Tennessee Intersection Accident

More crashes happen at intersections than at any other place. Intersections constitute a very small part of rural and urban street/highway systems, yet they are implicated in 31.9 percent of all motor vehicle crashes and 15.5 percent of all fatal crashes (2004 NHTSA data). Be very careful when approaching any intersection or driveway. Never assume another driver will yield the right-of-way to you. Always be prepared to stop.

In 2009, there were 33,808 fatalities on our Nation’s roadways. Of these, 7,043 (20.8% of total fatalities) were intersection or intersection related. An intersection is a planned point of conflict in the roadway system. With different crossing and entering movements by both drivers and pedestrians, an intersection is one of the most complex traffic situations that motorists encounter.

Dangers are compounded when we add the element of speeding motorists who disregard traffic controls. Despite improved intersection design and more sophisticated applications of traffic engineering measures, the annual toll of human loss due to motor vehicle crashes has not substantially changed in more than 25 years.

Tennessee drivers need to learn to look both ways as you near an intersection. Before you enter an intersection, continue checking traffic from both the left and right for approaching vehicles and/or crossing pedestrians.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile intersection accident contact the experienced Nashville car crash lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates for a free consultation to find out about your rights and remedies.

Who was at Fault?

For an experienced Nashville personal injury lawyer a report of a fatal two-car collision  in a local Memphis media source left all sorts of questions. According to the report, a Memphis police car was involved in a crash with a Mitsubishi. One occupant was killed when the Mitsubishi made a left turn into the path of the police car.

Let me make it clear here, I don’t represent the deceased or any other occupant of the Mitsubishi, but if I did, I’d surely like to find out several important facts. Was the police car answering a call and how fast was it traveling when the collision took place. If so, was the police car traveling the speed limit and did it have its emergency lights engaged.

If I was representing the police officers I’d focus on determining what the driver of the other vehicle was doing that might have distracted him from seeing my vehicle. Distractions are the cause of a majority of the collisions that happen today. Cell phones are the leading distracter, followed by eating, applying makeup and simply talking to passenger and not paying attention.

My sincere wish is that reporters educated themselves so that they might ask the right questions so that other Tennessee drivers might read about these accidents and learn something from them. If you are involved in a Tennessee automobile accident, contact the experienced and certified civil trial lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates and learn where you stand. Call 615-356-2000.

Intersection Crash

A Bell Buckle, Tennessee woman was killed in a two-vehicle intersection crash on U.S. Highway 231 Thursday night. According to local media reports, the 31-year-old woman stopped at a sign and for some unknown reason, pulled out directly into the path of a 33-year-old Murfreesboro woman who had the right of way. My prayers go out to both people involved in this horrible situation.

Most car accidents in Nashville happen because people are in a rush, speeding, not paying attention, texting or talking on the phone.  An accident can happen anywhere but Nashville police who monitor car crashes will tell you that there are certain intersections where you can count on an accident or two just about every day.

More crashes happen at intersections than at any other place. Intersections constitute a very small part of rural and urban street/highway systems, yet they are implicated in 31.9 percent of all motor vehicle crashes and 15.5 percent of all fatal crashes (2004 NHTSA data). Be very careful when approaching any intersection or driveway. Never assume another driver will yield the right-of-way to you. Wait until the coast is clear and always be prepared to stop.

The Tennessee Rules of the Road suggest that when you approach an intersection you should use a technique called “Traffic Checks”. “Traffic checks” is the process of looking frequently and carefully for vehicle traffic approaching from each direction. “Traffic checks” is especially important when merging or changing lanes AND when approaching and crossing intersections.

Preventing injuries and deaths at intersections should be a high priority for towns and cities. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that in 2005 alone, nearly 9,200 people died and approximately one million people were injured in intersection-related crashes which account for approximately 40-45 percent of all crashes.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Nashville intersection collision contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates. The best law firms will provide a free consultation. We provide a free, confidential consultation to not at fault persons named in this article. The free consultation offer extends to family members as well. Call 615-356-2000.

Intersetion Fatality

A 57-year-old Columbia, Tennessee woman was killed in a crash at the intersection of Chestnut Ridge Road and U.S. Highway 31. According to local media reports the woman was attempting to cross the South bound lanes of Highway 61 to turn left to go northbound, when she pulled out into the path of a southbound cargo van that slammed into her at highway speed at the drivers door.

More crashes happen at intersections than at any other place. Intersections constitute a very small part of rural and urban street/highway systems, yet they are implicated in 31.9 percent of all motor vehicle crashes and 15.5 percent of all fatal crashes. Be very careful when approaching any intersection or driveway. Never assume another driver will yield the right-of-way to you. Wait until the coast is clear and always be prepared to stop.

“Traffic checks” is the process of looking frequently and carefully for vehicle traffic approaching from each direction. “Traffic checks” is especially important when merging or changing lanes AND when approaching and crossing intersections. Look first to the left to make sure cross traffic is yielding the right-of-way. Then look for traffic from the right. If stopped, look both left and right just before you start moving. Look across the intersection before you start to move to make sure the path is clear through the intersection. Above all avoid distractions, if you have to use your cell phone wait until you are finished with your call and then focus on what you are about to do.

The lesson for Tennessee Teens here is perfectly clear. Keep your mind and you eyes on the road and avoid doing things that distract you from focusing on this task.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee auto accident caused by a distracted teen driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation.

Means Stop

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyer I can tell you that one driver runs a stop sign or a red light at a busy intersection only a huge amount of luck can help them. This past week lady luck didn’t show up for a Nashville man who ran a stop sign and hit another car, and that car hit a motorcycle.

The first driver wasn’t through with bad luck, as he returned to his car he stopped to light a cigarette and was hit by a van. According to a local media report a witness said, “He went 15, 16 feet in the air, come down on his hand, landed right on his head, you can still see the blood on the street where he landed.”

An octagon shaped red sign always means stop. This sign is the only eight-sided sign on the highway. It always means that there is danger. It will always be red with white lettering. It tells you that you are approaching an important street or highway and that you must bring your car to a complete stop, not going beyond the crosswalk. IF you cannot see, then proceed cautiously to a point where you can see, and then go only if you can do so safely.

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.

Stop Means Stop

So what do you suppose the Clarksville driver of a vehicle carrying three children was doing, or not doing, that prevented him/her from observing the stop sign at an intersection? The driver blew through the stop sign and slammed into an SUV injuring two adults and several children. Emergency responders said that three children were taken to Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, two of them in critical condition.

More crashes happen at intersections than at any other place. Intersections constitute a very small part of rural and urban street/highway systems, yet they are implicated in 31.9 percent of all motor vehicle crashes and 15.5 percent of all fatal crashes (2004 NHTSA data).

Be very careful when approaching any intersection or driveway. Never assume another driver will yield the right-of-way to you. Wait until the coast is clear and always be prepared to stop.

The lesson for Tennessee drivers here is perfectly clear. Keep your mind and you eyes on the road and avoid doing things that distract you from focusing on this task.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee auto accident caused by a distracted driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation.

Failure to Keep a Lookout

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyer, I can’t stress enough that paying attention to what you are doing when you are driving a 3000 lb vehicle on the highways and byways of Tennessee, absolutely essential to staying alive or keeping yourself from killing another.

To share the road safely, stay a safe distance from the vehicle in front of you. Nationally, safety agencies and driver education programs have tried to define a safe following distance for drivers to maintain. This has ranged from a two to four second following distance.

Use the following tips to determine if you are following too closely:

A. As the car ahead of you passes a stationary point on the road (a sign post, driveway, utility pole, etc.), count the seconds it takes you to reach the same spot.

B. Count to yourself “one-thousand and one, one thousand and two,” etc. You should NOT reach the same point on the road before you finish counting to at least “one-thousand-two.” If you do, you are following too closely.

C. Slow down slightly to increase the space between you and the other vehicle. Find another spot to check your new following distance. Repeat this exercise until you are following no closer than two seconds.

This principle will hold true at any speed on state and U.S. highways with moderate speed limits. However, during inclement weather, interstate highway driving at higher speeds and night driving, the two-second rule should be increased to allow for improved visibility. A minimum of four seconds should allow for better reaction time and a safer space cushion under these conditions.

This may or may not have been the problem in a recent intersection crash that happened when a Ford Explorer rear ended a stopped Suburban, causing the Explorer to travel into the opposing lane and hit a Chevy Monte Carlo head on. It occurs to me that there was something else going on her and that something else was driver distraction.

Investigators will have to determine just what the Explorer driver was doing that caused her to take her eyes off of the road in front of her. Distracted driving is now thought to be the cause of over 75% of automobile accidents in the US today. Avoid distractions and stay alive. Avoid distractions and keep from killing someone.

Have you or a loved one been injured in a Nashville motorcycle accident or auto accident as a result of distracted driving or other negligent driving?  If so, you should call the experienced Nashville personal injury lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates, a Nashville motorcycle accident lawyer from our law firm will fight to help you win. We will treat you with the utmost compassion and respect. Call us today and speak with an experienced Nashville personal injury lawyer to discuss the details of your case. Call (615) 356-2000.

Stop Means Stop

An octagon shaped red sign always means stop. This sign is the only eight-sided sign on the highway. It always means that there is danger. It will always be red with white lettering. It tells you that you are approaching an important street or highway and that you must bring your car to a complete stop, not going beyond the crosswalk. IF you cannot see, then proceed cautiously to a point where you can see, and then go only if you can do so safely.

If a driver is paying attention, and very well should be, whenever he comes to an intersection he should look for the sign and pedestrians. Murfreesboro Tennessee police investigators will have to wonder why a driver failed to stop and entered a busy intersection and was T-boned by a police officer.

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,

Preventing injuries and deaths at intersections should be a high priority for towns and cities. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that in 2005 alone, nearly 9,200 people died and approximately one million people were injured in intersection-related crashes that account for approximately 40-45 percent of all crashes.

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 intersection-related crashes 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.

Photo thanks to http://www.clker.com/

Drunk, Speeding, Raging

The article in the local paper was short and did not name the deceased man. The facts are simple but confusing. A man under the influence of alcohol, following shortly on the heels of a heated domestic dispute with his soon to be ex-wife, is speeding along a 2-lane country road, not wearing his seatbelt and when he reaches an intersection of the country road and a US Highway, he runs the stop sign and is hit by a tractor-trailer.

His vehicle ends of badly damaged in the ditch and the drunk, presumably angry driver is ejected from the pickup and killed. In the words of Mark Twain, “Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.” The truth is that if you drive when you are in a drunken rage you are most likely going to be in no condition to be behind the wheel.

What is there to say? Is there a lesson to be learned from this story? What do you think?

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 Tennessee auto accident experience behind you.

Avoid Distractions

Although this report is not about a Tennessee Teenage driver fatality I thought it important to being this situation to your attention. An 18-year-old Alabama woman attending Freshman orientation at LSU with her mother died in an automobile accident when the car she was driving pulled into traffic from a private driveway and was hit by a pickup driven by a 22-year-old man from Baton Rouge. The young woman’s mother was injured but is expected to recover. My prayers go out to her family and friends.

What could have distracted her from looking out for traffic before she pulled out into the path of the truck? When you are pulling out from a private driveway you must yield the right of way to oncoming traffic. Under Tennessee law intersections are places where traffic merges or crosses. They include:

• Cross streets,

• Side streets,

• Private Driveways,

• Shopping center and parking lot entrances.

More crashes happen at intersections than at any other place. Intersections constitute a very small part of rural and urban street/highway systems, yet they are implicated in 31.9 percent of all motor vehicle crashes and 15.5 percent of all fatal crashes (2004 NHTSA data). Be very careful when approaching any intersection or driveway. Never assume another driver will yield the right-of-way to you. Wait until the coast is clear and always be prepared to stop.

“Traffic checks” is the process of looking frequently and carefully for vehicle traffic approaching from each direction. “Traffic checks” is especially important when merging or changing lanes AND when approaching and crossing intersections. Look first to the left to make sure cross traffic is yielding the right-of-way. Then look for traffic from the right. If stopped, look both left and right just before you start moving. Look across the intersection before you start to move to make sure the path is clear through the intersection. Above all avoid distractions, if you have to use your cell phone wait until you are finished with your call and then focus on what you are about to do.

The lesson for Tennessee teens here is perfectly clear. Keep your mind and you eyes on the road and avoid doing things that distract you from focusing on this task.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee auto accident caused by a distracted teen driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation.