Tennessee Motor-Vehicle Accident Numbers on the Rise This Year

October 18, 2012

Tennessee Motor-Vehicle Accident Numbers on the Rise This Year

It only takes a few minutes of online searching to discover information about recent Tennessee motor-vehicle accidents:
-A 16-year-old teenage girl from Seymour and one of her pastors died in a fiery head-on collision while riding home in a van from a Gatlinburg church retreat.
-A 60-year-old Bradley County woman died when her car hit another that was traveling toward her the wrong way in the wrong lane after dark with the headlights off. The other driver is being investigated for possible drug use.
-A 21-year-old female passenger who was not wearing her seat belt was killed in an early morning Rutherford County crash in which the vehicle left the highway and flipped over. Allegedly, both she and the 23-year-old driver had been drinking alcohol and the driver faces criminal charges.

Unfortunately, the accident numbers in Tennessee are going in the wrong direction. As of Sept. 20, 2012, 728 people in the state had lost their lives on the roads, compared with 689 last year at the same time, according to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

Shedding some light on these numbers, the department also reports that looking at the first seven months of 2012 as compared to that time period in 2011, alcohol-related accidents are up 8.7 percent, representing 240 more such crashes. Drunk driving arrests are also up even more significantly, 29 percent more in the first 7.5 months of 2012 over the same period in 2011.

Car Accidents Not Only Cause Grief, but Also Are Expensive

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fatal car crashes in Tennessee rack up $14 million annually in medical expenses, and cause $1.14 billion cumulative future work loss costs, representing income and benefits that would have been earned over their lifetimes by those who died.

Drivers' Ed Not Required in Tennessee

While drivers' education courses are offered in some Tennessee high schools and by private companies, completion of such a safety course is not a prerequisite to obtaining a drivers' permit or license in the state, a requirement that many other states have. Some question whether Tennessee should join them and whether only having parents teach their kids to drive is adequate training, considering the high numbers of teen accidents.

Seat Belts

In addition to alcohol consumption, another feature of Tennessee road fatalities is lack of seat-belt use, according to the Governor's Highway Safety Office Director Kendell Poole, who says that more than half of those killed on the roads this year so far had not been using safety restraints.

Distracted Driving

Distracted driving has always been the cause of some accidents. Driver do lots of other things while driving like eating, listening to music, talking to other passengers, putting on makeup and reaching out or down to pick up objects. Everyone knows, however, that the recent explosion in mobile-phone technology and use brings a whole new danger to the road.

Especially with teenagers, already the most inexperienced drivers, cell phones are becoming almost like extensions of their bodies and minds. And the impact on driving of habitually constant use of cellular phones for talking, texting and searching the Internet while driving can be deadly. This behavior takes the eyes off the road, hands off the wheel and mind off the complex task of driving, all while responsible for controlling a heavy, potentially lethal vehicle in motion.

According to the Shreveport Times, if a driver takes eight seconds to read a text while moving 30 mph, he or she has driven the length of a football field with his or her eyes off the road. The same article reports that just in Rutherford County more than 300 accidents have been related to cell phone use since 2003.

A recent editorial in The Tennessean cites a University of Tennessee study for the figure that three-quarters of teenagers feel texting while driving is "common."

State Efforts

Tennessee law enforcement and legislators are grappling with the problem. For example, the new "No Refusal" law lets police request search warrants for blood draws when alcohol use is suspected and drivers refuse testing. Targeted No Refusal enforcement campaigns were held over two long holiday weekends this year already.

In addition to No Refusal, Tennessee police also conduct sobriety checkpoints and so-called "saturation patrols" concentrating high numbers of law enforcement personnel to target impaired drivers in a particular area.

If you are in a Tennessee car accident, or lose a loved one in such a crash, talk to an experienced personal injury attorney about your legal options.

Article provided by Kinnard, Clayton & Beveridge
Visit us at www.kinnardclaytonandbeveridge.com