiate a turn and slammed into a guard rail near Rockland Park. Tests are pending to determine whether drugs or alcohol were a factor in this crash.

Motorcycles made up nearly 3 percent of all registered vehicles in the United States in 2006 and accounted for only 0.4 percent of all vehicle miles traveled. Per vehicle mile traveled in 2006, motorcyclists were about 35 times more likely than passenger car occupants to die in a motor vehicle traffic crash and 8 times more likely to be injured.

In 2007, 2,641 (50%) of all motorcycles involved in fatal crashes collided with another type of motor vehicle in transport. In two-vehicle crashes, 78 percent of the motorcycles involved were struck in the front. Only 5 percent were struck in the rear. Motorcycles are more likely to be involved in a fatal collision with a fixed object than are other vehicles. In 2007, 25 percent of the motorcycles involved in fatal crashes collided with fixed objects, compared to 18 percent for passenger cars, 13 percent for light trucks, and 3 percent for large trucks.

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney I couldn’t help but think of the many factors that could have caused this near fatal Tennessee motorcycle accident. If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee roadway collision by a speeding motorcycle driver contact the experienced Tennessee motorcycle crash lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

Agressive Driving

Lately this Tennessee automobile accident lawyer has been giving a lot of thought to acts of aggressive driving. A recent article on the website of the Atlanta-Journal-Constitution points out an incident on I-285 that epitomizes the thoughtless nature of aggressive drivers who choose to put the lives of other drivers on the line so that they can get the thrill of drag racing.

According to the article two cars were racing on I-285 when one of them clipped another car and then, at high speed, hit three other cars, sending at least three people, with moderate to mild injuries, to the hospital and leaving thousands of dollars of damaged vehicle. Instead of stopping to see if they could help the inured, the cowardly jerks fled the scene.

Aggressive driving is a traffic offense or combination of offenses such as following too closely, speeding, unsafe lane changes, failing to signal intent to change lanes, and other forms of negligent or inconsiderate driving. Unfortunately, these actions put the rest of us at risk.

Aggressive driving is a major concern of the American public, ranking at or near the top of traffic safety issues in national surveys of motorists. In Tennessee and throughout the country, the public’s concern over aggressive driving continues to grow. Some studies indicate the public is actually more fearful of aggressive drivers than it is of impaired drivers. Aggressive driving is truly dangerous and cannot be tolerated.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile accident caused by an aggressive driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out all about your rights and remedies.

Fatal Tractor Trailer Accident

I wonder what could have diverted the attention of a Tractor-trailer driver to the extent that she wasn’t aware that traffic on the interstate in front of her had stopped. I mean, what about the rear-end of another tractor-trailer with it’s brake lights on? This driver is going to have an opportunity to give this question some serious thought, you see, she had her 3-year-old grand-daughter with her and she was killed. What could it have been? Was she talking on her cell phone, texting, fooling with a CB, GPS, Radio, CD or god forbid, a DVD player.

Distraction from the primary task of driving could present a serious and potentially deadly danger. In 2008, 5,870 people lost their lives and an estimated 515,000 people were injured in police-reported crashes in which at least one form of driver distraction was reported on the crash report. While these numbers are significant, they may not state the true size of the problem, since the identification of distraction and its role in the crash by law enforcement can be very difficult.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee car tractor-trailer wreck caused by a distracted truck 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.

Distracted Driving

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyer I try to watch for dangerous trends in Tennessee automobile accidents so that I can bring them to the attention of my readers to warn them to be careful. Over the last several months and ominous trend is developing. That trend is drunk or distracted (or both) drivers crossing the centerline and hitting another vehicle head-on.

On the 17th and 22^nd of this month I wrote about a pair of fatal centerline crossing accidents. Reference an article from the web site of WATE TV in Knoxville that reports on a similar crash on Saturday night. According to the article a fellow named Frankie Langley was driving one of the vehicles at a high rate of speed when he crossed over the centerline and crashed head-on into another vehicle killing it’s two occupants.

What causes a driver to leave the highway, cross the median and slam into another vehicle? I don’t have any independent information about this accident other than what I read in the article, but as an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney I am familiar with a number of reasons that a fatal collision like this one could happen.

Distraction from the primary task of driving could present a serious and potentially deadly danger. There has been increased attention on the danger of distracted driving recently, specifically on the dangers of cell phone use and texting while driving. Other secondary task involvement includes eating, drinking, conversing with passengers, as well as interaction with in vehicle technologies and portable electronic devices.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration driver inattention is the leading factor in most crashes. Nearly 80 percent of crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes involved some form of driver inattention within three seconds before the event. Primary causes of driver inattention are distracting activities, such as cell phone use, and drowsiness.

The lesson here for Nashville drivers is that you must keep all of your attention on the acting of driving and avoid distractions. You never know when another driver is going to fall asleep, have a medical emergency or get distracted and leave their lane and initiate a deadly collision. If you or a family member is injured or killed in a Nashville automobile accident caused by a distracted or drunk driver contact the experienced Tennessee automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

Need Help Installing Child Safety Seats?

As a Nashville automobile accident attorney I try to focus my Blog on issues of importance to Tennessee drivers. This morning I read an interesting and important op-ed piece in the Memphis Commercial-Appeal regarding children’s safety seats. Tennessee was the first state in the country to pass a Child Passenger Protection Law requiring children to be restrained in child safety seats (car seats and booster seats).

Even though it’s the law far too often we see a young child riding in a vehicle without a safety seat or, if there is a safety seat, the child is not properly restrained.

The article points out some less than comfortable statistics. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for children ages 3 to 14. Every day during 2007 in the United States an average of five children age 14 and younger were killed and another 548 injured in such accidents.

She goes on to state, “Today in Shelby County, the child seat misuse rate, or rate of children incorrectly seated, is a staggering 84 percent.” The Tennessee Governor’s Highway Safety Office has been focused on educating the public about the need to properly restrain our children when we set out on the highways and byways of Tennessee.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) which studies all manner of highway safety issues says that using child safety seats reduces the risk of fatal injury by 71 percent for infants and by 54 percent for toddlers in passenger cars. Placing children in age- and size-appropriate car seats and booster seats also reduces serious injuries by more than half.

It is a shameful fact that but true, Tennessee continues to have one of the lowest child safety seat usage rates in the nation and one of the highest traffic death rates. In every county in Tennessee there are centers where parents can go to find out about properly securing their children. The people at these centers are trained and will inspect the child safety seats in your vehicle and make sure you are doing everything you can to protect your children. To find one near to you call the Department of Safety at 615- 251-5166. In Shelby County call 385-4223.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee highway automobile accident contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident law firm of Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation to determine your rights and remedies