In the quarter century from 1985 through 2009, the lives of 1,055,881 men, women, and children have ended violently as the result of motor vehicle crashes in the United States. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for children, teens, and young adults.

Statistics from the United States Department of Transportation indicate that 33,808 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2009. Although this represents the fewest people killed in crashes in a single year since 1950, it also represents an average of 93 lives needlessly cut short on an average day as the result of crashes on our roads.

Since 2006, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has been sponsoring research to better understand traffic safety culture. The Foundation’s long-term term vision is to create a “social climate in which traffic safety is highly valued and rigorously pursued.” In 2008, the AAA Foundation conducted the first annual Traffic Safety Culture Index, a nationally-representative telephone survey, to begin to assess a few key indicators of the degree to which traffic safety is valued and is being pursued.

Summary of Major Findings

Personal experience with crashes

• One of every two Americans has been involved in a serious crash, has had a friend or relative seriously injured or killed in a crash, or both.

Perceptions of safety

• More than half of all drivers (52%) say driving feels less safe today than it did 5 years ago a 17-percentage-point increase from only a year ago. Nearly half cite some form of driver distraction as the main reason or as a reason for their feeling less safe.

Attitudes and behaviors: Drinking and driving

• Drivers view drinking and driving as a very serious threat, virtually all drivers disapprove of drinking and driving and acknowledge that others also disapprove of it, and very few drivers admit drinking and driving (fewer than 2 drivers in 100 admit having done so in the past month).

• There is almost universal support for requiring alcohol-ignition interlocks for drivers convicted of DWI more than once, and more than 2 in 3 Americans support requiring interlocks for first-time DWI offenders.

Attitudes and behaviors: Cell phone use and texting

• Cell phone use while driving has become widespread—more than 2 in 3 drivers report talking on their cell phone while driving in the past month; more than 1 in 3 say they do so fairly often or regularly. There is moderate social disapproval toward using a hand-held cell phone while driving, but over half of all drivers believe incorrectly that most others actually approve of it. Presently, people are generally accepting of hands-free cell phone use.

• Most people view drivers texting and emailing while driving as a very serious threat to their own personal safety and consider it completely unacceptable. However, many drivers don’t perceive social disapproval from others. Nearly 1 in 4 drivers (24%) admit to texting or emailing while driving.

• A two-thirds majority of Americans support restricting the use of hand-held cell phones while driving, but more people oppose (50%) than support (46%) an outright ban on using any type of cell phone (including hands-free) while driving. There is strong support for laws restricting texting while driving.

Attitudes and behaviors: Speeding

• Speeding on freeways is widespread—45% of drivers say they have driven 15 mph over the speed limit on a freeway in the past month—and nearly 1 in 3 say they consider it acceptable to do so. In contrast, driving 15 mph over the speed limit on residential streets is much less common, and is rated as one of the most unacceptable things that a driver can do.

• Nearly 2 in 3 drivers report at least occasionally feeling pressure from other drivers to drive faster than they want to drive; more than 1 in 3 say they feel such pressure fairly often or regularly.

• More than 2 in 3 Americans support having more police on the roads to enforce speed limits.

Attitudes and behaviors: Red light running

• Most drivers view it as unacceptable to drive through a traffic light that has already turned red if they could have stopped safely; however, 1 in 3 drivers admit doing this in the past month.

Attitudes and behaviors: Drowsy driving

• Most drivers view driving while extremely drowsy as a serious threat to their safety and a completely unacceptable behavior, however, more than 1 in 4 still admit to driving when they were so tired that they had a hard time keeping their eyes open at some point in the past month.

Attitudes and behaviors: Seat belt use

• Most drivers view it as unacceptable to drive without wearing a seatbelt, and more than 3 of 4 say that they never do; however, nearly 1 in 10 admits that they drive without wearing their seat belt fairly often or regularly.

• 2 of every 3 Americans support laws allowing police officers to stop and ticket a driver for not wearing a seat belt even if they’re not breaking any other law.

For information on Tennessee highway safety issues and advice if you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile accident contact Phillip Miller & Associates.

Teach Teen Driving Safety

A couple of recent articles about teen driving caught my attention and I thought I might use this opportunity to share some tragic facts about teen fatalities. The first story was at the website of Volunteer TV WVLT in Knoxville. Three teen drivers in a car, lost control,  left the road and crashed into a tree. According to police reports all three of the teens are going to recover even though a young girl was trapped in the vehicle for over an hour. The second story in the Johnson City Press involved an underage teen girl, 15, who was driving a car when she lost control and hit a ditch and came to a stop against a culvert.

Although the facts at slim in both reports, there can only be a couple of reasons for these crashes. I suspect that speed, inexperience and driver distraction created a potentially fatal mix.

According to the Center for Injury Research and Prevention young drivers ages 16-20 years are at a disproportionately high risk for both fatal and non-fatal crashes, with the highest per capita and per-mile-driven crash rate of any age group. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of teen deaths, accounting for 44% of teen fatalities in the U.S. If these crash fatalities continue without intervention, 100,000 adolescents and young adults will die in young driver crashes (drivers between the ages of 16 and 24 years) in the U.S. over the next 10 years.

It’s up to us to teach our teens that when you are operating a motor vehicle it’s time to put away the ways of children and take on the role of adults. See that you oversee the driving education of your children, teach by example, drive like you want your teens to drive. Practice safety, courtesy and good sense when you are behind the wheel, don’t text or talk on your cell phone. When you see a teen drivers acting the fool, call 911 or *847 for the Highway Patrol.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile accident involving a teen driver contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of our free consultation to get an understanding of your rights and remedies.

Yesterday I was driving through South Central Kentucky and I heard a radio news report about a nearby single-car  accident involving two teenagers. Details were sketchy but the gist of the article was that the 17-year old driver left the road, overcorrected and causing the car to roll and cross the highway into oncoming traffic.

Later that same night I was watching the evening news on Nashville NewsChannel 5 and heard about an incident in which an 18-year old driver hit a 7-year old pedestrian near Centerville, Tennessee. I was reminded of a recent report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic and Highway Safety which I recently shared with my staff.

The AAA Study looked at the number of people, other than the teen driver, who have died in crashes involving young drivers, such as teen drivers’ passengers, drivers and passengers of other vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists. The findings are interesting. Nearly two other individuals are killed for every teen driver killed.

The AAA Foundation analyzed data on fatal motor vehicle crashes from 1998 through 2007 and identified all fatal crashes involving a 15, 16, or 17-year-old driver of a passenger vehicle. Over the 10 years from 1998 through 2007, there were 24,655 drivers ages 15 through 17 involved in fatal crashes. These crashes killed 28,138 people, of whom 10,388 (36.9%) were the 15, 16, and 17-year-old drivers themselves. However, the majority of  fatalities in those crashes (63.1%) were people other than those drivers, and included 8,829 of their passengers, 6,858 occupants of vehicles operated by drivers age 18 or older, and 2,063 non-motorists and others.

On a positive note, the number of young drivers involved in fatal crashes each year decreased substantially over the years analyzed, with 776 fewer drivers age 15 to 17 involved in fatal crashes in 2007 than in 1998, resulting in the deaths of 311 fewer young drivers and 540 fewer deaths of other people in 2007 than in 1998.

We are all deeply effected by teen driving accidents but we can also play a roll in preventing them by being good driving mentors to our children.

Teen Driving Safety

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

In my blogs I often speak of the major problem of distracted dirivers. Actually my last several blogs dealt directly with that issue. New research findings by The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that nearly 6,000 people died in 2008 in crashes involving a distracted or inattentive driver, and more than half a million were injured. On any given day in 2008 more than 800,000 vehicles were being driven by someone using a hand-held cell phone. “Every single time someone takes their eyes or their focus off the road, even for just a few seconds, they put their lives and the lives of others in danger,” said Secretary LaHood Sept. 30 in Washington, D.C. “Distracted driving is unsafe, irresponsible and in a split second, its consequences can be devastating.”

The people whose job it is to reduce injury and death on the highways of our country are spending a great deal of time working on solutions but it seems to be getting more difficult as the driving public are opting to use the newest high-tech electronic devices marketed to “make driving more pleasurable and easier.” These devices include cell phone, many are simply tiny personal computers, GPS systems for navigation, and iPods and other MP3 devices for music, books and movies.

Many states have banned the practice of texting while driving, Tennessee is included in this National trend but more has to be done, especially as it relates to teen and younger drivers.

There are several ways to address this issue, the first being enforcement, and the new Tennessee law provides for a stiff fine if one is caught texting while driving, but the problem with enforcement is that an officer must actually observe the driver texting and that makes it difficult. A Nashville Police Officer told me that there have been very few citations given in Nashville

Distracted Driving

since the law went into effect in July of this year. As a citizen you can help with enforcement efforts. If you are driving on a state road and witness a driver texting you can call *THP (*847) and report the driver by giving a description of the car and it’s license number.

Another more effective way to address this problem is through education using public service announcements in video and audio form. An effective program to teach teens the danger of not following the caution signs in construction zones, known as ‘Between The Barrels” had teens create their own PSA projects which are taken around the state and shown to high school students. The result has been a decrease in construction zones involving teen drivers.

Unfortunately, the State of Tennessee seems to be speaking with a forked tongue on this issue. The State makes it illegal to text and drive but the Tennessee Department of Transportation uses Twitter, a social media which can be accessed by cell phone to alert drivers as to traffic problems on state highways. According to the TDOT website, “At TDOT we use twitter to provide motorist information to those who wish to receive it.  This motorist information is also available on our TDOT SmartWay website and our Tennessee 511 system. Twitter is one more tool we can use to get information to those traveling our interstates and state roads.”

To this experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney it seems to me that using the computer functions of a hand held device to access Twitter is as bad as being distracted by texting but then that’s what makes the world go around.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Nashville automobile accident by a distracted driver contact the experienced Nashville accident attorney at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies. If you are tempted to deal with the other person’s insurance adjuster without consulting an attorney you owe it to yourself to at least check out our web page and educate yourself on the dangers of taking this complicated process into your own hands.