Child Dies

Terrible news this weekend from Shelbyville, Tennessee. A 4-month-old child was killed and two of her siblings were critically injured in a two-vehicle crash at the intersection of State Route 437 (the Shelbyville bypass) and Railroad Avenue east of Shelbyville.

A witness told police investigators that the children’s father was driving westbound on Railroad Avenue and ran a stop sign, pulling into the path of a southbound full-size Ford pickup truck driven by a 28-year-old woman, of Murfreesboro. Her husband and daughter were uninjured and was taken to Middle Tennessee Medical Center in Murfreesboro.

The 4-month-old and the other two children were all ejected through the rear window of a small Volkswagen Jetta. The other children, ages 7 and 2, are in the critical care unit at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. The 7-year-old was on life support. All the children had been in child safety seats, but the seats were improperly attached.

Child safety seats reduce fatal injury by 71 percent for infants (less than 1 year old) and by 54 percent for toddlers (1 to 4 years old) in passenger cars. Young children restrained in child safety seats have an 80 percent lower risk of fatal injury than those who are unrestrained.

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).

A.  A child under one year old, or any child weighing less than 20 pounds, must be in a child passenger restraint system (car seat) that is facing the rear of the car.

B. Children who are one through three years old, and who weigh more than 20 pounds, must be in a child passenger restraint system that is facing forward.

C. Children who are four through eight years old and whose height is under four feet, nine inches, must be in a belt positioning booster seat system (child booster car seat) and wearing a seatbelt.

These seats should be in the rear seat of the car, if possible. The children can’t make the decision to protect themselves, this is the legal responsibility of the parents. It is also the responsibility of the parents to teach by example.  If you are driving and witness a parent driving without having their child properly restrained it is your duty to notify the authorities. Call 911 is you are in an urban area and *847 in a rural area. Make the call and save a child’s life.

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.

Watch Carefully For Child Pedestrians

As an experienced Tennessee auto accident lawyer, I regularly write about child safety. The main topics are usually child safety seats and school zone safety. 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.

It is a parent’s responsibility to teach children safety on the streets. Many children are injured trying to cross streets and these accidents are always preventable. Telling your child how to practice safety is one thing but it’s important to take the initiative and get to the corners and walk your child through the steps.

Reference an accident in Bristol Tennessee in which an eleven year-old boy who had crossed the street from his bus stop to visit a convenience store, something he was specifically told not to do by his parents. As he crossed back, according to witnesses, he dashed out in front of a vehicle driven by a 17-year-old young woman, and was struck down.

He was briefly hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries. A dangerous situation has a good ending. Hopefully this young man will learn his lesson and be able to share his experience with his classmates.

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. Call 615-356-2000.

Photo thanks to AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety

School Bus Safety

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney I’d like to take this opportunity to remind my readers that school is back in session and in your everyday drive you will be coming into contact with those large yellow things with blinking lights called school buses. They are yellow and have blinking emergency lights so that drivers will practice safety around them so that children don’t die.

Two Nashville area automobile school bus collisions leave three children hospitalized with injuries. The Nashville accident occurred when a pickup truck slammed into the rear of a school bus stopped at a railroad crossing. The second school bus automobile accident occurred when a teen aged driver slammed into the back of the bus.

Since 1996, 1,536 people have died in school transportation-related crashes an average of 140 fatalities per year. Most of the people who lost their lives in those crashes (72%) were occupants of other vehicles involved. Non-occupants (pedestrians, bicyclists, etc.) accounted for 20 percent of the deaths, and occupants of school transportation vehicles accounted for 7 percent.

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney I’m trying to visualize how these accidents could have taken place. School buses, as I mentioned above, are large and yellow and the rear end of the bus is adorned with an array of warning lights and signs that remind the drivers following them that the school bus always stops at rail road crossings.

Analyzing these case from only the information in the articles is difficult, but it’s obvious that both of the drivers who hit the buses were somehow distracted by something not related to their driving and not paying attention to the road in front of them. 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.

If you or a family member is injured or killed in Tennessee school bus accident contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates and put a Board Certified Civil trial lawyer on your side.

Although the experienced Tennessee automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates are located in Nashville, Tennessee we regularly represent automobile accident victims in rural areas all over Tennessee. Rural accident have unique challenges for car crash lawyers and that is why the experience we bring to the table can help you or a loved one make the best out of a tragic situation.

According to the 2006 Census, 23 percent of the U.S. population lived in rural areas, however, rural fatalities accounted for 56 percent of all traffic fatalities in 2006. In 2006, there were 12,190 drivers involved in fatal crashes who were speeding of which 57 percent were drivers in rural areas. Of these speeding drivers in rural areas 47 percent were drinking. Nevertheless, rural drivers made up 62 percent of total drivers found to have been drinking, speeding, and unrestrained.

Today I’d like to talk about a specific problem that we find in rural areas; children riding in pickup truck beds. In Tennessee it is against the law to allow children under the age of 12 to ride in the bed of a pickup truck.  The only exceptions are:

1. When the vehicle is being used in an organized parade, procession or other ceremonial event.

2. When the vehicle is being used for agricultural purposes.

3. For certain local areas where children over age six, but not yet 12 years old, are in pickup trucks traveling on local streets and roads.  These road exceptions should be checked locally.

Even with these exceptions, if a child under the age of six is in the pickup truck bed, the vehicle must travel 20 miles per hour or less. Each year, more than 200 people die as a result of riding in the cargo area of pickup trucks.  More than half of these deaths are children and teenagers.

If you want to learn more about highway traffic safety issues check out our website at www.seriousinjury.com. If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a rural highway car crash you need experienced Tennessee automobile accident attorneys on your side.