Slow For Construction Zones

Two Manchester, Tennessee, tractor-trailer drivers, a man aged 59 and a woman aged 57, died in a three-vehicle accident on Wednesday on I-65 in Jasper County, Indiana. According to local media sources, traffic had slowed for a work zone and had narrowed to one lane. For some unknown reason the male driver failed to observed the slowed traffic and slammed into the rear of the Tractor-trailer in front of him and that one slammed into the tractor-trailer in front of him.

The deceased driver had on his seat belt but was crushed and the passenger did not have her seat belt on and was ejected from the vehicle. Investigators will have their hands full trying to figure out what caused the driver to fail to maintain control. Did he fall asleep? Was he distracted by something else, a cell phone, CB radio, eating or  talking to his passenger and not paying attention to the traffic.

Construction zones can present a driver with a challenge. The zones are usually well marked in advance and require vehicles to start reducing speed in preparation for the upcoming area on the road where the construction equipment and workers are located.

This weekend I drove from Nashville to St. Louis for some business and was amazed at how many drivers ignore the signs warning drivers to slow down for a construction zone and instead of following the slow-down suggestions use the opportunity to speed up and get ahead of the people in front of them. This dangerous behavior in turn brings out bad behavior in others who don’t want the cheaters to get ahead of them. Some of those people who are slowing down and forming one lane as directed begin to attempt to block and retaliate against the speeders by refusing to allow them to merge.

The other danger I noticed was the tailgating by some on those who reduce their speed as directed. When you reduce your speed from 70 mph to 55 mph you should, according to the Tennessee Rules Of The Road, keep one car length for every ten miles per hour you are traveling, not so in these Interstate construction zones. What happens is that the danger of a rear-end collision is magnified. Driver one is worried about the driver 2 right on his tail and is paying more attention to the tailgater then he is to the driver in front of him.

The Tennessee Department of Safety suggests the following:

* Slow down! Drive within the posted speed limits, which are usually reduced in work zones. If you don’t, you’ll pay the price.

* Don’t tailgate! Most work zone accidents are caused by rear-end collisions.

* Eliminate distractions! Put down the cell phone; leave the radio dial alone. This is not the time to look for a new CD!

* Keep your ears open! Do not wear earphones while driving.

* Merge early! You can be ticketed and the cause of an accident for being a last chance merger.

* Watch for flaggers! Follow their signals, and don’t change lanes within the work zone unless instructed to do so.

* Expect the unexpected! Work zones change constantly.

* Turn your lights on before you enter the zone! Turn on your vehicle’s headlights to become more visible to workers and other motorists.

* Stay calm! Remember the work zone crew members are working to improve your future ride.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee construction zone accident it’s important that you secure the services of an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney like those that you will find at Phillip Miller & Associates. Time is of the essence in these cases so contact us immediately at 615-356-2000.

Don't Pull Out Until Clear

When you are turning on to a highway from a side road it is absolutely necessary that you are giving all of your attention to vehicle on the highway. Don’t be in a hurry, wait until you are absolutely clear and it is safe to pull out. Anticipate the speed of the oncoming vehicles and don’t take chances.

It’s hard to say what a 51-year-old Virginia woman was thinking when she tried to enter a rural section of US Highway 61, near Mound Bayou. She didn’t make it. She pulled into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer that smashed into the left side of her car. She died at the scene.

Was she distracted? She most certainly was, finding the cause of the distraction will be up to police investigators, but most distractions are caused by cell phone use, talking to other passengers, (she was alone) or just plain garden variety not paying attention.

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 are involved in a Tennessee automobile accident caused by a distracted driver you are going to need an experienced and sophisticated Nashville auto accident attorney like those you will find at Phillip Miller & Associates. Call 615-356-2000.

Move Over For Emergency Vehicles

A Tennessee Department of Transportation worker who was aiding a stalled motorist on I-55 at the Mississippi River Bridge, was killed when a tractor-trailer collided with the stalled vehicle and the emergency truck. The tractor-trailer driver also died. My prayers go out to the family and friends of these two men.

TDOT identified the state worker as Robert Nowicki, a former New York City police officer who was a 911 responder.

Tennessee law requires that motorists yield the lane closest to any emergency, maintenance or recovery vehicle that is stopped on the shoulder of the roadway. This applies to interstates and any multi-lane highway (with four or more lanes) that has at least two lanes of traffic traveling in the same direction.

When safety and traffic conditions allow the motorist must yield the right-of-way by making a lane change into a lane that is NOT adjacent to the stationary emergency vehicle. This requirement to move over applies, regardless of whether the emergency vehicle is on the right or left-hand side of the road.

If the emergency vehicle is stopped on the right shoulder, the motorist merges into the left lane of traffic, freeing the right most lane as a safety barrier. If the emergency vehicle is stopped on the left shoulder, the motorist merges into the right lane of traffic, freeing the left most lane as a safety barrier. ONLY when traffic conditions make it unsafe to make such lane change is the motorist allowed to respond to this situation by simply slowing down and remaining in the same lane.

This law applies to all emergency or maintenance vehicles including:

• Police or Highway Patrol vehicles;

• Ambulance or Fire Fighting vehicles;

• Tow Trucks or TDOT HELP vehicles;

• TDOT maintenance vehicles or private contractor vehicles involved in road construction or repair work.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee automobile accident contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates and take advantage of a free consultation to find out about your rights and remedies. Call 615-356-2000.

Who Was At Fault?

In my last Blog I wrote about a woman who turned in front of a fast moving SUV and paid for her mistake with her life and the life of her son. This past Friday, the same day as this accident, a UPS tractor-trailer turned into the UPS depot on Whites Creek Pike, directly in the path of a 35-year-old Nashville woman driving a motorcycle in the oncoming lane.

The woman died enroute to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. My prayers go out to this woman and her family and friends for their loss. Investigators have several questions to ask. Did the tractor-trailer driver fail to yield? Was the woman on the motorcycle driving in excess of the speed limit?

If you or a loved one is injured in a Tennessee tractor-trailer accident caused by a driver who is distracted or following too close, you owe it to yourself to immediately contact the experienced Tennessee tractor-trailer attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates.

What does this mean to you if you or a family member are the victim of a Tennessee tractor-trailer accident and suffer a serious or life threatening injury?  It means that the trucking company has a huge advantage in investigating the cause of the accident and developing a strategy for its defense to any claim that arises.

During one of these situations evidence can disappear and negligent drivers can be coached on what to say to police investigators. The trucking company has the benefit of an expert that was actually at the accident scene. This may not be possible for the victim since injuries are usually severe in nature. Needless to say it is important to act quickly so that an expert can examine the evidence on your behalf.

Time is of the essence in these kinds of cases. Although most cases can be reconstructed at a later time it is important to have someone looking out for your best interests as soon as possible. That’s why it’s important to contact an experienced Tennessee tractor-trailer accident lawyer like those you will find at Phillip Miller & Associates. If you or a loved one is injured in a car tractor-trailer accident act quickly and take advantage of a no-cost no-obligation consultation and learn about your rights and put our crack team of lawyers and investigators on the case.

Failure to Yield

A 78-year-old man from Ten Mile, Tennessee was killed the other day when a tractor-trailer pulled out of a private driveway along State Highway 58, and his vehicle slid up underneath the trailer. Intersections include private driveways entering public streets. In Tennessee a driver leaving a private driveway to enter a public road must yield the right of way to drivers on the road.

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. Always be prepared to stop.

Time is of the essence in these kind of  cases. Although most cases can be reconstructed at a later time it is important to have someone looking out for your best interests as soon as possible. That’s why it’s important to contact an experienced Tennessee tractor-trailer accident lawyer like those you will find at Phillip Miller & Associates.

If you or a loved one is injured in a car tractor-trailer accident act quickly and take advantage of a no-cost no-obligation consultation and learn about your rights and put our crack team of lawyers and investigators on the case.

A 21-year-old Macon County woman was killed after being struck by a tractor-trailer at 3 AM as she walked along a county road. The truck driver said he didn’t see the woman as he made a turn onto the road along which she walked.

An interesting and important report by the advocacy groups Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Partnership has caught my attention and I thought I might share it with you. Titled “Dangerous By Design” the report addresses the high rate of pedestrian deaths in the United States.

According to the report, in the last 15 years, more than 76,000 Americans have been killed while crossing or walking along a street in their community. More than 43,000 Americans – including 3,906 children under 16 have been killed this decade alone. This is the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down roughly every month, yet it receives nothing like the kind of attention that would surely follow such a disaster.

Children, the elderly, and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in this figure, but people of all ages and all walks of life have been struck down in the simple act of walking. These deaths typically are labeled “accidents,” and attributed to error on the part of motorist or pedestrian. In fact, however, an overwhelming proportion share a similar factor: They occurred along roadways that were dangerous by design, streets that were engineered for speeding cars and made little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on a bicycle.

If you or anyone you know has been injured or killed in a Tennessee car accident, please contact Nashville injury attorney Phillip Miller and the Tennessee personal injury attorneys at Phillip Miller and Associates at (615) 356-2000.

Interstate Suicide

As an experienced Nashville automobile accident attorney I have seen many more tragic events then I care to think about. The death of innocent children caused by negligent adults who should have known better is something that sticks with you.

This past week I read about another type of tragedy, an interstate suicide. Suicide by tractor-trailer. A 24-year-old Nashville man is dead after investigators say he jumped in front of a tractor-trailer on Interstate 65 at mile marker 61.

Police investigators say Joseph Allen, 34, of Kentucky, behind the wheel of his tractor- trailer when he saw the deceased step out into the right lane in front of him. He tried to avoid hitting the man by changing lanes but he said that the man jumped in front of his truck. The police report said that the truck was traveling the speed limit of 70 mph.

I don’t have any way of knowing the troubles this man faced but my prayers are out to his family and friends. My prayers also go out to Mr. Allen who had no fault in this matter but who will always have the image in his mind.

The highways are very dangerous and a life, or lives can change in a matter of seconds. If you would like to know more about Tennessee highway traffic safety come to the web site of the experienced Nashville automobile accident attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates.

Asleep At The Wheel

Two Tennessee men were killed in a mysterious fiery crash involving their tractor-trailer truck and a drilling rig on a Texas highway near Lytle, Texas this past Friday afternoon. The men, a 58-year-old driver and his 45-year-old passenger both died at the scene. According to investigators the tractor-trailer slammed into the rear-end of the rig and showed no signs that it attempted to stop to avoid the collision.

As an experienced Nashville tractor-trailer accident attorney the facts of this case leave me when many open questions. Picture this scenario; the truck is driving down the road with two people in the cab. It approaches a giant drilling truck which moving substantially slower and they are gaining on it at a rapid pace and yet neither the driver nor the passenger make any attempt to avoid the collision which took their lives.

It occurs to me they both of the men in the truck were asleep. As an experienced Nashville truck accident attorney , I have learned that the most difficult tractor-trailer accident case to investigate is one caused by a drowsy driver who has fallen asleep at the wheel.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates conservatively that each year drowsy driving “is responsible for at least 100,000 vehicle related crashes, 71,000 injuries, and 1,550 fatalities.” But among all the major factors that cause or contribute to crashes, like speeding, alcohol use, and weather situations, drowsiness is the most difficult for police and other crash investigators to detect and quantify.

Sleepiness and driving is a dangerous combination. Most people are aware of the dangers of drinking and driving but don’t realize that drowsy driving can be just as fatal. Like alcohol, sleepiness slows reaction time, decreases awareness, impairs judgment and increases your risk of crashing.

It’s nearly impossible to determine with certainty the cause of a fatal crash where drowsy driving is suspected. However, there are a number of clues at a crash scene that tell investigators that the person fell asleep at the wheel.

Unlike alcohol-related crashes, no blood, breath, or other objective test for sleepiness behind the wheel currently exists that investigators could give to a driver at the scene of a crash. This makes police training in identifying drowsiness as a crash factor very difficult.

If you or a loved one are injured or killed in a Tennessee vehiclular accident caused by a drowsy or sleeping driver contact the experienced Nashville accident and injury attorneys at Phillip Miller & Associates and find out about your rights and remedies.

Distracted Tennessee Truck Driver Rams Stopped Vehicles

There are all sorts of simple rules for driving on an interstate highway. One important thing to keep in mind is to keep a look out ahead to gauge the speed and movement of traffic ahead of you. This sounds intuitive, but with the increasing number of electronic devices being marketed to drivers these days this simple rule is not being followed. The other day I wrote about a tractor-trailer operator who was asleep at the wheel and when he came upon traffic that was stopped for an accident, he rammed into the cars on front of him and killed ten people.

A Brentwood Tennessee man died Friday afternoon of injuries he received when a tractor-trailer failed to slow for slower traffic and rammed into several cars. Investigators have not yet determined what the truck driver was doing, or not doing, as the case may be, but he sure wasn’t watching the road ahead. Traffic on I-40 in Wilson County had slowed because of a brush fire alongside the road. To show how distracted the driver must have been, he not only didn’t see the traffic slowing, he didn’t the smoke from the brush fire.

Questions for the investigators include, was he texting or talking on his cell phone? Had he fallen asleep at the wheel? Did he have a medical emergency that made it impossible for him to control the truck? Lot’s of question for the investigators, but for the family of the unfortunate man who was killed, there’s just one question, why? My prayers go out to the family and friend of this man and my hopes that other drivers who witnessed this tragedy or read about, it will learn the lesson that cost this man his life.

If you or a loved one is injured or killed in a Tennessee car/tractor-trailer accident don’t hesitate to contact an experienced Nashville personal injury lawyer like those you will find at Phillip Miller & Associates.

Sleeping Trucker Kills Ten

One of the last words uttered by Joseph Conrad’s antagonist Kurtz in his novel “The Heart of Darkness” were “…the horror, the horror.” Those words seem appropriate to desribe the scene of absolute carnage in the aftermath of a tractor-trailer accident on an interstate highway in Oklahoma.

The accident was preceded by a minor collision, which had stopped traffic on Interstate 44 near Miami, Okla. Eastbound drivers cresting a rise could see the traffic jam ahead and began braking. However, the truck driver’s 40,000-pound rig barreled ahead at nearly 70 mph, smashing into a Land Rover and knocking it into another car and then off the highway. The truck then rode over first one and then another car, dragging both vehicles under its wheels, before coming to a stop atop a minivan.

There is no evidence that he tried to brake or take evasive action before hitting the other cars, investigators said. Some collision warning systems contain a feature that will automatically brake in such circumstances without any action by the driver. The truck driver later pled guilty to ten counts of negligent homicide. This past week the National Transportation Safety Board held that the accident was caused because the truck driver was suffering from acute fatigue which could have been avoided had the trucking company followed the federal regulations regarding rest and employed an inexpensive electronic device that would have alerted the driver that he was in danger of hitting an object ahead of him.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates conservatively that each year drowsy driving “is responsible for at least 100,000 automobile crashes, 71,000 injuries, and 1,550 fatalities.” But among all the major factors that cause or contribute to crashes, like speeding, alcohol use, and weather situations, drowsiness is the most difficult for police and other crash investigators to detect and quantify.

Sleepiness and driving is a dangerous combination. Most people are aware of the dangers of drinking and driving but don’t realize that drowsy driving can be just as fatal. Like alcohol, sleepiness slows reaction time, decreases awareness, impairs judgment and increases your risk of crashing.

If you are involved in a Tennessee automobile accident with a suspected drowsy driver time is of the essence, do not tarry, contact the experienced Nashville automobile accident lawyers at Phillip Miller & Associates immediately so that you can get a solid picture of the issues you face and a good start in protecting your interests.