Fort Lauderdale Car Accident Attorney Blog

In recent years, it has become very clear that we have a distracted driving problem in the United States. In 2011 alone, there were 3,300 deaths and 387,000 injuries resulting from car crashes caused by a distracted motorist. This is a huge amount of people whose lives were cut short or who may have suffered serious injuries from which they will never be able to recover.

Our Fort Lauderdale injury attorneys know that almost everyone is aware of the dangers of distracted driving, and especially of the dangers of cell phone use. Thirty-nine out of the 50 states plus D.C. have a complete ban in place preventing all drivers from texting and another 10 states plus D.C. have a ban in place prohibiting cell phone use without a hands-free device. Unfortunately, Florida isn’t one of the states with a ban.

Some other states without complete bans also have restrictions, especially for teen or commercial drivers. There are also tons of public education and outreach campaigns including Distracted Driving Month and the Designated Texter public outreach campaign in Florida.

The vast majority of drivers in the U.S. have responded to surveys indicating they believe texting and driving is dangerous and should be banned. For example, 74 percent support a ban on hand-held cell phone use while 94 percent support a ban on texting while driving.

With all of this support for bans, widespread acknowledgement of the dangers of distracted driving and extensive education and outreach, some might question why so many people are being injured or killed by distracted driving crashes. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that almost everyone takes the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do approach when it comes to texting/talking and driving.

Hundreds of Thousands of Drivers Are on Their Phones Right Now
According to a recent study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there is a huge discrepancy between people’s attitudes and their behaviors when it comes to texting and driving. For example, despite the widespread beliefs in cell phone limitations and bans, between 24 and 28 percent of drivers indicated they were willing to initiate a call when driving and between 49 and 52 percent said they’d answer one.

This adds up to a lot of drivers texting or talking on their phones. In fact, NHTSA indicated that at any given daylight moment, there may be 660,000 drivers throughout the United States using their cell phones at the same time as they are operating a vehicle.

When you consider these hundreds-of-thousands of drivers driving around right now focused on their phone and not on the road, it quickly becomes clear why there are thousands of deaths and injuries each year. These drivers endanger themselves and others and this type of behavior should be stopped through tougher laws and through drivers making a real commitment not to use their phones behind the wheel.
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This April during Distracted Driving Month, the National Safety Council (NSC) is urging everyone to sign a pledge to drive cell free. The pledge is part of a wider efforts to draw attention to the problem of texting or talking behind the wheel. Talking on a cell phone and texting are widely thought to be among the most dangerous of all distracted driving behaviors, making car accidents between 4 and 23 times as likely to occur depending upon whether you’re chatting on the phone or using it to send a text.

However, as lawmakers and public education campaigns focus on urging people not to text and drive, one recent study has indicated that cell phone use may not actually be the primary cause of distracted driving accidents after all. Our Fort Lauderdale accident attorneys know that there are lots of different types of distracted driving behavior, many of which have nothing to do with a cell phone. Still, it is not clear whether the recent study is really an accurate measure of the cause of distracted driving crashes or whether it is just one more factor to consider in trying to sort out the puzzle of solving the public health crisis that distracted driving has become.

What is the Top Cause of Distracted Driving Accidents?
According to Yahoo News, the Erie Insurance Group decided to conduct a large scale review of auto accidents in order to try to find out what the most common distracted driving problems are.

The Erie Insurance Group reviewed 65,000 case files of car accidents that occurred in 2011 and 2012. Erie Insurance Group separated out the accidents that were attributed to distracted driving, which was about 10 percent of all of the accidents total, and then took a look at the stated cause of the distracted driving crash.

Based on the review of the information, Erie Insurance Group determined that the prime cause of distracted driving was not talking on a cell phone, texting or using a mobile phone in any way. Instead the study results indicated that a full 62 percent of distracted driving crashes in the U.S. occurred because of the simple problem that drivers were “lost in thought.” Apparently, according to the study, 62 percent of all of the distracted driving crashes in 2011 and 2012 involved drivers that just happened to be daydreaming at the time of the crash. By contrast, about 12 percent of the distracted driving accidents were attributed to cell phone use.

If it seems hard to believe that 62 percent of all distracted drivers were so focused on their daydreams that they got into car accidents, there is a possible explanation that may make things a little more clear. The study focused on what the stated cause of the accident was as told to law enforcement or as determined by law enforcement based on their observations. Because many drivers may be frightened of the consequences of using a cell phone when they caused an accident, it is possible that drivers simply did not report to police that they were on the phone. As such, the incidents of simple daydreaming may have been over-reported and incidents of phone use underreported.

Regardless of whether daydreaming is the top cause of distracted driving accidents or whether cell phone use is the leading factor, it is clear that far too many of these accidents occur and that every driver needs to make a commitment to focus on the road in order to stay safe and avoid hurting others.
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A lot of motorists might think it’s annoying to wear a seat belt. It might be uncomfortable for some and it might even wrinkle your clothes. But think about being injured from a car accident — an injury that could have been prevented with a seat belt.

According to Health Canal, most driving is done locally — and most motorists don’t wear their seat belts during these local trips. Yet we see most of our accidents occurring during these local trips.

Our Vero Beach car accident lawyers understand that motorists are more likely to buckle up when they’re taking trips. According to a recent study from Accident Analysis and Prevention, drivers don’t want to buckle up for those short trips. And that’s not good news when you consider that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that fatalities from car accidents could be reduced by close to 50 percent if we were all buckling up during every car ride.

So who’s buckling up?

According to research, a trip at about 30 miles per hour only saw about 70 percent of motorist seat belt usage. When that speed was upped to 50 miles per hour, seat belt usage increased to about 90 percent.

Additional Study Findings:

-Younger women were more likely to buckle up than women over the age of 40.

-Motorists who had achieved a higher level of education were more likely to buckle in.

-Those who only buckled in on occasions were more likely to be aggressive drivers.

-Drivers in the infrequent-user group had an at-fault crash/near crash rate approximately double that of the other two groups.

-Those who buckled in more often took a lot fewer driving trips than those who didn’t buckle in much.

Officials aren’t done though. The Strategic Highway Research Program will be looking at seat belt usage from 2,000 vehicles.

Who’s most likely to ride unbuckled?

-Intoxicated drivers

-Teenagers

-Pickup truck drivers

-Male drivers

-Nighttime drivers

The truth of the matter is that seat belts have been able to save over 75,000 lives from 2004 to 2008, according to the National Safety Council (NSC).

In the state of Florida, children under the age of 3 are required to be secured in a federally approved child-restraint seat. Child passengers ages 4 and 5 are required to be secured by either a federally approved child restraint seat or safety belt. In addition to buckling in children, all passengers in the front seat must wear a seat belt as well as all passengers under the age of 18.

Regardless of law, or of any statistics, you want to make sure you’re buckled in during each and every car ride for your own safety. This is one decision and one move that could wind up saving your life. Start making it a habit and buckle in each time you sit down in a vehicle.
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Many drivers view seat belts to be an inconvenience during short trips around town, according to a new study conducted by the Virginia Tech, The National Highway Traffic Safety Association and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyers know that whatever minor, temporary annoyance seat belts may cause drivers, the risk you take by not buckling up is far greater.

The majority of trips people take are local. People are lulled into a false sense of security amid familiar roads and surroundings when the reality is that a third of all traffic crashes actually occur within a mile of home. It makes sense considering that’s where you do the most driving.

The study, published in the January edition of Accident Analysis and Prevention followed the driving habits of 100 people over the course of the year. The vehicles of these individuals were outfitted with instruments that allowed researchers to follow the driver’s routes, patterns, speed and safety belt use.

What the researchers found was this:

Overall, seat belts were worn 79 percent of the time. This is encouraging, but it’s not great. It means that at any given time, 21 out of 100 people weren’t belted in.

Drivers were then grouped into one of three categories: infrequent seat belt users, occasional seat belt users and consistent seat belt users. Infrequent users were belted in 30 percent of the time or less. Occasional users were belted in 40 to 85 percent of the time. Consistent users wore their seat belt 85 percent or more of the time.

Fortunately, most users were consistent.

But a pattern began to emerge with regard to speed correlating with use of seat belt. It seemed if drivers were traveling an average of 30 miles per hour, they were less likely to buckle up (72 percent overall). However, if the driver was traveling at speeds of more than 50 miles per hour, they were more likely to wear their seat belts (89 percent overall). So on interstates and longer trips, drivers presumed greater danger than on shorter trips on secondary roads.

As mentioned earlier, that’s a skewed and unrealistic perception, and one that clearly requires more attention from safety advocates.

The NHTSA said the results suggested that infrequent users may only be deterred by strengthened laws, such as primary safety belt laws (or those that make it a primary offense for which an individual can be pulled over by law enforcement). Occasional users, meanwhile, may require more education to understand the risk they take when they don’t buckled up while running seemingly innocuous errands.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that seat belts can reduce the risk of serious crash injuries by more than 50 percent.

Florida Statute 316.614(4) holds that it is unlawful for anyone to operate a motor vehicle unless the driver and every passenger is properly buckled in.

While researchers here were quick to point out the limitations of a 100-car study, a similar but much larger version of this analysis is underway by the U.S. Strategic Highway Research Program, which will be looking at driving patterns and safety habits of some 2,000 motorists.
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Many of us are fully aware of the dangers of distracted driving, but we seem to have been lulled into a false sense of security with regard to one aspect: hands-free cell phones.

Our Coral Springs car accident lawyers know that in terms of accident prevention, hands-held devices do almost nothing to keep us safer.

Now is an appropriate time to drive this message home, as April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.

Although laws restricting cell phone use by drivers vary significantly from state-to-state, there are several places that allow hands-free devices, while hand-held devices are banned. While we would posit that some restriction is certainly better than none at all, we must question this erroneous notion that somehow not actually holding a device while having a phone conversation makes it safer.

(It’s worth noting that Florida has no cell phone restrictions at all, though it’s likely that could change in the current legislative session, with a number of bills working their way through committees.)

The National Safety Council notes several studies that have shown that drivers on cell phones – regardless of what kind – suffer from something called inattention blindness. This is sometimes referred to as tunnel vision. Essentially, the driver engaged in a conversation is looking at the road ahead, but they aren’t actually “seeing” it or fully processing and reacting to it.

The National Transportation Safety Board recommended in late 2011 that all states and D.C. enact bans of all electronic portable devices, including those that are hand-free. And yet, legislation almost always focuses on texting and handheld phones. Many employer policies too allow the use of hands-free devices. Presumably, all of this is under the premise that hands-free is somehow safer.

It’s not.

One tragic example was noted in Michigan, when a 20-year-old driver using a hands-free device blew through a red light and failed to brake even after smashing into several vehicles in the intersection. She was traveling nearly 50 miles per hour and she never even touched the brakes. Witnesses said she wasn’t on her phone or dialing or texting. She had been looking straight ahead. Both hands were on the wheel. She wasn’t drunk or drowsy. But she was talking into a headset. A 12-year-old boy was killed.

The problem is that hands-free devices do nothing to eliminate the distraction caused by an over-the-phone conversation.

Our society tends to value the ability to multi-task. But the reality is, doing two things at once means at least one won’t be done with optimal effectiveness. Our brains have a limited capacity for attention. A person who is talking a cell phone and driving has their attention divided, their brain overloaded. The driver may not be consciously aware that he or she is not processing the entire surroundings.

Drivers who are talking with passengers in the vehicle actually make fewer mistakes in this regard than those talking on a phone. Part of it is that passengers are also actively monitoring the surroundings with the driver. Passengers may also on cue suppress conversations when driving conditions are more dangerous or demanding. Someone on the phone can’t do that.

This month, pledge to end ALL cell phone conversations behind the wheel.
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April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and our Vero Beach car accident lawyers want to encourage everyone to take the time to get educated, spread the word and pledge to maintain focus on the road ahead.

Cell phones in particular are of serious concern. The reality is, not all distractions are created equal.

More than eating or putting on make-up or changing the radio station, cell phones are the primary distraction for drivers. The National Safety Council reports that at any given moment during the day, 9 percent of all drivers are talking on their cell phones. Countless more are texting.

The NSC estimates that about a quarter of all crashes involve some type of cell phone use.

We know that two-thirds of all drivers admitted to talking on their phone while driving in the past 30 days and a third said they do that fairly often, according to a 2011 AAA Foundation survey. Most of those people believed they could safely talk on their phones. They didn’t set out that day to seriously injure or kill someone else.

But they need to know better. This is a great opportunity to get involved. Have a conversation with your parents, your friends, your teenagers and your spouse. Inform that that every text steals their attention for nearly five seconds. Depending on your speed, that could be the length of a football field. Let them know you care about them far too much for them to risk their lives this way.

In the first 10 months of 2011, the Florida Department of Transportation reported that there were more than 2,215 crashes linked to distraction involving electronic devices. At least 150 of those were shown to have been directly caused by texting and driving.

Florida is one of just five states in the country without a ban on texting and driving. Previous attempts to pass such legislation fell flat. Last year, the state Speaker of the House refused to even hear it.

But that could change as legislators are pushing for five different measures that relate to distracted driving. One is a proposed House bill would make texting while driving a secondary offense, while a bill being mulled in the senate would allow drivers who kill someone as a result of texting while driving to be charged with vehicular homicide.

Another ongoing effort compares texting and driving to drinking and driving, and urges drivers to use a “Designated Texter.” It’s simple: If you’re driving, pass your phone off to someone else in the vehicle and have them take charge of the correspondence, as opposed to trying to tap out their own messages while driving.

Encouragingly, many teens interviewed by local media said they are doing this anyway. What’s more, nearly 80 percent of teens responding to a State Farm Insurance survey said they had spoken up about distractions while in the car with a friend who was being less than attentive behind the wheel.

At the end of the day, our Vero Beach accident lawyers know you can’t control the actions of anyone else. But you can take personal responsibility for this problem and take the NCS pledge to drive cellphone free.
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We’ve come a long way from the days of monstrous “car phones” that were first employed for business purposes in the 1980s.

Our car accident lawyers know that among all the distractions employers try to curb among workers, the use of cell phones behind the wheel is the most deadly.

Being that April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, employers should be concerned for the safety and well-being of workers, with the additional understanding that they could be held liable if one of their workers crashes while talking or texting while driving. The National Safety Council urges all employers to adopt cell phone policies that make it explicitly clear what they expect of workers when they are driving, bearing in mind that hands-free devices are just as dangerous as hand-held devices.

This is especially critical here in Florida, where we are one of just five states lacking any kind of legal restrictions on cell phone use or texting for motorists.

We know cell phone use quadruples the risk of a crash. We also know that many of those using cell phones in their vehicle during daylight hours are working. Employers have an important role and responsibility in reducing these numbers.

The NSC determined that the number of employers enacting cell phone policies has risen steadily since the late 1990s, for the most part keeping pace with the number of cell subscribers. In 1999, there were just 3 percent of NSC member companies that had cell phone policies. Fast-forward to a decade later, and 50 percent either had handheld or full cell phone bans. It’s climbed steadily since then, but we still have quite a ways to go.

Part of the problem is the perception among corporate administrators that productivity is going to decrease or that employees will be resistant to the policy.

However, the NCS found that simply wasn’t true. More than half said there was no impact on employee morale. About 62 percent said they had seen no change in productivity, and 10 percent even reported an increase in productivity. Just 2 percent reported a decrease.

Further, companies that fail to implement a cell phone policy – or worse, encourages cell phone use by its driving employees – opens itself up to the risk of expensive litigation and potentially losing some of its best workers. Liability may be increased in states that have legislated cell phone restrictions. While Florida doesn’t yet have this, there are five different bills currently in the pipeline hoping to address this loophole.

Employers seeking to implement a cell phone policy should clearly communicate to employees the “why” of the matter – that they care about each of them, and feel an obligation and a duty to do all they can to keep them safe.

Once a policy is enacted, employers should make sure that the education is ongoing, that employees understand the laws and the risks and that you are following up to ensure the policy is being obeyed.
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