Tennessee Interstate Roadway Departure Crash Takes Life Of Minister
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.
Phillip Miller is a Tennessee Accident Attorney specializing in
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