Three More Distracted Driver Fatalities
Distracted Driver Rollovers
One week ago I blogged about what appeared to me to be an epidemic of automobile accidents in East Tennessee. Apparently, I missed three other fatal Tennessee accidents that occurred during that same time period. I feel compelled to raise the question again, What’s Going on in East Tennessee?
According to an article in the Cookeville Herald-Citizen Irene Malgeri, 84, of Crossville was killed on Tuesday afternoon when she attempted to turn into a church parking lot and did so right into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer. Ms. Marleri died instantly and the driver of the tractor-trailer, Derrick Ogletree, 28, of Flovilla, Ga., was hospitalized.
Another Crossville citizen, Ronnie J. Stoke, 57, was killed in an accident on Sunday afternoon. According to the article Mr. Stoke was driving on I-40 when he lost control of his pickup truck and left the road, hit a guardrail and rolled, ejecting Mr. Stoke from the vehicle.
The following Friday morning 20-year-old Sarah Delk of Jamestown was killed when she lost control of her vehicle, ran off the road, struck an embankment and overturned. Ms. Delk was ejected from the vehicle.
Studies of real-world single-vehicle crashes show that more than 90% of rollovers occur after a driver runs off of the road. This is not referring to vehicles trying to negotiate difficult trails away from public roads, rather it refers to vehicles rolling over off of the pavement after the driver has lost control of the vehicle. The pavement, a ditch, soft soil, curb or other tripping mechanism usually initiates the rollover accident once the vehicle slides off.
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.
My sympathy and prayers go out to the families of the deceased. The lesson to be learned from these tragic accidents are that seatbelt use can and does prevent traffic fatalities and the driver inattention or distraction, even for a second or two, can have horrible results. The lesson for the political leadership is that to stem this epidemic they must be proactive and start an urgently needed public educational campaign to instruct and remind East Tennessee drivers of these two valuable lessons.
If you or a loved one is injured in a Tennessee automobile accident by a distracted driver contact the experienced Tennessee Automobile accident attorney’s at Phillip Miller & Associates to find out about your rights and remedies.
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