Distracted Driving Is Deadly

Earlier this Fall I blogged a warning to remind you all to pay particular attention to  school buses and children since school was back in session. Knoxville TV station WBIR reported earlier this week on a collision involving a school bus and a car. Citing a Tennessee Highway Patrol Accident Report the news item said that a West Greene County bus carrying 20 students from the Technology Center was driving along Highway 11E when a car driven Jennifer Baker, 21 pulled out from a convenience store parking lot into the path of the oncoming bus.

According to the article one student was transported to the hospital with minor injuries and others complained of back and neck injuries. The car was totaled and the school bus was heavily damaged. Troopers cited Ms. Baker for failure to yield. The school Transportation Director did say that the bus driver, Helen Fincher, did a great job handling the bus during the collision and her skill kept the bus from turning over. Our hats are off to Ms. Fincher and we here at Phillip Miller & Associates are grateful that no student was seriously injured.

According to The Tennessee Rules of the Road, drivers entering a roadway from a private parking lot must the yield the right of way to oncoming vehicles. My first thought when I read about this car/school bus collision was how could the driver of the vehicle entering the roadway from the convenience store parking lot not see a giant yellow bus approaching. My next thought was that either she wasn’t looking because she was not paying attention or she was distracted by something such as a cell phone or radio/CD player/iPod.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) the primary responsibility of the driver is to operate a motor vehicle in a safe manner. The task of driving requires full attention and focus. Cell phone use can distract drivers from this task, risking harm to themselves and others. Therefore, the safest course of action is to refrain from using a cell phone while driving. Research shows that driving while using a cell phone can pose a serious cognitive distraction and degrade driver performance. GHSA (Governor’s Highway Safety Association) Chairman Vernon F. Betkey, Jr., says “Education plays a key role in minimizing driver distraction, particularly with teen drivers, who constantly use cell phones and other electronic devices.”

If you or a loved one is injured in a Nashville school bus car accident contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

Tennessee Car Tractor-Trailer Accident

A Pennsylvania soldier stationed at Fort Campbell died in a mysterious accident early Sunday morning on I-24 in Clarksville, Tennessee. It’s accidents like this one, reported on the website of WSMV Channel 4 in Nashville, that cause me to ponder possible causes. According to the report Eric Thomas Rothharpt, 24 died when his Toyota Scion smashed into the rear-end of a tractor-trailer parked on the ramp with it’s flashers turned on because of a previous wreck. Police reported that the victim was not wearing his seatbelt when the collision occurred. The staff and attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates send our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Rothharpt.

What causes an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney like myself to ponder an accident like this is the question of how such an accident could have happened. You have a huge tractor-trailer parked off the roadway with its emergency lights blinking and yet the victim drives off the road and rams into it. My first thoughts were focused on whether this young man had been drowsy, fallen asleep and drifted off the road. Any investigation of this wreck should center on where he had been and what he had been doing prior to the collision. Had he been traveling some distance, been working long hours, there are many areas that need to be probed.

According to studies done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sleepiness impairs driving performance. Sleepiness leads to crashes because it impairs elements of human performance that are critical to safe driving. Relevant impairments identified in laboratory and in-vehicle studies include:

Slower reaction time. Sleepiness reduces optimum reaction times, and moderately sleepy drivers can have a performance- impairing increase in reaction time that will hinder stopping in time to avoid a collision. Even small decrements in reaction time can have a profound effect on crash risk, particularly at high speeds.

Reduced vigilance. Performance on attention- based tasks declines with sleepiness, including increased periods of nonresponding or delayed responding.

Deficits in information processing. Processing and integrating information takes longer, the accuracy of short-term memory decreases, and performance declines.

Working the night shift, overtime, or rotating shifts is a risk for drowsy driving that may be both chronic and acute. In a New York State survey, nearly one-half the drowsy drivers who crashed (and more than one-third of those who drove drowsy without crashing) reported having worked the night shift or overtime prior to the incident. In addition, a higher reported frequency of driving drowsy was associated with working a rotating shift, working a greater number of hours per week, and more frequently driving for one’s job.

My next thought was that he could have been distracted as he drove up the ramp. I would focus here on his cell phone to determine whether he had made or taken a text message or cell phone calls. The task of driving requires full attention and focus. Cell phone use can distract drivers from this task, risking harm to themselves and others.  Therefore, the safest course of action is to refrain from using a cell phone while driving. Research shows that driving while using a cell phone can pose a serious cognitive distraction and degrade driver performance.  The data are insufficient to quantify crashes caused by cell phone use specifically, but NHTSA estimates that driver distraction from all sources contributes to 25 percent of all police-reported traffic crashes.

If you or a loved one is injured in a Nashville car accident by a drowsy or distracted driver contact the experienced Nashville accident attorneys and Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.