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High speeds are a major factor in car accidents in the metro Atlanta region and across Georgia every year.  Concerned at the growing number of car wrecks involving speeding drivers, Georgia and a number of Southern states are enforcing speed limits and cracking down on errant drivers.

Operation Southern Slow Down is a multi-state initiative that involves a total of five Southern States including Georgia. The week-long campaign this year will see law enforcement officers in all of these states cracking down on speeding drivers.  In the five years that Operation Southern Slow Down has been conducted, Georgia Highway Patrol officers have written down more than 55,000 speeding tickets. Police have also pulled over 3,200 drivers for driving under the influence of alcohol during the week-long enforcement campaign over the past 5 years.

Officers intend to spend a lot of time and attention on speeding drivers in construction work zones. For instance, Interstate 95 and Interstate 16 are currently home to construction zones, and officers will be looking at cracking down on speeding drivers in these areas.  Workers in construction zones are always at a high risk of personal injuries in car accidents, and those risks are amplified when there are speeding drivers in these zones. Speed limits are always posted well before the start of a construction work zone and even through the zone.  Drivers must lower speeds as soon as they see these signs and stick to the posted speed limits as they drive through the construction zone.

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The federal administration has finalized a new rule that will strengthen standards for car safety seat design and manufacture, and help to protect children from serious personal injuries in side impact car accidents.

The rule has been more than two decades in the making.  For years now, child safety advocates have been calling on the federal administration to ensure that the child car safety seats that millions of American parents trust to keep their children safe are manufactured with the ability to withstand personal injuries in side- impact auto accidents or T-bone car accidents. These are deadly auto accidents and can cause serious personal injuries to passengers in the car.

Congress asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to enact a rule like this two decades ago, and the time has finally come.  The agency has finally announced its intention to finalize the rule. The rule will require that manufacturers test child car safety seats for protection in side- impact auto accidents and not just frontal impact car accidents.  Earlier, car seat manufacturers were only required to test for frontal impact auto accidents at 30 miles per hour . The new rule requires that manufacturers also test their car seats for side impact at 30 mph.

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A new report ranks Georgia in the top 10 in a list of states ranked based on  pedestrian accident deaths. It is very likely that the majority of these pedestrian accidents resulted in wrongful death lawsuits.

The number of people being killed while walking has increased significantly over the last few years, especially during the pandemic.  Even as there was  a dip in driving across Georgia during March 2020,  there was no corresponding drop in the number of fatal car accidents, especially those involving  pedestrians.  If anything, the number of people dying in these car accidents actually increased.

Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition recently released a new report titled Dangerous by Design.  The report evaluates the performance of all 50 states in ensuring the safety of pedestrians, and ranks metropolitan areas as well as all 50 states based on the number of pedestrian deaths occurring in the states.  Georgia is ranked at a dismal 9.  There is more bad news.  None of the states that are listed in the top 20 have seen any success in reducing the number of pedestrian accident deaths, compared to the previous report.

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The administration has finalized a rule that is meant to protect motorists and drivers of light passenger vehicles from serious injuries in a truck accident with large commercial trucks for tractor trailers.

A serious underride truck accident can involve devastating personal injuries, including decapitation. In these truck accidents, the motorist may hit the back of the tractor trailer, resulting in the smaller passenger vehicle sliding under the tractor trailer.  Head and neck personal injuries are common in such types of truck accidents, and decapitation is not unheard of either.

For years now, passenger safety advocates have called for stricter restrictions on the design of commercial trucks and 18-wheelers that will prevent such truck accidents from taking place. The Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently announced that it has finalized rules that will update the current federal standards for underride protection. As part of the rule, trucks must come with rear impact guards that will absorb the energy of the impact, and prevent motorists from sliding under the tractor trailer.

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Yet another study finds that as lockdown went into effect around the country in the early months of 2020, many motorists began driving cars at speeds higher than their normal speeds.  Of course, this greatly increased the risk of car accidents resulting in severe injuries or death. Safety advocates fear that many of these behaviors might be hard to shake off now.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently conducted a study in the state of Virginia that only confirms what federal data has indicated recently – that speeding as a motoring behavior has become much more widespread since 2020.  In the new study, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety researchers analyzed data from several Virginia Department of Transportation speed counters.  The analysis then compared the percentage of drivers who were driving 10 mph above the speed limit between March and June 2020.

They found that while traffic volumes dropped by a significant 25% across the state, there was a 30% to 40% increase in the number of vehicles driving at 10 mph over the speed limit, compared to the same period of time in 2019. The only place where there was little difference in the number of speeding drivers was in rural areas where the numbers remained unchanged.  Elsewhere across the state, speeds accelerated even as traffic volumes fell.  On weekdays, there was a 43% increase in the number of motorists driving at least 10 mph above the speed limit, but during weekends, that percentage increased to 63%. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety research found that motorists were comfortable driving at excessive speeds because of the lack of rush hour traffic. . 

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Even as federal transportation authorities grapple with a spike in deaths in all types of car accidents, a new study finds that high visibility traffic enforcement campaigns may possibly hold the key to reducing those numbers and keeping motorists safe.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently revealed that auto accident death numbers are on the rise.  Those numbers were extremely high in 2020, a year in which American motorists drove fewer vehicle miles than in previous years.  In 2021, according to projected estimates, those numbers were at their highest in more than a decade.   This increase has been high enough to spur federal transportation authorities into action. The new National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief has announced his Roadway Safety Strategy, a plan that aims to combine efforts towards safer roads, vehicles and motorists to reduce car accident death numbers.

A new analysis by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finds that high visibility traffic law enforcement campaigns like those that are frequently conducted to encourage motorists to buckle up or drive safely or at posted speeds may be effective in helping reduce car accident fatality numbers

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Newer intersection assistance technologies could reduce the number of car accidents resulting in serious injuries or deaths involving senior drivers by as much as one-third.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently published the results of a new study that finds that intersection assistance technologies which include lane assist, vehicle- to- vehicle connectivity and other type of technological features can go a long way in helping mitigate the kind of risks that place a senior driver at risk of a car accident.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety researchers compared 5 auto safety features that are currently available on many automobiles, and compared their impact on the safety of senior drivers with others that are not as widely available. The technologies that are currently available include front crash prevention systems, brighter headlights, lane departure warning systems that warn the motorist when the car is in danger of veering away from its lane and blind spot detection systems that can alert the motorist to blind spots that are not visible to the driver.  All of these technologies can significantly help seniors deal with the risks arising from failing vision, poor reflexes, restricted mobility and the other challenges that make it difficult for them to drive safely.

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The federal administration spends millions of dollars in traffic safety campaigns every year.  An analysis of the effectiveness of these campaigns finds that unless these education campaigns are also combined with practical action, they may have a very limited impact on traffic safety or the number of car accidents which occur each year.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s traffic safety campaigns  encourage motorists to drive safely, wear seatbelts and avoid driving under the influence of alcohol.  One stellar campaign that the federal agency conducts annually is the Click it or Ticket campaign that encourages motorists to wear seatbelts while driving.  The campaign is credited with increasing seatbelt usage across the country, and usage rates are currently now at above 90%. This is a very respectable percentage, although it is still imperative that we reach out to the 10% of motorists who fail to wear seat belts. Individuals who fail to wear a seatbelt are those who are most likely to suffer a personal injury in a car accident. To learn more about personal injury matters involving car accidents, please visit our website.

However, according to some experts, it is not the campaign by itself that has promoted seat belt use.  Rather, it is the fact that newer automobiles now come with a seatbelt warning system that gives a motorist time to wear the seatbelt and make sure that everyone else is also buckled in before the driver operates the car.  In one such system, the car will not start until a few seconds after the ignition is turned on to give the motorist time to buckle up.

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A motorcycle accident is more likely to result in fatal injuries than any other type of motor vehicle accident.  This is mainly because a motorcycle rider does not have the protection being in an enclosed vehicle, but also because many motorcycle accidents can result in serious head injuries.  This is why a wearing a motorcycle helmet while riding a motorcycle is critical in preventing injury.

Georgia is one among several states that have universal motorcycle helmet laws requiring all riders and passengers on motorcycles to wear helmets while riding.  Data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that universal helmet laws go a long way in increasing helmet usage among passengers and riders, thereby preventing the kind of serious crash-related injuries that can result in death.   If you are riding a motorcycle in Atlanta, you must wear a helmet regardless of your age, riding experience or whether you are a rider or a passenger on a motorcycle.

Universal motorcycle helmet laws make sense, and it can be hard to understand why only a few states have these laws in place.  It wasn’t always like this. Several decades ago, the administration had tied universal motorcycle helmet laws to state accessibility to construction funds.  As a result, all states excluding 3, had universal helmet laws.  However, when these incentives were removed, many states went ahead with the decision to repeal universal helmet laws within their borders. This has proved to be a disaster for some of these states that have recorded high percentages of traffic accident fatalities involving motorcycle crashes since the laws were repealed.

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2021 was a deadly year for truckers and other persons involved in accidents with large commercial trucks and 18-wheelers.  The latest data by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reflected a 13% increase in the number of deaths in accidents involving large trucks last year, compared to 2020.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its latest traffic crash data for 2021, and the figures are bleak.  Overall, traffic fatalities were up by as much as 10.5% from 2020.  Interestingly, many of these fatal accidents occurred during the day time and on rural or artery roads.  Overall, these were the highest traffic accident death numbers on record since 2005.  Many in the industry and in the federal administration believe that these rates are at “crisis levels”.

The news on the trucking safety front was not much better. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration considered any commercial truck weighing at or above 10,000 pounds as a large truck for the purposes of data collection.  The figures included not just smaller trucks, but also non-commercial trucks.  There were a total of 5,601 deaths involving truck accidents in 2021, compared to a total of 4,965 accident deaths the previous year, a significant 13 percent increase.  Increases in deaths in crashes involving at least one truck were recorded in all months, except January, February and October of last year.

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