Roadway Departure Epidemic

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.

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.

Something distracted 25-year-old Jeremy Black in a one vehicle accident that left three passengers injured. He was driving along in his SUV when he drove off of the roadway on the left side and hit a tree. None of the three passengers who were injured were wearing their seat belts.

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. FHWA uses the Fatal Analysis Reporting System (FARS) compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to compute statistics on roadway departure crashes.

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.

A tragic and totally preventable automobile accident took the life of a five-year-old girl took place the other night in Campbell County in East Tennessee. Had the driver/Mother not allowed herself to be distracted by reaching for a bottle of water, and had she seen to it that her daughter was protected in a child safety seat, she would still be alive today. My prayers go out to the family and friends of the driver and child.

Driving along an East Tennessee interstate highway, the mother takes her eyes and her mental focus away from the job at hand and drifts off the side of the road, over-corrects and loses control. The five-year-old is ejected from the vehicle and dies.

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 use of safety belts, child restraint safety seats and child booster seats, are required by Tennessee law. Seat belts, child restraint safety seats and child booster seats can help save you and your passengers lives in the event of a traffic crash. There were three other children in the vehicle at the time of the crash and they were unhurt. The lesson her is too obvious to restate, use your head and you won’t lose it, our someone else’s, for that matter.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile accident by a distracted driver, contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates

Distracted Driving

and find out about your rights and remedies.

Distracted Driving Fatlities

Any experienced Tennessee auto accident lawyer will tell you that U.S. Highway 43 in Lauderdale County Alabama just South of the Tennessee line is a deadly strip of highway. Between Friday January 29 and February 2 four people died and several others were seriously injured on a three mile strip of this road. Another accident during that same period that did not result in a fatality mirrored the latest fatal accident.

A 51-year-old Tennessee man was driving North on U.S. 43 when for no apparent reason he veered across the centerline and smashed into a Tractor-trailer truck heading the other direction. He was dead at the scene. The truck driver was not injured. In the earlier non-fatal accident the same thing happened, a driver spilled coffee on his lap and his cup tipped over on the floor of the car. He was distracted and reached to pick it up and in a second or two he drove across the centerline and struck a tractor-trailer.

What could have caused the distraction in this tragic accident? Investigators will inspect the car for signs of alcohol or drugs. They will retrace his steps to determine whether he had been drinking or had been having trouble sleeping and became drowsy. They will look at his cell phone records to determine whether he was using his phone to talk or text. Doctors will probably conduct an autopsy to determine whether he suffered a medical emergency that made it impossible to keep control of his car.

Driver inattention is the leading factor in most crashes and near-crashes, according to a landmark research report released today by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI). 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 loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile accident by a distracted or 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 determine your rights and remedies,

Roadway Departure Crashes

A tragic Tennessee one-car accident on I-75 took the life of a respected Cleveland Tennessee minister on New Years Day. According to an article on the website of Chattanooga TV station WRCB, 81-year-old Rev. Franklln Hyberger was a passenger in a car driven by his wife when she lost control of the vehicle, left the road and struck a tree. Like many of his friends and family in Cleveland, my prayers go out to Mrs. Hyberger and her family.

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,  drowsiness ot maybe, in the case of an elderly driver, a medical emergency. We will probably never know what lead to the driver losing control in this situation.

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 an 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.

A recent study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, shows that older drivers face a substantially elevated risk of being involved in and responsible for crashes in which they themselves die, and they pose more risk to other road users than the lowest-risk drivers do; however, the degree to which older drivers’ risk to other road users is elevated depends strongly upon whether risk is being measured on a per-driver, per-trip, or per-mile basis.

For example, the results of this study suggest that if a randomly-selected driver in his or thirties and a randomly-selected driver aged 85 or older were to drive equal numbers of miles, the older driver would be over 1500% more likely than the younger driver to be responsible for and die as a result of a crash, and about 220% more likely than the younger driver to kill an occupant of another vehicle or a non-motorist.

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

Distracted Driver

Whenever you see an accident, usually involving one car that leaves the road, an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney starts thinking about driver distractions or  medical emergency. When investigating a distracted driver case we try to determine just what the driver doing in the moments before the crash that caused his/her vehicle to leave it’s lane and cross over into an oncoming vehicle? What caused the driver to change focus from driving to other things?

Reference an article reporting on a collision in Blount County Tennessee in which a lone driver was traveling along a two-lane highway when for some unknown reason she crossed over the double yellow line and crashed head-on into a van carrying 5 people. She was not wearing her seatbelt and suffered serious injuries. Her condition at the present time is critical. All of the van passengers were wearing a seatbelt.

I don’t envy the investigators on this one. The first thing they are going to have to determine is whether the driver had some sort of medical emergency that rendered her unable to control here vehicle, that evidence will be determined by the treating physicians. The next thing that will need to looked at is whether she had and was using a cell phone, was smoking a cigarette or eating while she drove. All of these activities are considered major distractions that lead to thousands of automobile accidents each year.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration driver inattention by distraction 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.

It only takes a second, look away at something inside or outside the car, look back to the road in front of you and your life, and lives of other human beings can change in a way you never anticipated. If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee car accident caused by a distracted driver contact the experienced Tennessee automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation to learn about your rights and remedies.

Seven Tennessee women died in an automobile accident in Lewis County, Tennessee, forty miles south of Nashville, this past weekend when a single passenger vehicle crossed a yellow line and rammed head-on into a van carrying women on their way to work at a nearby factory. The 69-year-old driver of the car was dead at the scene and police said they had no idea what caused her to cross into the other vehicle. i send my sympathy and prayers to the families and friends of all of those injured or killed in this tragic accident.

Unfortunately, neither her family, nor the families of the victims will ever be able to answer that question for sure. As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney it’s clear that one of three things happened. The driver was either distracted by something in her car, a cell phone, radio, GPS device, or she just lost concentration and failed to focus on the task at hand, or she had some kind of medical emergency that caused her to lose control of her vehicle.

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.

According to a survey conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 95% of respondents 55 and older have one or more medical conditions and 78% use one or more medications, yet only 28% indicated some awareness of the potential impact on driving performance associated with  those medications.

The lesson to be learned following this accident is that no matter where we are going, down to the corner to the local store or cross-country, we have to be vigilant and never lose focus of the task at hand. If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile accident you owe it to your self to take advantage of a free consultation with one of the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates

Distracted Driver

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Distracted Driver Rollovers

One week ago I blogged about what appeared to me to be an epidemic of automobile accidents in East Tennessee. Apparently, I missed three other fatal Tennessee accidents that occurred during that same time period. I feel compelled to raise the question again, What’s Going on in East Tennessee?

According to an article in the Cookeville Herald-Citizen Irene Malgeri, 84, of Crossville was killed on Tuesday afternoon when she attempted to turn into a church parking lot and did so right into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer. Ms. Marleri died instantly and the driver of the tractor-trailer, Derrick Ogletree, 28, of Flovilla, Ga., was hospitalized.

Another Crossville citizen, Ronnie J. Stoke, 57, was killed in an accident on Sunday afternoon. According to the article Mr. Stoke was driving on I-40 when he lost control of his pickup truck and left the road, hit a guardrail and rolled, ejecting Mr. Stoke from the vehicle.

The following Friday morning 20-year-old Sarah Delk of Jamestown was killed when she lost control of her vehicle, ran off the road, struck an embankment and overturned. Ms. Delk was ejected from the vehicle.

Studies of real-world single-vehicle crashes show that more than 90% of rollovers occur after a driver runs off of the road. This is not referring to vehicles trying to negotiate difficult trails away from public roads, rather it refers to vehicles rolling over off of the pavement after the driver has lost control of the vehicle. The pavement, a ditch, soft soil, curb or other tripping mechanism usually initiates the rollover accident once the vehicle slides off.

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.

My sympathy and prayers go out to the families of the deceased. The lesson to be learned from these tragic accidents are that seatbelt use can and does prevent traffic fatalities and the driver inattention or distraction, even for a second or two, can have horrible results. The lesson for the political leadership is that to stem this epidemic they must be proactive and start an urgently needed public educational campaign to instruct and remind East Tennessee drivers of these two valuable lessons.

If you or a loved one is injured in a Tennessee automobile accident by a distracted driver contact the experienced Tennessee Automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates to find out about your rights and remedies.

Distracted Driver Runs Stop Sign

These days, drivers are faced with so many distractions both outside the car as well as devices inside the vehicle that are supposed to help us accomplish more tasks and save us time. Often other activities, including talking to your passengers, eating dinner, talking on the cell phone, adjusting the radio, lighting a cigarette take place behind the wheel. Experts estimate that drivers are doing something potentially distracting more than 15 percent of the time their vehicles are in motion. Multi-tasking is not our friend when we are driving on the highways and by-ways of Tennessee.

At a minimum you are: operating a piece of heavy machinery at high speed; navigating across changing terrain; calculating speeds and distances; and responding to all the other drivers and obstacles around you. Adding one more activity in the mix can be enough to make you lose control of your vehicle or fail to respond in an emergency.

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.

We will probably never know what Mr. Larry W. Lynch, 64, of Bethel Springs was doing when he failed to stop at a stop sign and drove his pickup truck directly into the path of a tractor-trailer at the intersection of Highway 45 and Hopkins Road. The tractor-trailer driver, Jesse L. Greene, 38, of Kenton, who was wearing his seatbelt, was injured in the wreck, the extent of  his injuries were not reported in the article in the Jackson Sun. My sympathy goes out to the family and friends of Mr. Lynch and my hopes for a quick and complete recovery go out to Mr. Greene.

In the case of Mr. Green it’s critically important that he contact an experienced Tennessee automobile accident attorney because he has two important issues to deal with. He was probably an employee of the company for which he was driving so he has to go through the worker’s compensation issues and then he has to take a careful look at a personal claim against Mr. Lynch’s insurance carrier.

Think carefully about the statistics, 80% of all crashes are caused by a driver who was distracted within three seconds before the collision. This means that it up to us to keep our eyes and our minds on the task at hand when as we pilot a three thousand pound deadly weapon down the road. If you want to read some guidelines for becoming a safe driver, check out my blog of November 21, 2009.

If you or a loved one are injured in a Nashville automobile accident involving a distracted driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation to find out about your rights and remedies.

Keep Your Mind On Your Driving

Lately a number of my blogs have discussed drivers who are driving along a Tennessee highway and for some reason become distracted and leave the road. Usually they cross into the oncoming lane and injure or kill another driver or pedestrians, or they hit obstruction on their side of the highway. 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. An accident like this can happen so quickly because the vehicle is usually moving at speed.

Today I’d like to reference two accidents that occurred in Tennessee this weekend that point out another type of distracted driver, that driver is one who is stopped at a traffic sign and then pulls out into oncoming traffic. This type of driver has seemingly all the time in the world to look both ways and make an informed judgment as to the proper time to enter the roadway, but yet, they pull out anyway.

The first of these accidents left an Ooltewah woman, Rhonda L. Morgan, 23, dead at the scene the other driver Vernon Norwood, 67, an Illinois resident injured.  According to an article on the website of the Chattanooga Times Free-Press, Ms. Morgan was stopped at an intersection before she pulled out right into the path of Mr. Norwood’s Chevrolet truck. My prayers go out to the family and friends of Ms. Morgan.

The second collision had a somewhat better outcome because no one died. The details are sketchy but from the article on the website of Knoxville TV station WBIR it appears that the driver of a large box truck towing another vehicle pulled out of a private driveway in front of an oncoming pickup truck. The pick up clipped the left rear end of the box truck causing it to flip over.

To start off this discussion, I want to point out that both Ms. Morgan and the driver of the box truck had a duty to yield to oncoming traffic. That duty entails watching and waiting until it was safe to enter the highway. Both of these drivers were obviously distracted by something and failed to yield. Primary causes of driver inattention are distracting activities, such as cell phone use, and drowsiness.

If you’re driving your vehicle, you are already multitasking. At a minimum you are: operating a piece of heavy machinery; navigating across changing terrain; calculating speeds and distances; and responding to all the other drivers and obstacles around you. Putting one more activity in the mix, even talking to your passengers or changing a radio station, can be enough to make you lose control of your vehicle or fail to respond in an emergency.

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 automobile accident involving a distracted driver you owe it to yourself to take advantage of a free consultation and speak with one of the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

Avoid Distractions

Why this tragic tractor-trailer/pickup truck accident happened will most probably never be known but the article in the Bowling Green Daily-News reporting from an accident report from the Kentucky State Police, says that Adam Bowen, 30, of Campbellsville, Kentucky was driving on I-65 in the early morning hours when his pickup truck drifted off the left side of the road and as he over corrected, the vehicle crossed the highway and ran off the right side of the road crashed into the embankment and came to a stop in the right lane of traffic where both Mr. Bowen, who was not wearing a seatbelt, and the pickup were hit by a tractor-trailer and two other vehicles. My prayers go out to Mr. Bowen’s family and friends.

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney the first question that comes to my mind is what caused Mr. Bowen’s truck to veer to the left shoulder. Was he distracted by something he was doing in the car or was he tired and fell asleep? These are the questions that will probably never be answered.

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.

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. FHWA uses the Fatal Analysis Reporting System (FARS) compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to compute statistics on roadway departure crashes.

Another question we will never be able to answer is whether Mr. Bowen would have died if he had been wearing his seatbelt? Because of the fact that his pickup was rammed by a tractor-trailer and two other vehicles, it’s impossible to say one way or another. Seatbelt usage reduces automobile crash-related deaths and injuries by at least 50 percent.

To prevent this kind of accident in your life attention must be paid to a few simple rules. If you are sleepy immediately get off the road and take a nap. Always wear your seat belt, whether you are driving on the interstate highway system, or just taking a short drive to the grocery store and always avoid distractions like cell phone use, texting or anything that requires you to take your eyes off of the road for even a couple of seconds.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Nashville automobile accident caused by a distracted or drowsy driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates for a free consultation and find out about your rights and remedies.