April 21, 2008

Car Accidents Involving Injury-Proof Cars

Volvo is leading the way to eliminate injury from car accidents by the year 2020. If all goes according to plan, its driver and passengers will escape even the most serious car crash without injury. And Volvo is far from the only player in what experts call the biggest revolution in the auto industry since the seatbelt.
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With 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes each year, car makers, safety experts and designers want to make injury-proof cars. The Swedish carmaker, now owned by Ford, is the first to set a target date to eliminate car accident death and injury in its cars.

As recently as January, some 77 percent of U.S. consumers polled by Consumer Reports ranked Volvo as the safest car brand. According to Consumer Reports no other brand dominates a category the way safety is owned by Volvo. But other carmakers have learned safety sells and are putting out their own safe credentials. As Orlando car accident lawyers we think this can only improve car safety more quickly. That is a very good thing.

Prevention of needless injury and death from car accidents is an issue that deserves everyone’s attention. Taking the injury out of car accidents is one solid method to address occupant safety. The other is building car crash avoidance into new vehicles. We applaud these approaches by auto makers.

April 7, 2008

Car Accident Follows School Party

A parent’s nightmare- you allow your children to go to a school party thinking there will be proper adult supervision. Instead, alcohol was served and two teenagers are permitted to leave the party impaired. On their way home, the teen driver loses control and strikes a tree, splitting the car in two. The car accident kills one teen and leaves the other brain-damaged.
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This tragedy led to both a civil trial and criminal charges against some of the participants. At the civil trial, which resulted in a verdict against the school and affiliated church, there were allegations that the school principal knew about the party beforehand and visited the home while it was going on. The evidence also included a party flier depicting a whiskey bottle which was distributed at school.

As Orlando car accident lawyers, it was even more disturbing that school provided all of its families with a written statement that it would notify police if it became aware of illegal activities by students. Certainly, parents had an expectation that this school would not knowingly allow alcohol to be served to minors at a school function. Yet investigators of this needless alcohol-related car accident found the remains of a car driven at perhaps 100 mph- with halves of the car coming to rest on opposite sides of the median. Indeed, the car accident was so bad that the medical examiner never determined who was driving.

April 1, 2008

Car Accidents Due to Fatigue

Driver Fatigue is a major cause of car accidents. As Orlando car accident lawyers, we find that people fail to appreciate the very real danger of driving when exhausted. While everyone knows the dangers of drinking and driving, few individuals question the wisdom of driving when tired. Yet, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates up to 100,000 car accidents each year from driver fatigue, with an estimated 1,550 deaths and 71,000 people injured. Certainly, the difficulty in identifying fatigue as the source of car accidents, as opposed to alcohol-related car accidents, means these figures are underestimated.
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According to researchers, any individual who has experienced certain types of sleep disorders or previously experience erratic driving due to fatigue should take special precautions. A west coast sleep research center, reported on surveys of more than 10,000 drivers and found that individuals who had visited with a physician because of sleepiness or fatigue were at an increased risk for being involved in a car accident. Also, individuals who were once stopped by police for erratic driving while sleepy were also more likely to have a car accident.

Of course, most people will not have any additional risk factors. For most drivers, there must simply be a better overall awareness that driving tired may impair your faculties in ways that are similar to alcohol usage. We have seen too many car accidents that could have been prevented, if the drivers had not been on the road so late at night or for so many hours.