Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

Here we go again, Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyer Joseph Lipsky sadly reports that nearly 10,000 people were killed in car accidents in the first quarter of the year, federal transportation officials said Wednesday, which is a number representing the deadliest start in America over the past twenty years. In states such as Florida, car accident deaths were up nearly 10% compared to the same quarter last year. The figures, which represent actual deaths, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not state the causes of the deadly crashes. The researchers do not have an explanation for the drastic rise in car accident deaths, but initially believe the continued lower congestion since the pandemic, has allowed already reckless drivers to drive at even more dangerous speeds. There is also speculation that those reckless drivers are more frequently driving under the influence and not using seat belts. The continuing rise in deadly car accidents began in the first quarter of 2020, when nearly 8,000 people died in car and truck accidents. That number rose in the first quarter of 2021, when the number rose to nearly 9,000. The first quarter of the year, January, February and March, is generally the least deadly on American roads.

Transportation Secretary Buttigieg previously said the government was working to reduce deadly car accidents by commencing a “safe system” approach that would evaluate roads and cars designs. The program will be funded from the infrastructure law, which includes a $5 billion fund that will provide grants aimed at protecting bicyclists and pedestrians. The infrastructure law requires technology that could address some causes of fatalities, such as including breath monitoring devices in cars. The government released this deadly car accident information in advance of the Labor Day holiday, in hopes of educating drivers to avoid reckless conduct, like drinking and driving, and texting while driving. The government is also introducing a multi-million-dollar campaign to advanced driver education and safety. While NHTSA has responsibility for the safety of vehicles, much of its budget is dedicated to advertising campaigns and help for law enforcement. Some safety advocates say the federal government has struggled to move beyond its long-standing focus on driver behavior.

As we remember during the beginning of the pandemic, roads had much less traffic but those on the roads drove at much faster speeds, not being burdened by rush hour congestion. With most people thinking the pandemic is in the past, Americans drove more than 750 billion miles between January and March, a rise of more than 5 percent versus 2021.NHTSA determined that the death rate on U.S. roads during the first three months of this year was 1.27 per 100 million miles driven, also a significant rise from 2020. .

Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky regrets to report that the number of car accident deaths across America rose the most since the 1940s. The increase over the past year was unexpected, as car accident deaths and injuries had been on a downward trend over the past fifty years – due to vehicle safety innovations, reduction in drunk driving crashes, and lower speed limits. Those changes are the reason why the rate of car accident deaths dropped to their lowest number, prior to the pandemic.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly 43,000 people lost their lives in car and truck accidents last year, an increase of 10.5% over 2020, which itself had the highest death rate in fifteen years. In comparison, during 2019, car accident death rates rose nearly 20 percent, which was the highest rise since the mid-1940s. Trying to determine the reason for the dramatic increase is difficult, but researchers believe it is a deadly combination of faster reckless drivers using their phones while behind the wheel.

Not surprisingly, Florida is a top state for distraction-related automobile deaths, according to data from MoneyGeek.The Sunshine State had over 500 distracted driving deaths during the years 2019 to 2020. The only state with more distracted driving deaths during that time was Texas. In hopes of changing the path of deadly crashes in Florida, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) and the Florida Highway Patrol started a campaign, during National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, to teach Florida motorists about the importance of avoiding distracted driving. According to FLHSMV data, distracted driving crashes resulted in 333 fatalities in 2021 – the highest recorded in Florida in at least 8 years. On average, there were more than 1,000 distracted driving crashes every week across Florida last year.

Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky reports that according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of car accident deaths in the United States rose dramatically during the first three quarters of 2021, to a shocking number of nearly 32,000, with ten percent of those deaths happening in Florida. Sadly, this rise follows the post-pandemic surge noted once the Covid-19 lockdowns were lifted.

The government estimates that the number of car accident deaths during the period last year from January through September rose by twelve percent compared to the same time frame in 2020, a rise which was the highest recorded in over forty years, the greatest rise since the government’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System began monitoring traffic deaths. In fact, the number of car accident deaths of the year’s first nine months was the highest during those months since 2006. As expected, Florida, which was one of the first states to lift pandemic restrictions, was one of the states which lead the rise in traffic accident deaths. The rise in fatalities correlates to 1.36 traffic deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven, which statistically was a slight rise from the 1.35 per miles traveled measured in 2020. Interestingly, the deadly rise diminished during the third quarter of 2021 versus the same quarter of 2020.

In light of this shocking rise, the Department of Transportation vowed to roll out a nationwide plan, called the National Roadway Safety Strategy, in hopes of reversing this deadly trend. Specifically, part of the recently passed infrastructure law will encourage states to build safer roads, with dedicated bicycle and bus lanes, increase lighting along rural roads and install more crosswalks. Given the difficulties local police departments are having deploying officers for traffic patrols, plans also call for installation of speed cameras, which are disfavored by motorists, but provide for greater and more cost-effective speed enforcement. Evidence is clear that reducing speeding motorists correlates to an equivalent drop in violent crashes, meaning lives are saved.

Despite driving significantly fewer miles over the past year due to Covid-19, there were actually almost 3,000 more car accident deaths in 2020, as compared to 2019. According to a recent study by the National Safety Council, over 42,000 people lost their lives in car accidents over the past twelve months – an eight percent increase from the prior year. Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky knows too well of the carnage on our roadways over the past year, having helped many families who were victims of deadly crashes in Miami, Plantation and Boca Raton.

While safety advocates had hoped for a silver-lining during Covid, that a significant drop in vehicular traffic would result in an equally impactful drop in car accident deaths; the sad part is that those who choose to drive during the lockdowns actually demonstrated riskier driving behavior, including driving at high speeds. The dangerous driving was also documented by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which confirmed that more speeding meant deadlier crashes. Those findings seem out of place when looking back at Florida’s March and April, 2020, state of emergency and stay-at-home orders.

Most observers point to Covid-19 as significant contributing factor in the rise in deadly crashes – a statistic which is omitted from the Covid-19 reported death numbers. The safety council calculated that Americans drove nearly thirteen percent less over the past year; yet, the rate of driving deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven increased by nearly twenty-five percent to 1.49, the greatest percentage increase in over 100 years.

As if 2020 was not difficult enough, Fort Lauderdale car accident attorney Joseph Lipsky sadly reports that the number of people killed on our highways rose nearly five percent during the first three quarters of 2020, even with the majority of Americans being locked down due to Covid-19.  According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) more than twenty-eight thousand people died in car accidents during the period from January through September of 2020, an increase from just under twenty-seven thousand deaths during the same three quarters of 2019. The deadly rise occurred during the timer when there were few vehicles on the road when the pandemic began.

While the stay-at-home restrictions emptied the roads of significant traffic, driver speeds rose steadily, resulting in a shocking rise in car accidents and wrongful deaths.  Usually, economic slowdowns resulted in less miles being drive, last year’s drop was almost 20% versus 2019. Despite such a large drop, the ratio of car accident wrongful deaths rose by nearly twenty percent, up to 1.25 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.

According to the NHTSA “Preliminary data tells us that during the national health emergency, fewer Americans drove, but those who did took more risks and had more fatal crashes,” the safety agency said in a letter addressed to the nation’s drivers. Traffic deaths rose 0.6% during the first-quarter of 2020, but they fell 1.1% in the second quarter as coronavirus lockdowns restricted movement. Car accident wrongful deaths dramatically rose by 13.1% from July through September. As the pandemic began and drivers encountered less crowded roads, they drove faster. And with police officers reluctant to interact with motorist, in a need to protect themselves from transmission of the virus, there was a drop in enforcement of traffic safety laws.

While most people know that using a seatbelt is mandatory, and that buckling up saves lives, the same knowledge and law does not apply to rear-seat passengers. Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky reminds us that unfortunately too many motorists and their passengers fail to realize that those same lifesaving benefits should be used by rear-seat passengers. This is particularly important as according to a recent report from the Governors Highway Safety Association, more than 800 people died last year when they did not use a rear seatbelt in a vehicle which was involved in a car accident. Whether due to convenience, discomfort or lack of education, too many rear-seat passengers fail to see the need, particularly on shorter trips, to use their seatbelt.

The study found that over the past year, seventy-five percent of rear seat passengers used a seatbelt, which was a decrease from prior years. The crash wrongful deaths were not limited to cars, which accounted for half of the unbelted fatalities, an equal number involved rear-seat passengers in trucks and vans. The study concluded that if those rear-seat passengers were using a seatbelt, more than half would have survived the car accident.

The study was based upon an investigation of police reports and the damage from thousands of car and truck accidents and compared them to federal statistics. Those federal statistics confirm that rear-seat shoulder/lap seatbelts do prevent wrongful deaths in nearly fifty percent of crashes. When analyzed for those traveling in the rear of light trucks and vans, seatbelts were more than seventy percent effective in preventing wrongful deaths.  Despite the fact that those states with mandatory rear-seat seatbelt laws have a significantly greater survival rate in serious car accidents, Florida still does not have a mandatory rear-seat seatbelt law for passengers older than 18 years of age.

Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky reports the results of a recently released AAA study which show wrongful deaths caused by motorists running red lights reached a 10-year high last year.  The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reports that nearly 1000 people lost their lives last year when a driver disregarded or tried to beat a red light. The number of preventable deaths rose on a year by year basis by more than thirty percent over the past decade. This deadly trend represents the fifth straight year of deaths attributed to red light crashes. The AAA study monitored everyone killed in a traffic light crash, including the driver, passengers and pedestrians and cyclists.

Not to stress this point, but according to Jack Nelson, the AAA director of traffic safety and research, “this is at least two people killed every day at the hands of drivers blowing through red lights.”

While the purpose of the study was not to determine the reason for the increase in red-light related car accident deaths, the AAA still postulated that one contributing factor is that we are driving more as a society. According to the data AAA tracked, the average number of miles motorist drove over the last ten years, since the great depression, increased by more than five percent, a figure confirmed by the Federal Highway Administration. Other uncontroverted factors include the exponential rise in the number of so-called smartphones being used by drivers and the increase in in-vehicle information and entertainment systems.

More traffic wrongful death data from Ft. Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky,while the number of people killed in traffic crashes in 2017 exceeded 37,000, a drop of nearly 2% from the prior year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; according to the World Health Organization, the number of traffic-related deaths rose to move than 1.35 million last year. The WHO’s report on Road Safety determined that deaths from car accident are now the 8thleading cause of death, resulting in more than $800 billion dollars of damages world-wide last year alone.

And of course, Florida again is considered one of the most deadly states for car accident deaths, partially due to some of the most lenient driving laws in the country.

Car accident dangers are evaluated in the study in 5 categories including occupant protection, child passenger safety, teen driving, drunk driving and distracted driving. Florida drivers demonstrated some of the most dangerous behaviors resulting in 2,922 fatal crashes with over three thousand car accident wrongful deaths in 2017.U.S. crash deaths fell slightly in 2017 but still reflected the second-deadliest year on the road in the last decade. As expected, given Florida’s recent rise in legal marijuana use, some of the most frequent causes of deadly car accident include drugged driving and distracted driving.

According to Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyer Joseph Lipsky, recent car accident data released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration demonstrates a mixed bag of news regarding wrongful deaths from car accidents. While the NHTSA’s statistics show that while car accident deaths were less in 2017, compared to the prior year, they were still the 2nd highest over the past ten years. The reality is that more than thirty seven thousand drivers and passengers lost their lives in 2017; which represented a nearly two percent drop from the prior year.

In addition to the number of motorist deaths, sadly, the number of pedestrians and bicycle riders who died in car accidents remained overly high, at nearly six thousand. However, this too was a drop of almost two percent from the year before, but 2017 was the second most deadly year over the past thirty for pedestrians involved in car accidents.

Personal injury Lipsky agrees that the NHTSA’s figures are encouraging but do not under any circumstance represent a reason for celebration, as the overall trend of rising motorist and passenger deaths over the past decade remains alarmingly high. Common sense certainly shows that the increase in the number of distracted drivers, and those under the influence of alcohol or marijuana, which has since been legalized in Florida for medicinal purposes, remain a prevalent danger to both motorists and pedestrians. And while the statistics demonstrate that less than ten percent of traffic deaths are related to driver distraction, the NHTSA is the first to readily admit that the real number is certainly significantly higher. The primary reason for the inaccurate number of distracted driver accident can be attributed to the fact that drivers do not readily admit their use of smart phones, making it  difficulty to adequate quantify the true number of drivers using their phones to talk or text while driving. We agree that this ever increasing problem warrants further investigation by the legislature to enact sensible laws, and by the police to enforce those laws already in effect, whose purpose is to properly discourage motorists from driving while distracted.

As car accident attorneys helping seriously injured accident victims throughout Florida, including Fort Lauderdale, Miami and the Palm Beaches, we are not surprised that a recent survey determined that Florida has the worst drivers in America. The study reviewed crash and police information accumulated from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which reviews the number of wrongful deaths per miles driven in each state; the number of driving under the influence (DUI) arrests per state, as reported to the FBI; the ratio of insured versus uninsured motorists in each state; and Google’s analytics regarding the number of searches about speeding tickets and traffic tickets in each stated.

As everyone who suffers through the daily drive upon Florida’s highways, including the Florida Turnpike, I-75, I-95 and SR 826 knows, the study could only have one “winner” once it analyzed all the data. Incredibly, while most drivers think they drive well, the data reveals that that is not the case. In Florida, that data shows that our reputation is well earned. Florida’s drivers “won” for the 2nd year in a row, a dubious honor as the nations’ worst. Florida’s honor is attributed to the number of deadly car accidents, ranking 9th in the nation and we also had the 9th greatest number of internet searches for traffic tickets. Surprisingly, Florida ranked at the bottom regarding the number of DUI arrest.

In addition to being the state with the worst drivers, Florida also has the most dangerous road, U.S. 1. According to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, U.S. 1 has a fatality rate of 2.8, with more than 1,011 car accidents with more than 1,000 wrongful deaths over the past ten years. Not too far behind I-95 running through Broward and Miami-Dade Counties with a fatality rate of 1.73 accidents per mile.

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